TRANSLATION
Uneasy muse
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`Gangopadhyay's blasé reliance on intrinsic talent shows up in this novel too, which is, incidentally, very entertaining and informative, instead of being brilliant and rigorous.'
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RANU O BHANU, a novel in Bengali by Sunil Gangopadhyay, has just been published in an English translation. In the original it has already created a stir in Kolkata because the two protagonists, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Bengali cultural icon, and Ranu Mukherjee, later wife of a business tycoon, are supposed to have been lovers. The author does not present his case directly but instead indulges in delicious innuendo, keeping the conservative, hypocritical Bengali readership in mind.
Tagore, the great poet, litterateur, painter and thinker first met Ranu — her actual name was Priti — in her parents' Banaras home when she was a child. He was struck by her angelic simplicity as she rushed out in innocent nudity to greet him. When tumultuous events rocked the world he soon forgot her. The First World War, at home the massacre of civilians at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar (Punjab) by English troops under general Dyer, his decision to return in protest the knighthood conferred on him and his failed tour of America to raise funds for his cherished university, Shanti Niketan, took up all his time.
Inseparable
On his return home, he again remembered Ranu who was then 15 and a stunner, though still innocent and somewhat troubled by her burgeoning womanhood. All this Tagore took note of with his poet's eye. They acted together in his play "Bisarjan", and she revealed acting talent mature beyond her years. Soon Ranu and her Bhanuda, the nickname she gave Tagore after the eponymous character of his long narrative poem "Bhanushinghar Padabali", became inseparable. She was, now in the eyes of people close to him, his muse.
Tagore's famous cousin, the laid-back painter Gaganendranath and nephew Abanindranath, also an excellent artist, joked about the Ranu-Bhanu relationship with Leonard Elmhirst, a friend and admirer of the poet. A Yorkshireman and veteran of the "Great War", Elmhirst was trying to improve agricultural practice and quality of animal husbandry in Bengal and taught these subjects at Tagore's Utopian abode of learning.
Young and pining for female company, Elmhirst too was fond of Ranu, but in a platonic way. His lover, Dorothy Straight, a wealthy American widow had donated 25,000 dollars toward building Shanti Niketan. She had later reneged on a promise of a further 50,000 dollars, presumably because she was peeved at Tagore — as were many other wealthy Americans — for spurning the knighthood and writing a strongly worded letter to the king of England.
Other Englishmen rallying round Tagore at that time were C.F. Andrews, also known as Deen Bandhu, an educationist who was soon to be the founder of St. Stephen's College in Delhi, and William Pearson, an acolyte who had accompanied Tagore on his ill-fated tour of America.
In Ranu's blossoming into exquisite womanhood, Tagore felt once again the presence of his late sister-in-law, Kadambari Devi, also known as Natun Bauthan, his elder brother, Jyotirindranath's gifted, lonely, neglected, beautiful wife. Rabindranath shared a deep companionship with her and grapevine has it that they had been lovers. By superimposing the image of Ranu on that of the deceased Nautan Bauthan, Gangopadhyay creates a poignant double-portrait evocative of Stephan Zweig.
Things become problematic when Freudian and Nabokovian ideas take root as Tagore and Ranu grow older in the novel, more so because hide-bound middle-class Bengali conventions encourage subterfuge — literal and literary. After her marriage to Biren Mukherjee, also to be later knighted for his services to the British Empire, Ranu noted in her diary, "I cannot give the poet what he wants". It is obvious that she shared with him an intimacy that could be called love but was unable to help him consummate it for strictly social reasons.
Fluid narration
Idyllic scenes are easily juxtaposed with those carrying spiritual and moral dilemmas. Tagore's rejection by Rilke, Spengler, Kafka, Zweig, Hesse, Keyserling and others bewildered him. The only European writer who welcomed him with open arms was Romain Rolland. At home, his relationship with Gandhi was uneasy although it was he who had first called him "Mahatma", and, who in return addressed him as "Gurudev". He was a great admirer of Gandhi's ideas about Indian society but wary of his political strategies to overthrow the British.
The narration is fluid, though the reader may have to persevere with the often too literal translation, and errors in proof reading. There is enough detail to sustain continuous interest; however, there is a lack of genuine creative energy. When he began, Gangopadhyay was a writer of high promise, but then he gradually became lazy as he could get by with just being good. Socio-political decadence had not unexpectedly taken a toll of intellectual life in the country. He was, in a sense, a victim. His blasé reliance on intrinsic talent shows up in this novel too, which is, incidentally, very entertaining and informative, instead of being brilliant and rigorous.
PARTHA CHATTERJEE
Ranu O Bhanu, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Srishti, paperback, p.231, Rs. 250.
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