Daughters of Jorasanko

1902–1905

I

It was a cold clear day of early December. The sky was a hard, flawless blue and a keen wind could be heard whistling past the grounds of No. 5 Dwarkanath Tagore Lane. Named Baithak Khana Bari, but better known in the locality as Hindu Bari because it housed the Hindu branch of the family, it was an imposing mansion rearing its head proudly above the older, shabbier No. 6 that stood next to it. No. 5 had been built by the Prince, the man after whom the street was named, the jewel in the crown of the Tagores of Jorasanko, and No. 6 by the founder of the family, Neelmoni Tagore. It was in the latter, rather spartan, ancestral dwelling that Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, head of the Brahmo branch, lived with his extended family.

It was the busiest hour of the day for the women of Baithak Khana Bari. The mistress, Soudamini Debi, sat on her high wooden chowki in the centre of the chequered marble veranda, keeping a sharp eye on everything that went on. Three feet below her was a flagged courtyard and, facing it, a row of dim, badly ventilated rooms from which a dozen clay ovens spewed smoke and flame from dawn till dusk. Each room had a distinct function and functionary. In the dudher ghar, quantities of milk seethed and foamed in huge cauldrons before being turned into curd, kheer, rabri and payesh. In the machher ghar, six to eight varieties of fish were cooked every day. There were many people in the house, from the very young to the very old, and tastes and requirements varied. There was a separate vegetarian kitchen and a special room for luchi, ruti and parotha. At one end of the courtyard, standing quite by itself, was the khansamar ghar, over which Muslim cooks had presided during the heydays of the Prince, when he had thrown brilliant parties with sahebs and mems attending. It had been shut down under the rule of the two previous mistresses of the house and been reopened some years ago. The present incumbent, however, was not a Muslim. He was a mog from Burma.

Soudamini’s granddaughter, Protima, sat cross-legged on the floor beside her. They looked a lot like each other and were dressed identically. Both wore thaans, single lengths of widow’s white, wrapped loosely about their limbs. But while Protima’s neck and shoulders were goose pimpled and turning blue from cold, Soudamini’s rose from the edge of her thaan, smooth and unflawed as though cut out of a mound of snow. They were Hindu women and followed the rules laid down for widows by the shastras. Fifty-year-old Soudamini had endured the rigours for nearly two decades and was, in consequence, immune to heat, cold, hunger and thirst. Protima was ten and had been widowed for only seven months…

Today was ekadasi, the eleventh day from the new moon – a day of rigorous fasting for Brahmin widows. A whole day and night would pass before the girl was allowed to drink water. And she felt so thirsty already! The cold dry wind was chapping her lips and turning her throat and chest to dust. She looked up at the grandfather clock at the far end of the veranda. Let me see, she said to herself, it’s ten o’ clock. So that makes it… She started counting the hours to the next day’s dawn on her fingertips. But her arithmetic wasn’t too good and she kept mixing up the numbers and beginning all over again. Giving up in disgust, she fixed a stern eye on the sun. Children called him Surya mama, but he wasn’t behaving like an indulgent maternal uncle at all. Indifferent to Protima’s hunger and thirst, he was taking his own sweet time driving his chariot across the sky. He was going slower than a snail. Faster! Faster! she admonished, you lazy good for nothing… She gulped, then suddenly remembered that swallowing one’s spit was taboo. The elderly widows of her husband’s family had told her that. Even thinking of thirst on ekadasi was a sin. Protima shrugged off the advice. It was nonsense. And, anyway, it was too difficult to follow. Her grandmother, she knew, was not in favour of such strict rules for her. Soudamini had wanted Protima to be allowed to wear saris instead of thaans and eat rice twice a day. Ekadasi could be observed with fruits and sherbet. She had made the suggestion to Nilanath’s grandmother, Kumudini, who was also her husband’s sister, but it had been overruled by the doughty dowager. The two women had had lengthy arguments, at the end of which a compromise was reached. Protima would observe all the rules pertaining to widowhood, down to the last detail, for the first year – the period of kalashouch. After that, some relaxation might be considered.

