You have strewn your path of creation
With such a mysterious web
Oh deceitful mistress !
You have laid a trap with adept hands
On a life so simple…
[30 July, 1941, Jorasanko, 9.30 a.m.]
The end came at 12.10 p.m. His right hand suddenly lifted, touched his forehead as if in a prayer & then it fell. Everybody present in the room understood as if by instinct that the poet had finally crossed the bar. It was 7 August, 1941-the twenty second day of the month of Shravan, the favourite month of the poet. It was not unexpected as his eighty year old body had not been responding to treatment, since his operation by Dr. Lalit Mohan Bandyopadhyay on 30 July. Before his operation, he had continued to write, now dictated mostly to Rani Chanda. His last poem was recorded on 30 July morning, at 9.30 a.m. Three days ago, what he had dictated to his grand-daughter Nandita, had been so evocative…
The first day’s sun;
When existence had newly kindled into life:
Had asked the question
Who are you?
There was no answer. [27 July, 1941, Jorasanko]

The poet slipped in & out of consciousness & was not speaking any more. Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy came regularly to supervise the treatment. On 5 August, Dr. Nil Ratan Sircar arrived with Bidhan Chandra. Dr. Sircar had treated the poet regularly in his previous illnesses but had not been around this time. After the death of his wife he had retired to Giridih. The poet had asked for him several times whenever he had been able to, but Dr. Sircar could not be reached sooner. He entered the room & sat still by the bedside of the poet & held his right hand. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he looked at the face of Rabindranath-his patient & his friend. Nil Ratan was of the same age as Rabindranath & it looked as if he was bidding farewell to his friend, until they met soon on the other side. After a while, he got up & started to walk out of the room-but he stopped at the threshold & looked back for the last time. Then, without saying a word, he slowly dragged his tired feet across the long corridors, past the vast empty rooms & expansive courtyard of the desolate mansion at Jorasanko, to the car waiting outside in the dark & narrow Dwarkanath Tagore Lane.

It was Rakhi Purnima on 6 August & the full moon shone brightly on the massive spectral house of Jorasanko, as the few inhabitants waited with bated breath for the worst yet to come. As the night wore on to dawn, cars started arriving at the narrow entrance & relatives & doctors arrived, bewildered at the possible turn of events. As the day wore on, news spread like wild fire & people started gathering at the gates. The Akashvani Calcutta (All India Radio), named so by the poet himself, had been broadcasting updates of his health for the past few days & everybody in the city seemed aware of the impending tragedy. Ramananda Chattopadhyay performed the last Upasana by the poet’s bedside at 7.00 a.m. Rabindranath was put on oxygen at about 9.00 a.m. Amiya Tagore offered white champa flowers at his feet, which were covered with a white shawl. Bidhusekhar Shastri started chanting prayers from the Upanishad sitting on the floor near the foot of the bed. Someone was singing in hushed tones in the verandah outside, “Ke jay amrito dham jatri” ( Who is the traveller to the eternal world?).

Nandalal Bose called his nephew Suren & told him, “Get a Benarasi chadar for Gurudev. He must go like a king”.
Suren worriedly shook his head, “But no shop is open in the city today”.
Nandalal looked up with despondent eyes, “But you must do it for Gurudev !”
Suren had finally managed to convince a shop-owner at Bowbazar to provide him with a red Benarasi chadar embossed with bright gold zari flowers. Gurudev’s body was bathed, decorated with flowers, laid on the chadar & made ready for the journey to Nimtala Ghat. In life, the ever aesthetic poet had wished for a quiet send-off at Santiniketan & his ashes scattered over the Kopai river. But, that was not to be. A column at the main gate of Jorasanko gave way to the constant pounding by the ever- increasing crowds & some of them even attempted to climb up the water-pipes to the room upstairs. The body of the poet was carried out forcibly from his room at Maharshi Bhavan by strange unknown men & it soon went far out of the reach of his friends & relatives. On the shifting shoulders of countless men, in the intermittent drizzle, the last journey was not anything he had ever wished for. Men & women stood on the streets, on the roofs, on verandahs, on window ledges, showering flowers, as his mortal body went by, while tuning in to a live commentary on Akashvani by Birendra Krishna Bhadra. A ghoulish spectre emerged as the Benarasi chadar soon disappeared, his beard & hair snipped or simply yanked off, to be kept as memorabilia. Rathindranath never reached the burning ghat to perform the last rites. The pyre was lit, after a journey which took nearly five hours, by Subirendranath, the grandson of Satyendranath & Jnanadanandini. As his body was being consumed by flames, the protective cordon surrounding it was being forcefully breached again & again by supposed mourners in search of relics in the ashes & bones.

Suren clutched the brass urn containing the ashes to his heart every time the special train stopped at a station. He felt his old & frail Gurudev was in pain, by a tortuous journey amidst the sea of curious onlookers. At last, the train arrived at Bolpur. In the shadowy darkness before dawn, Suren saw lines of men & women standing in complete silence on either sides of the road. They were the students of Viswa Bharati & the Santhals from the neighbouring villages who had considered the old man as their God & had come every morning to offer flowers at his feet, while he sat in the verandah of his house in Santiniketan. Everyone was weeping in silence, maybe just the kind of farewell Gurudev would have wanted. Eyes blinded with tears, Suren secured the pot of ashes on his head & started walking slowly towards Santiniketan, chanting to himself:
Shantam Shivam Advaitam…
The years rolled by
The last day’s sun
in the quiet dusk, from the shore of the western sea,
asked the same question:
Who are you?
There was no answer.
*Gurudev’s beloved ‘Suren’ was Surendranath Kar, the celebrated architect & behind the designs of so many buildings at Santiniketan. He had been the poet’s constant companion in his later years, particularly in his travels abroad & by his bedside till the end. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1959.
[Rabindranath is perhaps the only poet in the world whose birth & death anniversaries are celebrated with equal fervour not only in his country but all over the world, wherever Indians & especially Bengalis happen to be. Both the days are celebrated according to the Bengali calendar-Ponchishe Boishakh (25th Baisakh) & Baishe Shravan (22nd Shravan). This year Baishe Shravan happens to fall on 8th August.]