Finally Saved Part 2 - Translation From Rabindranath Tagore
This is the Second Part of the Translation from Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel-Laureate Philosopher Poet from India.
Father only smiled; thought, "women
are emotionally heated balloons!
Life is a difficult salvation, they don't have that knowledge",
After having said that, he continued his reading of a romantic English novel.
After suffering from the continuous heartache, at last the mother's misery ended,
Father was alone in the household.
The eldest son lived, with his wife and children,
In Patna, another region of the country,
Other two daughters - they didn't live close by,
They lived with their in-laws.
One of them lived in Faridpur,
The other one even farther,
In Madras, across the Bindhya Mountains.
So Manjulika was handed over the responsibility of taking care of her father.
He detested the food prepared by a Brahmin cook,
Except his own wife's cooking
No one's could satisfy his taste or appetite.
In the morning, it was rice; in the evening, it was Roti or Luchhi,
An array of fish with rice, five or six fried items.
Goat-meat with flatbread.
Manjulika cooked every item on her own, both part of the days.
Every day including Ekadoshi (The day of her fasting) , etc.,
That's what her menu of cooking was.
She mopped and dusted her father's room,
Put warm clothes in sun, got them back and organized,
sorted and arranged papers in separate categories,
copied lists from the washerman,
Tried to keep track of milkman's and grocer's bills,
Got reprimanded by the Father if she made a mistake.
Her mustard was never like her mother's
That's why she had to
hear so many complaints,
Other than that, the way she prepared the beetle-leaves,
Was not close to her mother.
At every step she did blunders compared to her mom,
In short,
Today's girls were not like the previous generation.
Being quiet and docile,
Manjuli bears everything, she is calm all the time,
worked tirelessly.
Like the way a Mother, fulfills all demands
of a boy-child, being amused with affection,
The same way with a pleased face,
Manjuli listened to the complaints of her father, every hour of the day,
Smiled to herself,
How valuable was her mother's memory to her father
Her heart was full with that proud happiness to think that,
"One who has received my mother's care,
Will never be happy with any one else's! "
Father was suffering from arthritis during the month of Holi,
Pulin was the doctor in the community,
He had to be called.
The heart might get inactive,
That was the scare!
So Pulin had to visit a few times a day,
Manjuli, with him,
planned to speak as normally as she could.
But that was hard, How distressful!
Did it happen to anybody else?
Why her voice was shaking, why it sounded so feeble,
Why the eye-lids
became entangled with a heaviness.
She was so afraid,
As if someone would hear the reverberating sound in her blood,
Like dews on the lotus-leaf, the emotions in her heart
Why trembling so much as if to get caught!
Gradually the illness is in recession,
Arthritic pain is less,
The patient left bed,
walked around moving his limbs.
In an evening at this time
when scent of Jasmine was in the air,
when darkness tried to talk to the moon,
but in the end ended up looking at her,
Then Pulin, in pretext of discussing patient-care,
Called Manjuli to the adjacent room, and said,
"You know that your mother wished for
getting two of us married.
that wish of hers
I want to fulfill by any means.
Why are we wasting our time? "
"No, no, no, what a shame"!
Saying this, Manjulika covered her face
Ran out the room.
Tears dropped incessantly from her eyes as if her heart would burst.
She thought, " I am not able to hide my feelings from him.
This is enough, it should be end of my life".
Manjulika started taking care of her father two times she did before,
Day and night,
When the essentials are done, she engages in non-essentials,
Washed again the pots and pans which were already washed,
Every two or three hours,
Dusted the room again which she dusted before.
When she took bath, when she ate -
She didn't care.
There was no stop until at eleven at night
until being tired, she fell asleep on the floor.
Whoever saw her, was amazed
and said " What a girl"!
Father boasted with pride, " I am not bragging,
But remember she is my daughter.
Celibacy - She has learned from me, it would be different otherwise.
Nowadays without the restrictions of self-abstinence,
There wouldn't be any restraint in the society,
That's why women are following the ideas of indulgence."
After the demise of his wife, It was about eleven months,
There were rumours,
Marriage counsellors are visible at this home.
When heard, Manjulika did not believe at first,
Later heaved a sigh after watching everything going on.
Everybody was busy, there was a strange feeling in the air -
some furniture from abroad appearing at home.
Observed her Father getting nicely attired again,
all of a sudden the eye-brows are dark,
grey hair turned black,
drizzle of perfumes every now and then on the shawls he wore.
Manjulika remembered her mother,
With a broken heart, with a terrible pain.
Didn't matter she had passed away, yet
She hadn't gone away from the realm of this house.
The image of a tender compassionate individual
was at the heart of this household;
The pious dedication of a saintly woman
touched all the activities of the family.
She would be really lost in this family, terribly disrespected -
Manjulika was completely heart-broken, thinking about that outcome.
Please Look For The THIRD PART of the translated poem.
Translated By: Malabika Ray Choudhury
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