At this time of morning, the kitchen wing hummed with activity. The younger women of the house sat on the veranda in a circle, chopping vegetables on long, curved bontis. Their mouths bulged with paan and their tongues clacked noisily. They knew Soudamini’s eyes were on them, but felt no constraint. Soudamini had a volatile personality and lost her temper quite often, but she was warm and easy as a rule and not overtly fastidious or critical. So work and gossip went hand in hand. After the vegetables were done, they would sit down to dress the paan, of which huge amounts were eaten each day. ‘O re aaste!’ Soudamini scolded. ‘Your voices are reaching the baar mahal!’ But her tone was indulgent as she went on, ‘Keep your eyes on the bonti, Binu. Slicing banana flower is tricky business. And, Chhoto bouma, remember to soak the lentils for bori tonight. We need to make three or four lots while this sun lasts…’

Suddenly her eyes fell on a corner of the courtyard where Ullashi Bagdini had just put down her basket under the shaddock tree. Ullashi was the wife of Rama Bagdi and between the two they supplied fish to both the Tagore households. Ullashi stood a head and a half taller than her tiny, thunder-voiced husband and doubled him in bulk. But despite her gargantuan proportions, she was a woman of astonishing beauty. Her skin was a burnished copper and even glinted gold in some lights. Her face was large and bright; indeed everything about her was large and bright, from her dark flashing eyes to the tight knot of hair, long and thick as a ship’s cable. Her cheeks were smooth and round with deep dimples and her mouth a full-blown flower stained a fiery scarlet from the paan she ate all day. Rabindranath, Soudamini’s nephew from the Brahmo Bari, had made up a story about Ullashi. Ullashi, he said, was an apsara, a heavenly maiden, who had brought on the wrath of the gods and been made to take birth in a fisherman’s hut. But she had consumed such large quantities of nectar and ambrosia in her previous life, she had carried some of it over into this one. And feeding, in secret, on her hidden store of celestial nourishment, her body had grown beyond the ordinary in size and beauty.

Ullashi was middle-aged now, but she had been the belle of the fishing community of her village in her youth and had caught the fancy of quite a few men from the highest caste. She had indulged them and drained their purses at the same time, benefiting doubly thereby. Not only had she enriched herself in this life, she had earned merit for the next one by her service to twice borns. Or so people said.

‘Hanh re, Ullashi,’ Soudamini turned on her angrily, ‘do you know what time it is? Is this fish to be cooked for lunch or for my shraddha?’

‘What am I to do, Ma thakrun? Do I have ten hands?’ Ullashi started defending herself and yelling for the cook in the same breath. ‘O Duryodhan kaka! How much longer must I wait for the bonti? Don’t I have anything else to do? Don’t worry, Ma thakrun. I’ll have the fish scaled and cut in a jiffy. How long that doddering drug eater will take to cook is the question.’

At this, Duryodhan rushed out of his kitchen, brandishing an enormous bonti like a sword. ‘Chhenal magi!’ He spat the abuse viciously at Ullashi. ‘Brings in the fish after the sun has crossed the zenith then starts screaming like a demon.’

Ullashi sprang to her feet at the adjective, a reference to her dubious past, and made a dash towards her adversary. ‘How dare you call me chhenal magi? Call your mother that, you old scoundrel. Call your sister that, you … you … son of a—,’ she shrieked in a voice that sounded like the clanking of metal plates.

The puny old man in his soiled dhuti and bare torso was undaunted. Like his illustrious namesake, he was all spit and flame. Rolling eyes, bloodshot with last night’s ganja, he waved the bonti vigorously in Ullashi’s face and repeated chhenal magi several times. Then, grasping the sacred thread that lay across his thin chest, he let loose a spate of Brahminical curses.

‘O re tham tham! Stop it both of you,’ Soudamini cried. ‘Give over mouthing those foul curses, Duryodhan, and go back to your work. And you, Ullashi! Have you no shame? Berating a Brahmin! That too, a man old enough to be your father! By the way, the koi fish you brought in yesterday was stale. Your Aban dada refused to touch it.’

‘Stale!’ Ullashi forgot her issue with Duryodhan at this terrible insult. She stuck a fat finger in one dimple and repeated, ‘Stale! What are you saying, Ma thakrun? They were the pick of the catch. Each half a yard long and round as my upper arm. They were twisting and leaping in my basket even as I entered the house. Unless, of course, that worthless Brahmin let them go stale on purpose.’

