Chapter 71 "Memoirs" ①-1

(India) Tagore 1 I don't know who paints in the picture-book of memory; but whoever he is, what he paints are pictures; I mean he doesn't just copy with his brush faithfully what is going on.He adds or subtracts according to his preferences.He made the big things smaller and made the small things bigger.He indifferently puts what is in the front into the background, or what is behind in the foreground.All in all, he was painting rather than writing history. In this way, on the surface of "life", a series of things have gone through, and a set of pictures has been drawn on the inside.The two are compatible, but not the same thing.

We don't have time to examine our inner studio thoroughly.Part of it often catches our eye, but a larger part is always in the dark, out of sight.Why is the ever-busy painter always painting; when will he be finished; in what gallery will his pictures be exhibited--who can tell? A few years ago, I was given the opportunity to spy on this studio because someone asked me about my past.I thought it would be enough to select some material for my biography. ① According to the English translation published by Macmillau And Co, London, 1954. agree.Later I discovered that as soon as I opened the door, the memory of life was not the history of life, but the creation of an unknown painter.The colorful colors smeared everywhere are not the reflection of the light outside, but the rendering of the painter's own emotions from his heart.So records on canvas cannot be used like evidence in court.

In spite of the fruitless attempt to glean the correct history from the storehouse of memory, there is a fascination in revisiting these pictures, a fascination that seduces me. The journeys we take, the wayside arbors where we rest, are not pictures as we walk—they are all too necessary, too obvious.And before entering the posthouse at night, we look back at the cities, fields, rivers, and mountains through which we walked in the morning of life, and then, in the light of the past day, they are really pictures.In this way, when my opportunity came, I took a good look back and became enthusiastic.

Does it arouse my natural emotion, and thus interest me, merely for the sake of being my own past?Of course, there must be some personal emotions, but these pictures also have their own independent artistic value.Nothing in my memoirs is worth keeping forever, but the quality of the subject matter is not the only reason for writing records.What one actually feels is often important to our fellow beings as long as it can be felt by others.If pictures formed in memory could be written down in words, they would have a place in literature. I contribute the pictures of my memory as literary material.It would be a mistake to treat it as an autobiographical attempt.Seen that way, these memories are not only useless, but also incomplete.

2 Education began. The three of us boys grew up together.Both of my companions are two years older than me.My education also began when they became teachers, but nothing of what I had learned remained in my memory. What I often recall is: "The rain is dripping, the leaves are quivering." I have just cast anchor across the stormy Kara Khala; I am the king of poetry's first poem. Whenever the joy of the day returns to my heart, even today, I realize why poetry needs rhythm so much.Just because of the rhyme, the words are terminated but not terminated. After reciting, the lingering sound is still echoing; the ears and the heart can still play with the rhyme from time to time.In this way, in the consciousness of my life, the rain is constantly dripping, and the leaves are constantly trembling.

There was also an episode in my childhood, which I still remember very well in my heart. We had an old accountant named Kalash who was like family.He is a great comedian, telling jokes to everyone, young and old, all day long; new uncles, new relatives, are the objects of his special ridicule.It is suspicious that even after his death, he still has humor.Once, the adults in the family tried to serve as shackles to communicate with the underworld.The shaman once drew the word Kalash. People asked him what life was like there. He replied, "I won't say anything. Do you want to get something easily that I didn't know until after I died?" ①②Dual-tone practice. --Verses from the translator's Bengali children's primer.

This Kalash once sang to me a crooked poem he made up to please me.I am the protagonist in this poem, and there is a shining heroine who is coming in anticipation.While I was listening, my mind was glued to the picture of the glamorous and peerless bride sitting on the "throne" in the arms of the "future".The array of jewels she wore from head to toe, the sumptuous wedding preparations unheard of, might have dazzled older and wiser minds; What flashes in the phantasy of the song is still the swift and sonorous ending rhyme and swaying rhythm. These two literary delights still linger in my memory—and, besides, the old children's poem: "When the rain falls, the tide rises."

