Narrow Domestic Walls...

Today, I was just browsing through my blogger friends' blogs and I came across a wonderful poem posted here about yin and yang which set my mind whirring. One thing led to another and yet another until I remembered Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali. I'm quoting it here.


Mind Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.


This used to be my Assembly Prayer in school. Everyday in the afternoon, as soon as we reached school, we were made to stand in the school assembly grounds and "sing" a Hindi Prayer, followed by the above poem from Gitanjali and then made to recite the pledge. I used to think it was an ordeal undergoing all this every single day of school and I used to recite it without ever trying to understand the meaning of it.

And then sometime last year, when I was in the US, I visited my friends in Milwaukee. My friend is a bengali married to a UP-ite. Of course the UP-ite is also my dear friend - all of us studied in the same engineering college. During the course of a conversation, my bengali friend's parents talked about Rabindranath Tagore and his poem collection Gitanjali and in particular this poem.

Impromptu, I told them that I used to recite this poem everyday when I was in school. My friend's father then immediately recited the Bengali version of the same poem. Later, after coming back from Milwaukee, I decided to google it because I wasnt able to recollect the complete poem. I found it at the link here

I read each and every line and then read it again and then re-read it again and again and yet again, each time reading it slower than the previous time. Trying to understand the meaning comprehend Tagore's logic behind the composition. It made sense.

It made sense THEN.
It makes sense NOW.

The poem is so relevant even in today's scenario although it was written as far back as 1912.

I have nothing further to say dear Mr. Tagore. I rest my case.