Tagore's Pasarini

The Hawk Maid
By Rabindranath Tagore

[Translator’s note: Poem ‘Pasarini’ from the book ‘Bichitra’, written in February, 19341.]
Translator- RAJAT DAS GUPTA (Kolkata) - e-mail: rajatdasgupta@yahoo.com & dasguptarajat@hotmail.com

The Hawk Maid depicts the inherent passion of the humans to perceive the origin of life which remains ever mysterious to us. Our mundane existence keeps our concentration with the narrow perspective of our daily business and other temporal most of our life Yet, there are some escape moments, maybe more towards the end of our life. On 3 January, 1938, 3 years before his death, the Poet wrote to his poet friend Amiya Chakraborty –
“My mind craves to move far where, within myself, I am trying my creations. One means is science, with which I had my pilgrimage through the stellar space and time. The universal network which webs my existence with the same light as of the inconceivably distant nebulae, I have surrendered my whole heart to its pull, which is dragging me towards that infinite mystery where is latent the significance of life and death with some eternal purpose which is being conveyed towards the Infinite, all through the Universe.” ‘Hawk Maid’ is a wonderful flash of this profound philosophy of the Poet.]

Hawk Maid, O Hawk Maid,
In daytime at rialtos thou had trade,
On thy way home
Freely did thou roam
Took seat under a tree,
Thy earnings left free
In thy basket unnoticed,
And where thy ponderings did flit!

There the land
Blurred with ruddy sand,
Basked in the wintry sun
The tender leaves of the Banyan,
The breeze tepid
What euphoria did breed,
What message did whisper
In thy ear?
The water in the river
Flashes light afar,
What hymn plays on
In thy meditation!

The primordial memoir
In thy vein does stir,
So in the vegetation around
Life itself found;
In autumn end at high noon
In thy clay playroom
For ages to search its clue
In games of varied hue,
Amidst the meadow solitary
Takes away the curtain contemporary,
Thy mind,
With the lighted firmament combined,
Sees close to the eye,
In thy heart plays up high
That solemn hymn
That goes within
All pervasive time,
Emanating from that supreme rhyme
Of the Universal dance,
That took thee to trance.
All calls urgent,
Towards the horizon lent
Of the world familiar,
Losing track of time there;
All around without a message,
Neither any proclivity does trace,
The voiceless sound
The stark summer does hound;
Sigh of the vacuum
Reticent does roam.

Hawk Maid, O hawk Maid,
To-day thou played truant to thy trade.
Thy merchandise, the river ghat, (a)
Thy home, and the mart,
Days of cacophony, far recede
To the eternal message to cede,
Thy person and heart are keen,
Imploring deliverance serene.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Note: (a) landing to the river

Obama's War and Peace

Obama’s Afghanistan war and India
ND Batra
India has vital interest in the success of President Barack Obama’s surge-and-exit strategy for destroying the Al Qaeda-Taliban nexus and plexus in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Af-Pak region is not a passive sanctuary for the Taliban-Al Qaeda; it is the global supply-chain hub of terrorism.The US Federal prosecutors have charged a US citizen David C. Headley for aiding and abetting Pakistan-based Islamic terrorists who perpetrated the honorific bombing in Mumbai last year that killed 170 innocent people. Five more American citizens of Pakistani origin have been arrested in Pakistan for their suspected links with the Taliban-Al Qaeda and for planning to commit jihadist terrorist acts. Mr. Obama reminded the American people at West Point that the paramount goal is “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.”

It is an existential war against a global menace from which no one, not even Pakistan can escape, despite the fact that it nurtured the Taliban and has been providing safe havens to Al Qaeda. Although Mr. Obama strongly disagreed with the Iraq War which he regarded as a war of choice, the lessons of the war and insurgency cannot be lost, especially how the Bush administration’s well-planned troop surge worked enabling the US to handover security responsibilities to the Iraqi government.

Mr. Obama is not looking for a closure or an endgame because there can be none so long the United States remains an indispensable global power. Finishing the job does not mean quitting. Sixty-four years after World War II, the US maintains a significant military presence in Germany and Japan, as it does in South Korea since the armistice in 1953.

Central Asia is too important to be left to jihadists; or any aspiring power to dominate the region. Other countries may be rising but the United States is not declining. In fact the United States too is rising, even during the recession. Since the new surge-exit strategy announcement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, two most powerful cabinet members who have played a decisive role in shaping the new military thinking, have been going around on public forums to explain how the job will be done and how much flexibility is built into the exit date which the president set as middle of July 2011.

Secretary Gates, who also served the Bush administration in the same capacity and was responsible for the successful surge strategy in Iraq, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the mid-2011 exit strategy would be the beginning of transfer of security responsibilities to the Afghanistan government keeping the ground actualities in mind, nonetheless, with continuous partnership with the United States.

Success is not being conceptualized in binary terms—success/failure—but rather as a continuum, for which there will be assessment outcome metrics. Exit strategy is not abandonment, as Secretary Clinton told the Armed Services Committee, “We will help by working with our Afghan partners to strengthen institutions at every level of Afghan society so that we don’t leave chaos behind when our combat troops begin to depart.” This sounds a tall order to the naysayers, who wonder: Can Afghanistan secure itself? Can it govern itself?

Can it manage its borders? Again, these questions do not require yes or no answers but rather how much Afghanistan can do on its and how much help it would need from the US and the 43-nation NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, which committed another 7000 troops in addition to the 30,000 troop surge announced by Mr. Obama.Except for Tony Blair’s reluctant Britain, Europe showed little enthusiasm for the Iraq War. But for fighting the Taliban-Al Qaeda in Af-Pak, European countries, who have been victims of terrorism, London, Madrid, Paris, for example, are absolutely committed.

A day after Mr. Obama announced the troop surge, the Nato Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, spoke unequivocally, "What is happening in Afghanistan is a clear and present danger to our citizens. Instability in Afghanistan means insecurity for all of us."

When the United States and Europe work together in solving international security problems, the probability of success increases as it happened in the Bosnia-Herzegovina War (1992-1995), the post-Yugoslavia break up tragedy that led to international conflict resulting in the ethnic killing and massacre of more than 100,000 people. Though belated, the Nato intervention brought the war to an end.

The hope of bringing peace to Af-Pak rests on the US-Europe strategy and concerted action, in which India must play a constructive role to protect its own national self-interest.

(ND teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University, US)