The second thing I remember, is the beginning of my school life.One day I saw my sixth brother and my nephew Satya, who was also a little older than me, both went to school and left me because I was not old enough.I've never been in a car, never been out of the house.So when Satir came back, telling many pompous and flashy stories of the adventures he had met on the road, I felt that I could not stay at home any longer.Our tutor tried to expel my illusions with correct instructions and loud slaps: "You are crying to enter school now, and I am afraid that you will cry even more to leave school in the future." Regarding the teacher's name, appearance and Temper, I don't remember at all, but the impression of his heavy teachings and heavier hands still hasn't faded.Never in my life have I heard a truer prophecy than these words.

For my crying, I was sent to an oriental school when I was too young.I have no recollection of what I learned there; but there is a method of chastisement which I keep in mind.All children who could not recite their homework were punished to stand on a stool with their arms outstretched, palms up, and several stone slabs stacked on top of them.Whether this approach will promote children's better understanding of things is a question that psychologists can debate.This is how I started my schooling at a very young age. My rise to literature had its roots, but was also due to popular books, chief among them Chanakya's Maxims translated into Bengali, and Kritevas' Ramayana. .

The picture from reading Ramayana that day came back very clearly to my mind. It was a cloudy day, and I was playing on the porch facing the street. Suddenly, Satir wanted to scare me. I forgot why, and shouted: "Police! Police!" I only had one very vague responsibility for the police. But there is one thing I am sure of, that once a criminal falls into the hands of the police, he will disappear as soon as a poor man falls into the jagged claws of a crocodile.I couldn't think of how an innocent child could escape this merciless punishment. I ran to the inner courtyard trembling, only to be chased by the police from behind.I confided to my mother the catastrophe I was facing, but she was not alarmed.But fearing that it would be dangerous to go out again, I sat on the threshold of my mother's room, reading a copy of my grandmother's Ramayana on marbled paper with its pages creased.The courtyards are surrounded by four corridors, and the gloomy light from the dark afternoon sky shines on the courtyard.My grand-aunt found me crying over a tragic episode in the book, and she came and took the book away.

I knew little about luxury as a child.In general, the standard of living was much simpler then than it is now.At the same time, the children in our family are completely free from excessive care.The fact is that the formality of care, which may be an occasional solicitude to the protector, is always a deadly nuisance to the child. We are under the rule of slavery.To save their trouble, they almost suppress our right to move freely.But the liberty from pampering compensates for the brutality of this restraint, and our minds are not bewitched by continual pampering, luxury, and adornment, and are therefore always clear. Our meals were anything but delicious.The clothes we wear can only arouse the ridicule of modern children.In any case, we cannot wear shoes and socks until we are ten years old.In cold weather, add a cotton jacket over the commoner clothes.It never occurred to us that this was poor.We protested only when our old tailor, Nyamatie, forgot to make pockets in our coats, for there was never a child so poor as to have change to fill his pockets; In the distribution of mercy, there is not much difference in the wealth of children from rich and poor families.Each of us has a pair of slippers, but we don't wear them much.We kicked the slippers to the front, chased them up and kicked them again, and through each step of this effective blow, the slippers were also easy to be broken. Our elders are far away from us in terms of clothing, food, housing, transportation, conversation and entertainment.We saw their daily food by chance, but we couldn't touch it.To the modern child grown-ups have become trivial; they are too accessible and the object of every need.Nothing we have is so easy to come by.Many little things are rare to us.We live in hope that one day we will grow old enough to have what has been stored for us in the distant future.The result is that no matter how tiny we get, we enjoy it to the end; nothing is lost from skin to core.Children from rich families in modern times eat only half of what they get, and most of their world is wasted on them. We spent time in the lower room in the southeast