Short Stories By Rabindranath Tagore

The Divide

Genealogical investigation would reveal that Banamali and
Himangshumali were actually distant cousins: the relationship was
complicated, but possible to trace. Their families, however, had been
neighbours for a long time, with only a garden dividing them; so
however remote their blood-relationship, they knew each other very
well.
Banamali was much older than Himangshu. Before Himangshu had
cut his teeth or could talk, Banamali would carry him around in the
garden to enjoy the morning or evening air; he would play with him, dry
his tears, lull him to sleep; indeed he did everything an intelligent
grown-up person is supposed to do to entertain a child – shaking his
head at him, shrieking with dismay, expressing babyish excitement or
fearsome enthusiasm. He had little education: he liked to garden, or be
with his young cousin. He nurtured him like a rare and precious creeper,
which he watered with all his love; and as the creeper grew, pervading
the whole of his inner and outer life, Banamali counted himself blessed.
There may not be many, but there are some people who will easily
sacrifice themselves completely to a small fancy or a little child or an
undeserving friend. Their love may be tiny compared to the vastness of
the world, but it is to them a business in which they happily sink all that
is vital to them. They will then live contentedly on a pittance, or else
one morning sell their remaining property and take to begging in the
streets.
As Himangshu grew, he formed a firm friendship with Banamali,
despite their difference in age and remoteness of blood-relationship. Age
seemed of no consequence. There was a reason for this. Himangshu
learned to read and write, and had by nature a strong desire for
knowledge. He would sit and read any book that came his way: he
would read many worthless books, no doubt, but his mind matured in all
directions as a result of his reading. Banamali listened to him with great
admiration. He took his advice, discussed every problem with him, small or large, never ignored him on any subject just because he was a child.
Nothing is more cherished in this world than a person whom one has
brought up with utmost love, and whose knowledge, intelligence and
goodness inspire respect.
Himangshu also loved gardening. But there was a difference here
between the two friends. Banamali loved it with his heart; Himangshu
with his intelligence. For Banamali, raising plants was an instinctive
occupation: they were like children to him, only more so, in their
softness and unawareness, in the way they never asked to be cared for
but would grow up like children if given loving care.
1 For Himangshu,
plants were a subject of curiosity. The sowing of seeds, the sprouting of
seedlings, the buds, the blooms all aroused his attention. He was full of
advice about planting, grafting, manuring, watering and so on, and
Banamali gladly followed it. Whatever nature or nurture could do, in the
combining or separating of plants, was achieved by the two friends in
that modest patch of garden.
There was a small cement patio just inside the gate to the garden. At
four o’clock Banamali would come there, lightly dressed, with a crimped
chadar round his shoulders, and sit in the shade with his hookah. He was
quite alone, and had no book or newspaper with him. He would sit and
smoke, with a distracted meditative air, glancing with half-closed eyes to
right or to left, letting time float by like coils of smoke from the hookah
as they slowly drifted and broke and disappeared, leaving no trace.
At last Himangshu returned from school, and after a snack and a wash
came into the garden. Banamali immediately dropped the stem of the
hookah and stood up. His eagerness made it perfectly plain whom he
had been patiently waiting for all this time. Then the two of them
strolled in the garden, talking. When it became dark they sat on a bench,
while the southern breeze stirred the leaves in the trees. On some days
there was no wind: the trees would be as still as a picture, and the sky
above would be full of brightly shining stars.
Himangshu talked, and Banamali listened quietly. Even what he did
not understand, he enjoyed. Things that would have irritated him greatly
coming from anyone else were amusing when spoken by Himangshu.
Himangshu’s powers of expression, recollection and imagination gained
from having such an admiring, grown-up listener. He sometimes spoke of things he had read, sometimes things he had thought, sometimes
whatever came into his head – supplying with his imagination whatever
his knowledge lacked. He said much that was correct and much that was
