Sunday, March 4, 2012

Rabindranath in America - Hospital Fund (contd- 28)

There were some arrangements of treatment of teachers and students of the Brahmacharyasram of Shantiniketan from the very beginning of the institution, but that was very insignificant. Pearson was dedicated to the service of human being. Many persons of Shantiniketan, in their memoirs,  wrote about his devotion to the deceased persons in Shantiniketan specially students. He liked a student named Jadav very much. When Jadav was attacked with typhoid, he was going to be shifted to Calcutta. But due to his extreme unwillingness, he was treated in Shantiniketan. After his death in Shantiniketan on 10 April 1915, Pearson wrote;
" An hour or two before he died I was sitting by his side and he said in Bengali in a voice weak and full of pathos.'The flower will not blossom'. I whispered to him. Don't be afraid, for the flower will blossom."
This promise made to him inspired Pearson to organize a full-fledged Hospital in ShantiniketanBeing one of the accompaniment of Rabindranath, he began to try to collect funds for this. For this purpose, he began to sell signed photograph of Rabindranath to the audience attending  the lectures of Rabindranath. In this regard, he took the assistance of Mrs. Moody. He wrote to her;
" I have sold all the photographs at $ 5 eachwhich makes $ &0 dollars . I have subtracted from that the $14 which I paid Mr. Crowther, which would leave fifty-six for the photograph, and have sold Four dollarsword of book marks  -- littie ones, at fifty cents each -- which makes a total of Sixty dollars, for which I enclose a check.
The book written by Satish Chandra titled "Guru-dakshina" was translated by Pearson which Mr. Brate was agrreeable to publish after changing the title to Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore". The proceeds from the sale of this book will be devoted to a fund for building a new Hospital at the Shantiniketan School./ I want the above words printed on the paper cover of the volume Shantiniketan.He also wrote ," Mr. Pond has told me of your kind offer to let us have copies of the book for sale in connection wth Mr.Tagore's lectures at a discount of 45 %. this will help our fund very materialyy I am sure.and I shall be only too glad to act as sales man. On 11 Nov he wrote this to Rathinsranath in detail.       .