corner of the outer courtyard①.One of our servants was Sharma, a plump, black man with curly hair, from the Kuruna region. He placed me in a chosen place, drew a circle outside with chalk, and solemnly raised his finger to warn me that if I crossed this circle, disaster would come.I never quite understood whether the danger was physical or spiritual, but I was always terrified.I read in the Ramayana that Sita suffered affliction for stepping out of the circle drawn by Lakshman, so I do not doubt the possibility. There is a pond under the window of this house, and a stone step leads directly to the water; there is a big banyan tree beside the courtyard wall at the west end of the pond; and a row of willow trees to the south.I approached the window in a circle, so that I could pass through the drawn shutters and gaze at this scene all day long as if I were reading a picture book.Our neighbors have come to take a bath one by one since early in the morning.I know who is coming and when.I am familiar with everyone's washing method.Some people plug their ears with their fingers and leave after soaking for a few times.Some people did not dare to go down entirely, but just wrung the wet towels on their heads a few times.A third quickly and carefully brushed the dirt off the surface of the water with his arms, and then, on a sudden impulse, jumped into the water with a jerk.One person simply jumped into the water from the top of the steps.Some people walked down the steps step by step, still reciting the morning scriptures.Some people are always in a hurry to go home after washing.Some people are not busy at all, they wash leisurely, wipe carefully after washing, take off the wet bathrobe and put on clean clothes, slowly straighten the folds of their belts, and then walk a few times in the outer garden. He bent over, picked a few flowers to hold, and walked home slowly, while his clean body glowed with freshness and joy.This kind of thing didn't end until after noon.At that time, no one came to the bathing place, and it seemed quiet, only the ducks were still there, and the outer courtyard was where the men lived, while the women lived in the inner courtyard. —The translator swims around looking for water snails, or grooms their feathers all day long. As silence settled over the water, all my attention was drawn to the shadow of the banyan tree.There are a few aerial roots, climbing down from the tree, forming a dark tangled coil under the tree.As if the laws of the universe had not yet found their way into this mystical region; as if the dreams of the old world escaped from the guard of the heavenly soldiers, and lingered into the light of modern times.The people I saw there, and what they did, I can't put into words.I later wrote about the banyan tree: Day and night you stand still, like an ascetic confessing, do you remember the child who played with your shadow with fantasies? It's a pity that the banyan tree is no longer there, and neither is the water mirror that reflected this majestic tree king!Many people who had bathed in it also blurred along with the shadow of the banyan tree.And the child, grown up, was counting the roots that pierced through this intricacies of day and night, the intricacies that he cast around and surrounded him. We were not allowed to go out of the house, in fact we did not have the freedom to go through the whole house.We can only peek at nature through the fence.There is an infinite thing called "outside" that we do not have access to.From its interstices its light, its sound, its scent, often touched me.It seemed to make many gestures outside the fence that it wanted to play with me.But it is free, I am bound - there is no way to meet.So the temptation was all the more powerful.Today the chalk line is erased, but the forbidden circle remains.The far is still far away, and the outside is still the outside; I recall a poem I wrote when I grew up: The domesticated bird is in the cage, the free bird is in the forest, when the time comes they will meet again, it is fate. The free bird sang, "Oh, my love, let us fly to the woods!" The caged bird whispered, "Come on, let's all live in cages." The free bird said, "Where is there room to spread your wings in the middle of the fence?" "Poor thing," cried the bird in the cage, "I shall never perch in the sky." The short wall of our rooftop lanai is higher than my head.When I grew taller, the tyranny of being a servant relaxed a bit; when a new bride was brought into our family, as her playmate in leisure time, I was recognized and could only come to the verandah at noon.By this time the whole family had lunched; there was a break in household chores; the silence of the siesta filled the inner courtyard; damp bathrobes hung to dry