‘Again! You dare call me names again … you chhenal…’ Duryodhan flew out of the kitchen with a spud in his hand. The two were good and ready for another round, but this time their attempt was foiled, not by Soudamini, but by the entrance of Mohini, the weaver’s widow. If Ullashi resembled a tower of burnished metal, Mohini could be likened to a bamboo stem, long and tapering. Swaying and swishing this way and that under her head load, she nimbly skirted the fishwife’s shadow (she was a couple of notches above her in caste) and walked straight up to the veranda where she plonked her bundle right next to the circle of women. Soudamini stared at her. ‘Why are you here at this hour?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you know that our girls are busy in the morning? Do they have the time to look at your saris now?’

Mohini dropped down on her bony haunches at one end of the courtyard. ‘Water!’ she gasped. ‘A drink of water!’ Then, puffing and panting, she explained that she had walked all the way from Shimle and was nearly dead with fatigue. She was in no hurry. She would rest a while and let the didis and bouranis finish their work. Curling her long body in the shape of an S, she lay down in a patch of sunshine and shut her eyes in deep contentment. She would get a meal in this house, she knew that, and somebody would wake her up when it was ready. As for the saris, she had the whole afternoon to do her selling.

‘Have you brought the thaans I ordered?’ Soudamini asked.

‘Yes, Ma thakrun. Two double-thaans woven from the finest silk in Islampur. One for you and one for Putu didi.’

At this, Binayini looked up from her bonti and shot a glance at her daughter. Her lower lip trembled and a large tear rolled down one cheek. Turning her face to one side, she put up a finger, blackened with banana flower juice, and wiped it away. But the gesture, surreptitious though it was, didn’t go unnoticed. As if on cue in a play, everyone got ready to perform their parts. ‘O re Ma re!’ Mohini sat up in a flash and threw the end of her sari over her face. ‘Hai hai! What a cursed fate is mine that I had to pick out a thaan for our little darling with my own hands! Putu didi, a widow! Even to think of it makes my heart bleed.’

‘Tchk Tchk!’ Ullashi clicked her tongue noisily. ‘Such a pretty girl and so good natured! What has she done to deserve such a fate, may I ask? So many girls with faces as black as kitchen pots are going around with sindoor in their parting! And our Putu didi with all her beauty…! Those good for nothing gods up there are blind and deaf. Aren’t they, Ma thakrun?’

Protima saw and heard everything. But the praise, pity and tears that were being showered over her slid off her senses like water from a yam leaf. She was in a different zone altogether; busy counting the hours to the next day’s dawn. She was even cheating a little in her counting. The grandfather clock had just struck the half hour after ten. But she pretended it was twelve o’ clock. Half the day is over already, she said joyfully to herself, only half is left. And the night of course. But nights go by in a jiffy. I’ll pass the time till I go to bed thinking about what I’ll eat tomorrow. Let me see … first thing in the morning a great big pitcher of lime sherbet. I’ll tell Srinath to bring me the biggest pitcher he can find. Then a great big thala full of hot luchis and a bowl of alu chhenchki with plenty of green chillies in it. The girl felt a burst of hot potatoes in her mouth at the thought, and the crunch of green chillies burned her tongue and palate with a pleasant fire. She sucked her cheeks, gulped noisily and came out of her trance.

By now the women of the house had joined Ullashi and Mohini in their exclamations over the little widow’s beauty and the injustice of the gods. Though the Tagore girls were all good looking, there was, indeed, something rare, something startling about Protima’s beauty. It was so natural, so independent of artificial aids, it had attracted attention from the time she was four or five years old. Her skin was a gleaming flawless white, her eyes long and liquid and her lips thin and red. Masses of shining hair tumbled down her neck and shoulders. ‘She looks exactly like the image of Saraswati in your puja room, Chhoto didi,’ her grandaunt Mrinalini from the Brahmo Bari said to Soudamini every time she saw her, ‘at this tender age too! Wait till she becomes a woman. People will seat her on a swan, put a veena in her hands and worship her.’ Then, edging a little closer, she whispered, ‘I want her for my Rathi. I’m staking my claim right away. Don’t go promising anyone else.’

Soudamini smiled each time, signalling her approval. Mrinalini was a distant cousin of hers from Phooltala village in Jessore and one of the nicest women she knew. Her husband, Rabindranath, was the greatest poet of the land. The boy, too, was just right. Handsome and healthy and only five years older than Putu. It was a match made in heaven except, of course, for the fact that they were Brahmos. But, as Soudamini told herself, the barriers the two branches had set up between them had crumbled over the years. She could remember a time when they didn’t even attend weddings in the Brahmo house. Her mother-in-law, Jogmaya Debi, had forbidden it. But after the death of the feisty widow, who had taken on her brother-in-law and split the family in two, things had gone back to the way they had been. Of course, the other protagonist of the family drama, the formidable Maharshi Debendranath, was still alive. But he was well into his eighties now, toothless and frail, and had lost control over his family. He seemed to have lost interest too. He was rarely seen in Jorasanko these days, preferring to rent a house even when in the city.

