LETTERS FROM ABROAD
The losing of Paradise is enacted over and over again by the children of Adam and Eve. We clothe our souls with messages and doctrines and lose the touch of the great life in the naked breast of Nature. This letter of mine, carrying the cry of a banished soul, will sound utterly strange to you in the present-day India.
We hold our mathematical classes in Santiniketan under the madhavi bower. Is it not good for the students and others, that, even in the busiest time of lessons, the branches overhead do not break out into a shower of geometrical propositions? Is it not good for the world, that poets should forget all about the resolutions carried at monster meetings? Is it not right, that God’s own regiment of the useless should never be conscripted for any military contingency of the useful?
When the touch of spring is in the air, I suddenly wake up from my nightmare of giving "messages and remember that I belong to the eternal band of good-for-nothings; I hasten to join in their vagabond chorus. But I hear the whisper round me: “This man has crossed the sea,” and my voice is choked.
We are leaving for Europe to-morrow and my days of exile are coming to an end. Very likely my letters will be fewer in number from now, but I shall make up for this when I meet you in person under the shadow of the rain-clouds of July.