on the short wall; crows were pecking at the rubbish in the corner; In the silence, the caged bird chatted beak to beak with the free bird from the gap in the short wall. I always stand and stare...my eyes fall first to the far side of our inner garden.Rows of coconut trees. Through this tree, you can see "Xinji Garden" and its surrounding huts and ponds. Next to the pond is the milkhouse of our milkmaid Tara; Calcutta's roof balconies of different heights, reflecting the white noon sun, stretched to the gray-blue horizon in the east.A few houses farther off, whose roofs led to terrace stairs, seemed to wink at me with an upward pointing finger, suggesting to me their secrets.I am like a beggar standing outside the gate of a palace, imagining the treasures that cannot be obtained in closed rooms. I cannot tell the games and freedoms that are piled up in these strange houses.From the deepest part of the scorching sun-filled sky, the small, sharp cry of a kite bird reached my ears; a peddler selling glass bracelets came from the alley connected to "Xinji Garden" and passed by during his lunch break. In the silent house, singing "Whoever wants a bracelet, who buys a bracelet..." I flew away from the world of work. My father was rarely at home, he was always out and about.His room on the third floor was always closed.I used to put my hand in through the shutters, unlatch the door and open it, and spend the afternoon lying still on the sofa at the south end of the room.First of all, because this room is often closed and entered secretly, it has a deep sense of mystery; the emptiness and vastness of the south balcony, reflected in the sunlight, made me daydream. There is another charm here.The installation of water mains has only just begun in Calcutta, and in its first triumphant flooding, it has not spared Indian housing estates.In the golden age of running water, the water flowed up three floors of my father's house.Turning on the shower faucet, I took my untimely bath to my heart’s content—not for comfort, but to give my desire a chance to do as it pleased.The joy of freedom alternated with the terror of being caught, making the city hall showers shoot quivering arrows of pleasure into my heart. Maybe it's because the contact with the outside world is so far away, the joy of contact is easier to enter my heart.When material things are plentiful, the mind becomes lazy and gives everything to material things, forgetting that in preparing a successful feast of pleasure the interior is more valuable than the exterior.This is the chief lesson a man's childhood can teach him.His possessions are few and small, but for his happiness he needs no more.The wretched child, burdened with countless toys, has his play world spoiled. Calling our inner garden a garden is going too far.Its possessions consisted of a citron tree, a plum tree or two of a different species, a row of coconut trees with a round altar paved with stones in the middle, and weeds of all kinds invaded its cracks, beat the stones, Hoist your own victorious flag.Only those plants that would not die of neglect continued to perform their honorable duties without complaint, and without any disapproving slander of the gardener.There is a threshing shed at the north corner of the garden, where the people of the inner courtyard occasionally meet when the family needs it.The last vestiges of rural life, having thrown in the towel, slipped away ashamed and unnoticed. But I still suspect that Adam's Eden could not have been better prepared than ours; for both he and his garden are equally naked; they need not be ornamented with material things.It is only after he has tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge and has fully assimilated it that man's need for outward furniture and adornment grows permanently.Our inner garden is my paradise; it is enough for me.I remember very well, running there as soon as I woke up in the dawn of early autumn.A dewy scent of flowers and leaves rushes to meet me, and the morning, with cool sunshine, will peep at me from the east wall of the garden, under the trembling ears of the coconut palm. To the north of the house there is an open space that we still call the barn.The name indicates that in the early years, this area was a place to store rice for the whole year.At that time, like brothers and sisters who were infants, similarities between cities and countryside could be seen everywhere.The resemblance of this kinship has now been lost.Whenever I get the chance, I make the barn my holiday hangout.It would be wrong to say that I went there to play - in fact it was the place that attracted me, not the game. Why this is, it is difficult to say why.Maybe because it was a small deserted place, and it was an