not correct, but Banamali listened solemnly. Sometimes he put in a word
of his own, but accepted any objections that Himangshu made; and next
day, sitting in the shade again, puffing at his hookah, he would ponder
over what he had heard, marvelling at it.
Meanwhile a dispute had arisen. Between Banamali’s garden and
Himangshu’s house there was a drainage ditch; at a point along this
ditch a lime tree had grown. When the fruits ripened, Banamali’s family
servant tried to pick them, while Himangshu’s family servant stopped
him – and they began to argue so fiercely that if the insults they rained
on each other had been made of something material, the whole ditch
would have been choked with them. From this, a heated quarrel
developed between Banamali’s father Harachandra and Himangshu’s
father Gokulchandra, and they went to court over the ownership of the
ditch. A long verbal war began between champion lawyers and barristers
fighting on one side or the other. The money that was spent on each side
exceeded even the floods that flowed through the ditch during the
month of Bhādra.
In the end Harachandra won; it was proved that the ditch was his and
no one else had a claim to the fruit of the lime tree. There was an
appeal, but the ditch and the lime tree remained with Harachandra.
While the court-case was going on, the friendship between Banamali
and Himangshu was not affected. Indeed, so anxious was Banamali not
to let the dispute cast a shadow over either of them, that he tried to bind
Himangshu ever more closely to him, and Himangshu showed not the
slightest loss of affection either.
On the day that Harachandra won the case, there was great rejoicing
in his house, especially in the women’s quarters; but Banamali lay
sleepless that night. The next afternoon, when he took his place on the
patio in the garden, his face was sad and anxious, as if he alone had
suffered an immense defeat that meant nothing to anyone else.
The time when Himangshu usually came elapsed; at six o’clock there
was still no sign of him. Banamali sighed heavily and gazed at Himangshu’s house. Through the open window he could see his friend’s
school-clothes hung up on the ālnā; many other familiar signs showed
that Himangshu was at home. Banamali left his hookah and paced up
and down, looking dejectedly towards the window again and again, but
Himangshu did not come into the garden.
When the lamps were lit in the evening, Banamali slowly walked up to
Himangshu’s house. Gokulchandra was cooling himself by an open door.
‘Who is it?’ he said.
Banamali started. He felt like a thief who had been caught. ‘It’s me,
Uncle,’ he said nervously.
‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘There’s no one at home.’
Banamali returned to the garden and sat mutely there. When it was
dark, he watched the window-shutters of Himangshu’s house being
closed for the night one by one. Lamplight inside the house shone
through cracks round the doors; later, most of the lamps were
extinguished. In the darkness of the night, Banamali felt that the doors
of Himangshu’s house were totally closed to him, and all he could do
was remain alone in the darkness outside.
The next day he went again and sat in the garden, hoping that today
Himangshu might come. His friend had come every day for so long that
he never imagined that he might not come again. He never supposed
that the bond between them could be torn; he had taken it so much for
granted, that he had not realized how totally wrapped up in it his life
had become. He had learnt now that the bond had indeed been torn, but
so sudden a disaster was quite impossible to take in.
Every day that week he went on sitting in the garden at his usual
time, in case Himangshu chanced to come. But alas, the meetings that
used to occur by agreement failed to recur by chance. On Sunday he
wondered if Himangshu would come to his house in the morning for
lunch, as he had always done in the past. He did not exactly believe that
he would, but he could not stop hoping. Mid-morning came, but
Himangshu did not. ‘He’ll come after lunch,’ said Banamali to himself –
but he did not come after lunch. So he thought, ‘Today perhaps he is
taking a siesta. He’ll come when he wakes up.’ Whatever time
Himangshu might have woken from his siesta, he did not come.

Evening fell again, then night; Himangshu’s doors closed one by one,
and the lights in his house went out one by one.
When Fate had taken each of the seven days from Monday to Sunday
away from Banamali, leaving no day on which to pin his hopes, he
turned his tearful eyes towards Himangshu’s shuttered house, appealed
to it from the depths of his distress. ‘Dear God,’
1 he cried, gathering all
his life’s pain into the words.