But just when the time was ripe for putting the plan the two women had hatched into action, a sudden blow of fate tossed it out of the window. Mrinalini died suddenly, leaving both houses in a state of shock. Her husband was beside himself. How would he cope without her? What would become of his children? It was insensitive to bring up the subject of marriage at this point of time. But Protima was nine-and-a-half. How much longer could her family wait?

Protima’s father, Sheshendrabhushan Chattopadhyay, wasn’t all that keen on the match. Though the lines drawn between the two houses had blurred over the years, he saw no reason for forming an alliance with a Brahmo family. Especially when his daughter was so beautiful and so many better offers had come for her. Still, being a live-in son-in-law in the tradition of the Tagores of Jorasanko, he had to bow down to his mother-in-law’s wishes. And her resolve had only hardened with her cousin’s untimely death.

One morning, after the shraddha and all the attendant ceremonies were over, Sheshendra came to No. 6 and asked to see the bereaved widower. He knew the timing was inappropriate. But he had no choice. His parents were urging him to settle his daughter before she attained puberty. Besides, the poet had a habit of disappearing to Santiniketan every now and then. And once he went there, no one knew when he would return.

‘Robi kaka,’ he said after the preliminary courtesies and condolences were over, ‘I know this is not a good time to bring up the subject. But my Protima is ripe for marriage. It’s time we set a date. The wedding, of course, will take place a year later, after the kalashouch is over but—’

‘No, Sheshendra,’ Rabindranath interrupted, running a white hand through his long pepper-coloured locks, ‘I can’t even begin to think of a wedding just now. I’m weighed down with too many troubles already. There’s Rani. You know how sick she is. The doctors have advised me to take her west for a change of air. Then there are the little ones. Shami is only five and Meera seven. Mejo bouthan has taken charge of them as of now. But how long can I burden her? Besides, Rathi is so young. He’s just getting ready for his entrance exam. Isn’t it better for us to wait till he’s older and able to support a wife?’

‘Why should Rathi support a wife? Are you not still here? Spreading your shadow over us all like a benevolent banyan tree? Besides, I have to think of my daughter. She has entered her ninth year. Soon she’ll be ten…’

‘Ten is hardly an age—’

‘You married Rani off at ten.’

Rabindranath sighed. ‘Yes I did,’ he murmured ruefully. ‘It was the biggest mistake of my life and I’ve never ceased to regret it. Your kakima begged me to reconsider my decision but I didn’t. I realize, now, that her practical sense was greater than mine. I should have heeded her advice. However,’ he went on, ‘she had wanted your Protima as her daughter-in-law. It was her earnest wish and I respect it. Rathi will marry her. But not so soon. Give me a few years to settle things and then…’

‘I can’t wait that long, Robi kaka. Our kinsman Nirodnath Mukhopadhyay wants her for his youngest son Nilanath and my parents are putting pressure on me to agree.’

‘Ah, my nephew Niru! He was my fellow student in St Xaviers. You know what happened once?’ The poet smiled into his beard. ‘Father Henri asked him if he knew the meaning of his name. Niru was a very smart, confident boy. As bright as I was dull. Of course, he answered promptly, "ni means without and rode means sunshine. Without sunshine."’

The two men laughed uproariously, then sobering down, Rabindranath said, ‘Do what you must, Sheshendra. Bringing your daughter to our house was my wife’s last wish. I would have liked to honour it. But I can’t force you to accept my terms, can I?’

The wedding date was fixed that very night and Protima was married to Nilanath a few weeks later. But within three months, it was all over. Nilanath drowned while swimming in the Ganga and Protima was sent back to her parents.