out-of-the-way corner, it had a fascination for me.It was outside the dwelling, unlabeled useful; and it was useless and unadorned, for no one had grown anything there.It must be for these reasons that this desolate spot does not deny the free play of a child's imagination.Any time I can find a break from the guardians and run into this barn, it really feels like a holiday to me. There is another place in the house that I have never found.A playmate about my age called this place a palace. "I've just been there," she sometimes tells me.But I don't know why, the good day when she could take me with me never came.It's a wonderful place, and the toys and ways to play are wonderful.It seemed to me that this place must be very close—perhaps on the first or second floor; but I could never get in.I don't know how many times I've asked my companions, "Just tell me, is this place really inside or outside the house?" She always replied, "Not outside, not outside, it's in this house." I sat down and thought, "Where will this palace be? Don't I know every room of this house?" I never asked who the king was; where was his palace which had not been found; but This is clear—the palace is in our house. When recalling my childhood, what I often think of is the mystery that is full of life and the world.Undreamed things are lurking everywhere, and the first question that comes to mind every day is: when!Ah, when can we touch it?It was as if Nature had clenched something in her fist and asked us with a smile, "Guess what's in there?" We couldn't think of anything she couldn't hear. I still clearly remember the seed of the sour liche that I planted in the corner of the balcony in the south and watered every day.The idea that this seed will grow into a big tree always keeps me in uneasy suspense.Sweet apple seeds still have the habit of sprouting, but because of the emotion of suspense that comes with it, this habit is gone.The fault is not in the sweet apple, but in my heart. Once, we stole some stones from an elder relative's rockery and built a small rockery ourselves.The plants planted in the crevices of the rockery, because we take care of them too diligently, make them barely rely on the instinct of the plants to live until their premature death.The joy and admiration that this little hill gave us is indescribable.We have no doubts that our creation is also a wonderful thing for grown-ups.But on the day when we sought confirmation of this question, the hill at the corner of our house, all the stones, and all the plants and trees disappeared.The knowledge that rockery is not suitable for stacking on the study floor was passed on to us in such a rude and sudden way that we were greatly shocked.When we realize how different our fantasies are from the will of grown-ups, it is always in our hearts to free the floor from the weight of the stone. How dear the pulse of the life of the world was to us in those days!The earth, the water, the leaves, the sky all speak to us and don't let us ignore them.How often we harbor the deep regret that we know only the upper layers of the earth and not the lower layers!All our plans are how to spy on what lies under the earth-coloured blanket of the earth.We thought that if we could poke down one bamboo pole after another, we might be able to get a little bit in touch with its deepest parts. A series of wooden pillars for the canopy are erected in the outer courtyard during the Mag month.On the first day of the Mag month, the holes for the pillars began to be dug in the ground.Preparing for the holidays is always fun with kids, but this kind of digging has a special appeal to me. Although I watched them dig every year—and saw the hole go deeper and deeper until the diggers were no longer in sight, I never found any Temag month, in October of the Indian calendar, Equivalent to December to January of the Gregorian calendar. ——Translator Other things worthy of princes or knights to explore—and every time I have the feeling that the mysterious box has been unlocked.I think digging a little deeper will do.Years and years passed and this never worked out.The curtain was only drawn once but not opened.I think grown-ups can do whatever they want, so why are they content with digging like this?If we little children could command, the deepest secrets of the earth would no longer be allowed to be shut up under its dusty quilt. It also stimulates our imagination to think that behind the blue dome lurks the mystery of the sky everywhere.How surprised we were when our teacher told us that the blue sky is not a lid when he told us the first volume of Bengali Science Reader!He said, "Put ladders on top of each other and keep going up, but you'll never touch the end." I decided he must be trying