Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Rabindranath to Pithapuram

Rabindranath's journey to Pithapuram was not a happiest one. He described his  miserable condition in this journey to Ranu on 19th Oct,1918; " It was only a station left to reach Pithapuram, all on a sudden the wheels of thrain stopped revolving. It appeared to me as if an invisible messenger from the assembly of stars came with a summon down to the engine and instanteneously the rotational movement of the wheels stopped, the sound of the flute vanished, ring of smoke wiped out and  its banquet of stone-coal finished. The train does not move from the station even after five minutes, after ten minutes, after one hour . The scheduled time to reach Pithapuram was half past five but time rolled on to half past six, half pats seven still the train does not move.Everything remained stand still. It becomes unbelievable that train can move. All on a sudden another engine with slow speed arrived to rescue us. At about half past eight we reached Pithapuram and when we reached the palace my mental and physical condition were completely  ot of order like the engine."
Surendranath Kar was accompanying Rabindranath for the first time.He informed that the king of Pithapuram was Brahmma and Rabindranath was his most favourite. His repeated request induced Rabindranath to think for staying there for 3/4 days Surendranath recollected the days they had passed there.
" A small two storied building covered with garden on all sides was fixed for lodging of Gurudev. There were pamelo and other kinds of lemon trees on all sides of the house.The secretary of the King came and noted down about he dinner of Gurudev. Knowing that Gurudev had no restriction in veg or non-veg meal, he became carefree. Anyway the arrangements were not so good. Gurudev said unhesitatingly , " Look, Suren, we are not habituated with  thier type of food and so could not tolerate for a number of days - so, we had to depart as early as possible.".
There was only one attraction for Gurudev- a famous Vina-player Sangameswar Sashtri stays there. Latre on Gurudev fetched him to Santiniketan for a few days. His playing of Vina appealed him much so that he decided to stay there for some time forgetting his previous tinking in spite of many obstacles. He played Vina every day aftet dinner for hours together and Gurudev listened the tune attentively upto dead of night