Baba

I got your letter many days ago but I could not reply because I had fever. I am well now. So I am writing to you. Today is Pramatha babu’s birthday. That’s why Pramatha babu’s servants are being given trays of rice and other things. I went to Pramatha babu’s house to see the trays. It was the first day that I went out. Mejo ma says I must start learning to cook and sew from now on. Didiya’s doll is to marry Bouthan’s doll. The dolls were bought and kept aside because I had fever. Bouthan’s doll is the boy and Didiya’s the girl. Tell Didima to write to me. Tell Mama I will reply to his letter tomorrow or day after tomorrow. Today I bit my cheek while eating rice. Mejo ma said she sent you a telegram last night. You must have taken my name when reading it. That is why I bit my cheek. I’m writing to Rani didi. Please give it to Rani didi. Tell her to send me a reply. How are you all? We are all well. What else can I write? I end now.

Meera

Rabindranath smiled as his eyes passed over the crooked lines full of repetitions, cancellations and spelling mistakes. Little Meera! Only seven years old and motherless! Touching the letter to his lips he folded it carefully and put it in his breast pocket.

II

A few months later…

Rabindranath lay shivering under a pile of kanthas and blankets. His chest and throat hurt from a rasping cough and his body felt hot and cold by turns. He was in Hazaribagh in Kali Krishna Thakur’s house – an old, dark mausoleum of a house buried in trees. It was a March morning and some of the trees were flowering. He could see them from the window. Raintrees, silk cotton and flame of the forest. But the wealth of gold, crimson and saffron blossoms brought no answering light to his burning, bloodshot eyes.

The idea of coming here seemed doomed from the start. Some weeks ago, the doctors of Bolpur had told him that his second daughter Rani was suffering from consumption and needed a change of air. A stint of six months or so in a cooler, drier climate. Plague had broken out in the west and the usual holiday spots being affected, Rabindranath had looked for a suitable house in Santhal Parganas, Chhota Nagpur and Hazaribagh. Finally this one had been found and Rabindranath had moved in with Rani, his wife’s brother, and her aunt Rajlakshmi. He had also picked up Meera and Shami from his sister-in-law Jnanadanandini’s house in Store Road and brought them along. His eldest son Rathi had just given his Entrance Examination and was visiting his sister Beli in Muzaffarpur.

It had been a strenuous journey; first by train to Madhupur, then in a hand-pulled pus-pus cart all the way to Hazaribagh. Poor Rani had nearly died of fatigue. And he himself had crept into bed with a streaming nose and high fever immediately on arrival. A week had gone by but the cold and fever hadn’t abated. But, what was more worrying, the others were sick too. Rani was running a steady temperature of a hundred and two degrees. Meera and Shami, first one then the other, were diagnosed with influenza and the nightmarish ride in the pus-pus had aggravated Rajlakshmi pishima’s rheumatism to such an extent she could barely move her limbs. Rabindranath groaned with exasperation.

It wasn’t only his present predicament that bothered him. Doubts and anxieties about his school in Santiniketan made him sick with worry. He had forced himself to overcome his annoyance with Rani’s husband, whom he had sent to America to study homeopathy. But Satyen had insisted on returning without a degree. Rabindranath had mailed him the hundred pounds he had asked for and even arranged the customary floral bed ceremony with his terminally ill daughter though his spirit rebelled at the thought and his heart felt as heavy as stone. The boy was such a good-for-nothing! Such a selfish wastrel! He didn’t spare a thought for his harassed father-in-law or his ailing child bride. All he wanted was a good time. And he wasn’t prepared to work for it. It had to be provided by others.

The urge to disown his son-in-law and leave him to his fate rose in the poet’s breast from time to time. But whenever that happened he heard Mrinalini’s voice humming in his head… You mustn’t forget that he is our daughter’s husband… That voice stopped him. He knew he couldn’t abandon Satyen. The thing to do, he told himself, is to give the boy some responsibility he cannot shrug off. He thought long and hard and decided to make him principal of the school in Santiniketan. ‘I am leaving you in complete charge,’ he had told Satyen before proceeding to Hazaribagh, ‘for who knows how long! It all depends on Rani’s health. Look after everything. I know I can depend on you.’ But, within a fortnight of Rabindranath’s departure, news came that his son-in-law had left Santiniketan and gone off to Punjab. He was enjoying a holiday with the funds entrusted to him for the running of the school.

Rabindranath moved restlessly in his bed. Then, pushing the blankets aside, he rose and walked on unsteady feet to his daughter’s room. Placing a hand on Rani’s head, he croaked feebly, ‘And how is my little bird this morning?’