to save ladders, so I kept asking, "But if we connect more, more, What about more ladders?" When I realized that adding countless ladders would be fruitless, I was terrified and thought about this question blankly.I came to the conclusion that this kind of news that shocked the world must only be known to the teachers of the world! In Indian history, the slave dynasty was not a happy dynasty.Going back to a period of my own life ruled by servants, I can find nothing glorious or joyful about that period.Kings are often changed, but the laws of detention and punishment that torment us remain the same.We had no opportunity at that time to philosophize on the subject; our backs struggled to bear the blows that fell on it: we took it as a cosmic order, that is, the "big one" hits, the "little one" of" will be beaten.It took me a lot of time to learn the opposite truth, that the "big ones" suffer, and the "little ones" are what make people suffer. The hunted do not see good and evil from the hunter's standpoint.Hence the cry of the alert bird, which warns its mates before the bullet is fired, is reviled as malice. When beaten, our crying was not considered polite by our beaters; it was in fact an insurrection against servant rule.I cannot forget that our heads were banged on the jugs that were then used in order to suppress this riot effectively.Undoubtedly, such a callsign is a nuisance to the person who caused it; and is likely to have unpleasant results. Now I sometimes wonder why our servants treated us so cruelly.I cannot admit that it is all because there is something wrong with our manner of conduct that they place us outside the bounds of human benevolence.The real reason must be that all our burdens are placed entirely on the servants, and this whole burden is a hard thing to bear even for those closest to us.As long as children are allowed to do children's things, let them run and play, and satisfy their curiosity, things are very simple.Unsolvable problems are created because you want to confine them in the house, tell them to stay quiet, or prohibit them from playing games.Then the burden so lightly engendered by their childishness falls heavily on the guardian—like the horse in the fable, which does not let it go off, but picks it up, though it costs Money hired the bearers, but that did not prevent them from taking a little burden from the poor beast at every step. Of most of the tyrants of our childhood, I remember nothing but their blows.Only one character stands in my memory. His name is Eswa.He was a village teacher.He was a decent, regular, quiet, dignified man.To him the earth seemed too earthy, and too little water to keep it clean; so he had to fight a long battle with this chronic squalor.With lightning movements he pokes buckets into the water to draw from unsullied depths. He was the man who, when he bathed in the pool, kept brushing the dirt off the surface until he plunged, as if unexpectedly, into the water.He stretched out his arms so far as he walked, that it seemed to us that he would not even believe in the cleanliness of his own clothes.His whole demeanor showed an effort to sweep away all the filth that entered the land, water, air, and person by unguarded roads.His seriousness is bottomless.He tilted his head slightly, chewing the selected language in a deep voice.His literary rhetoric provided grown-ups with material for behind-the-scenes jokes, and the somewhat over-the-top passages had a permanent place on our family punch line.But I wonder if the grammar he used is still as nice today; classical Chinese and spoken Chinese used to be very different, but now they are close. This former teacher invented a way to keep us quiet at night.Every night he gathered us around a broken castor oil lamp and read us the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.The other servants came and listened.The oil lamps cast huge shadows on the roof beams, the little geckos were catching bugs on the wall, and the bats were flying around on the verandah outside, dancing the mad monk dance. We listened quietly with our mouths open. I still remember the night when we heard the story of Kushe and Luopo, when those two heroic children were about to ruin the reputation of their father and uncle, the tense silence made this dimly lit room, Filled with ardent suspense. It was very late then, our allotted sleepless hours were drawing to a close, and the end was far off. At this critical moment, my father's squire, Kishore, came to his aid and quickly concluded the episode for us with the sonorous and quick-paced verse of Dasuraja.The impression of the soft melody of Criedevas' fourteenths is swept away, and we are carried away by a torrent of rhyme and alliteration. Sometimes reading