Symbols say it all — a screeching brake to a dynamic life, a sense of void leading to days of mourning. The chair in the picture will be occupied by someone else in some other time; the ashtray too will be used by another person to stub a Wills stick into it; the flowers will wither in a few days. But on that Friday morning (August 1), when the ambience was more than morose at the Deomel seminar hall, i took this picture at the room where NM used to take a puff after a double period of about 90 minutes. With a small garden outside the window, the place gave NM his source of poetic energy between classes. In fact, everyone at the condolence meet said that NM had more poetic self than his self as a teacher. Was this the reason that the poet NM could have foreseen death was knocking his doors? Why could the man say that he was feeling no longer at home in Santiniketan, just a few days before his sudden death? Why did he tell Singhji of Hindi department that their joint project would never be finished even when 70 per cent of the work was complete? Is it because he could “see” death? Was he aware that this time he would have to lose a battle to “proud death”? Are poets saints? Can they see future? Can they feel what’s going to happen? Maybe yes.
A human being like NM was rare in this world. From the rickshawpullers to vegetable vendors, from a grade IV staff of the university to the vice-chancellor, i was told later, went to see NM lying at the PM hospital covered with a white piece of sheet. Why was he so popular among all classes of people in Santiniketan? Santiniketan is not a city, but it has every character of a cosmopolitan town also. Those who know Santiniketan for a long time — not just weekend visits — would say that although it has a balm-like effect to every illness, sometimes it also behaves quite rude too. But to NM, this place was never that rude. NM was an outsider — he was not at all an ashramite in “niketani” sense; i have never seen him attending mandir on Wednesdays; never had i seen him in the crowd on Barshamangal evening at Natyaghar. Then why and how could he win hearts of hundreds of ashramites and people in Tagore’s town? Only because he was a great human being with a kind heart that gave space to everyone — from a teenaged student to tea-seller; from a professor driving four-wheeler to Mantu da riding a ramshackle rickshaw. One needs a unique heart to feel these all; a self not only for personal gains, but for humanity at large.
©Supratim Pal
Click on the link below to find tributes to NM by Deomelites. http://www.orkut.co.in/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=19848648&tid=5228288192276467117&start=1