‘Why have you left your bed, Baba?’ twelve-year-old Rani scolded in her mother’s voice. ‘Your hand is hot and your voice sounds terrible.’

‘I wanted to ask you something. If I go back to Santiniketan … there’s so much work left undone … I’ll return as soon as I can … your mama and didima will take care of you…’

Silence fell. A silence pregnant with meaning. Rani knew what her father was trying not to tell her. And her father knew that she knew.

‘Of course,’ she said softly, ‘but you must get well first…’

Three months in Hazaribagh and a shift from Kali Krishna Thakur’s house to a brighter, better ventilated one didn’t improve Rani’s condition. It got steadily worse. Rabindranath favoured homeopathy and several doctors had come and gone. Finally, giving up, he sent for an allopath, a lady doctor with an MD degree. After careful examination, she declared that the patient’s lungs were clear of lesions and there was no imminent threat to her life. The fever and coughing would subside in time. But the climate of Hazaribagh wasn’t healthy enough. The child needed the pure, unpolluted air of the mountains.

‘Shall I take her to Darjeeling?’ Rabindranath offered.

‘No. The hill stations of Bengal are damp and foggy. She needs crisp air and crackling sunshine.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘I suggest you go further west. Kashmir if possible. If not, to Ranikhet or to Almora.’

‘Almora then. My father was a frequent visitor to Almora.’

Heaving a sigh of relief, Rabindranath started preparing for the journey. This time, he decided to leave Meera and Shami behind in Kolkata with Jnanadanandini. Almora was very far away and who knew how long they would have to stay there! The doctor’s words had fallen like balm on his lacerated soul. All his worries were forgotten. In his mind’s eye, he saw Rani as she would be in a few months: a completely cured, sprightly, sparkling girl. The transformation would happen. It was only a matter of time.

Little did he know that another series of torments lay in wait for his long-suffering daughter. A six-hour delay at Madhupur station (the station master had promised to attach their bogey to the Bombay Mail but hadn’t kept his word) was followed by another, longer one at Mughalsarai. And at the end of it, the train they were made to board was not a fast mail train but a slow passenger one. Rabindranath had wanted to give Rani a meal and a long rest in Bareilly but that was no longer possible. The train to Kathgodam was waiting at the station and the poor girl, trembling with fatigue and gasping for breath, had to be bundled unceremoniously into the nearest compartment. Even after reaching Kathgodam, their troubles didn’t end. Rabindranath could neither find a place to stay nor coolies to carry their luggage up the mountain. He ran about seeking help; then, failing, was forced to hire a one-horse carriage and proceed to a nearby town called Ranibagh. Hungry, thirsty and exhausted to the bone, he found a couple of rooms in a dak bungalow where, late in the evening, the group had the first meal of the day.

Rani lay in an armchair on the veranda of the dak bungalow, her eyes on the mountains. She was seeing the Himalayas for the first time. Dusk was falling, but the snow on the distant peaks still glimmered with streaks of fading daylight. Presently a sickle moon, a paper-thin slice of silver floated drunkenly in a violet sky. A star, soft and lustrous as a wave-washed pearl, floated with it. It was her mother looking down on her. Beckoning to her. Rani’s mouth curved in a smile.

Horses, coolies and a litter for Rani were procured early next morning and the party set off on the climb to Almora. Rabindranath’s spirits rose with every mile. How strong and bracing the breeze was! How bright and sparkling the sun! He looked around eagerly. The landscape reminded him of England. A whiff of nostalgia for his Devon days rose in his senses. He tried to identify the flowers. The swathes of mauve and purple were Michaelmas daisies. And those tiny pale pink heads bobbing up from sheltered clefts were anemones. That was a patch of columbine! Dove-grey columbine clinging, chameleon like, to a silvery rock surface. Wild roses in profusion, tumbling down boulders, yellow petals starring sheets of bright green moss. He breathed in great lungfuls of air, chill and fragrant as spiced wine. He felt his heart soar. The ozone treatment his friend Jagadish Bose had recommended would work wonders in this sun and air. Rani would get well here.

Arriving at their destination, in the early afternoon, everyone expressed approval of the house Rabindranath had rented for their stay. Thompson House was a large, airy, fully furnished villa with gardens on three sides and an orchard at the back. Beyond it, a pine forest sloped upwards covering the hills. On top of the house was a sun room, a hexagonal structure with glass walls, overlooking the mountains. These walls were really doors which could be opened