a story leads to a discussion about the classics.In the end it is always decided by the esoteric manifesto of Esvar's wisdom.Although he is one of the servants who take care of the children, his status is lower than many people in our family society, but he is like the old man Bisma in the "Mahabharata", his majesty will be He was raised from below. Our dignified and revered servant has a weakness which, for the sake of historical correctness, I feel compelled to mention.He smoked opium.Therefore he coveted rich food and drink.When he brought us milk in the morning, his mind was more attracted to milk than repelled.If we show a little natural distaste for this breakfast, he will not force us to swallow it again and again, even if he is responsible for our health. He also has narrow views on our absorption of solid foods.We sat at the dinner table, and a thick, large log plate piled with fried crepes was placed in front of us.He began to cautiously drop a few pieces of cake onto our plates from a considerable height, for fear of getting himself dirty—the cake seemed to have been forcibly taken from a man of God and would not be given. Like his gift, he fell down in his quick and cold way.Later, he asked if he wanted to share more.I know the answer that made him most grateful. In order not to make him suffer, when I ①②eating, touching food with my hands, such as utensils, is considered unclean in religious rituals. ——Translator Dasuraya (1806-1857), an Indian poet who wrote in Bengali. No more. Eswa was also entrusted with our daily afternoon snack money.Every morning he asked us what we would like to eat.We knew that the cheapest thing he would think was the best, so sometimes we asked for fried rice crackers for a snack, and sometimes a kind of hard-to-digest boiled beans or fried peanuts.It's clear that Eswa is not as hard-working and rigid with our diet as he is with the classics. While at Eastern School, I invented a method to improve my status as a student.On the corner of our lanai, I set up a class.The wooden railings are my pupils, and I am the teacher, sitting in front of them with a stick.I decide which one is a good student and which one is a bad one—and not only that, but later on I can tell which one is quiet and which one is naughty, which one is bright and which one is stupid.If those few broken railings were alive, I would have beaten them to the point where I wouldn't even want to be a ghost.And the more I scare them, the more angry they get with me, until I don't know how to punish them enough.How tyrannically I abused my poor dumb students, there is no evidence left.My wooden pupils have been replaced by cast-iron railings, and a new generation has not been educated--they will never have the same impression. Since then, I have realized how much easier it is to learn the method than to learn the content. I had no trouble picking up all the brusqueness, haste, partiality, and unfairness in the behavior of the teachers, and in no other way of teaching.My only consolation is that I have not yet unleashed the force of savagery on any sentient being.However, the difference between my wooden students and the students of the Eastern school does not prevent my psychology from being completely consistent with the teachers of the Eastern school. My time at the Oriental School will not be very long, because I was still very young when I entered the Normal School.我只记得一个特点，就是在上课之前，所有的孩子都在廊上坐成一排，吟唱一些诗句——显然是想在日课里加进一些快活的成分。 不幸的是这些字是英国字，调子也是外国味儿的，所以我们一点不知道我们是在练习着什么咒语；而这无意义的单调的表演也不能使我们快活。但是这并没有妨害准备这个款待的学校当局的严肃的自满；他们认为去检查他们恩赐的措施结果是多余的：他们也许认为孩子们没有顺从地快活是有罪的。无论如何他们很满足于应用那些他们找到的歌，连歌带曲都是从那本提供这理论的英文书上来的。 这段英文到了我们嘴里所变成的语言，只能请语言学家去揣摩了。我只记得一行： Ｋａｌｌｏｋｅｅｐｕｌｌｏｋｅｅｓｉｎｇｉｌｌｍｅｌｌａｌｉｎｇｍｅｌｌａｌｉｎｇｍｅｌｌａｌｉｎｇ想了半天以后我才能猜到一部分原文。那个Ｋａｌｌｏｋｅｅ是哪一个英文字变成的我还不清楚。余下的我猜是： ……ｆｕｌｌｏｆｇｉｅｅ，ｓｉｎｇｉｎｇｍｅｒｒｉｌｙ，ｍｅｒｒｉｌｙ，ｍｅｒｒｉｌｙ！ （高兴之极，快乐地，快乐地，快乐地唱！）当我对于师范学校的回忆从模糊渐渐清晰的时候，这些回忆一点都不甜蜜。我如果能和大一点的孩子接近的话，学习的苦痛也许不至那样地难于忍受。但那终于是不可能的——大多数孩子在举止习惯上是那样讨厌。因此在课间休息的时候，我就跑到二层楼上，整段时间我坐在窗口看街。我数着：一年——两年——三年，心想不知有多少年头要这样度过。 在教员当中我只记得一位，他的语言是那么肮脏，只因看不起他，我坚决拒绝回答他的任何问题。这样我终年沉默地坐在他班里的末一个座位上，在别人都忙着的时候，我就被丢在一边，去努力解决许多疑难问题。 问题之一，我记得，我曾深深地考虑如何才能不用武器而战胜敌人。我至今还记得，在同学们哼哼地背诵功课的声音当中，我如何在这问题上出神。如果我能训练出一些狗、老虎和其他凶猛的动物，在战场上摆上几行，这样，我认为，可以作为激励士气的前奏。以后再把我们的人力涌上前去，胜利是一定可以取得的。当这个奇妙而简单的战略图画，在我的想象中越来越鲜明生动的时候，我方的胜利就变成不容置疑的了。 在工作没有来到生活中之前，我总发现很容易找到成功的捷径；从我工作以后，我发现冷酷的还是真冷酷，困难的也真是困难。这个，当然不那么愉快；但是还不像努力去寻找捷径的不快那样糟糕。 在这班中的一年终于过去了，我们接受瓦查斯帕蒂老师用孟加拉语的考试。在所有的学生当中我得到最高的分数。那位教师向教育当局控诉说，在我的考试上有了徇私。因此我又考了第二次，校长坐在考官的旁边，这一次，我还是考了第一。６做诗这时候我还不到八岁，我堂兄的儿子乔提比我大几岁。他刚开始读英国文学，用很大的兴味背诵哈姆雷特的独白。他为什么想起让像我这样的孩子来写诗，我也说不出。有一天下午他把我叫到屋里去，让我试写一首诗，他又给我讲十四字诗帕耶尔韵①的句法。 到那时为止我只看到印在书本上的诗——没有划掉的错字，看去没有疑问，没有麻烦或是任何人类的弱点。我甚至于不敢想象我的任何努力能够创作出这样的诗歌。 有一天我们家里捉住一个小偷。被好奇心所驱使，我虽然恐怖发抖，也冒着危险去偷看他。我发现他不过是一个普通人！当他受到我们看门人的一点虐待的时候，我感到很深的怜悯。我对于诗也有同样的经验。