tagore, one
One of the perks of being a lit student is that you get to interact with beautiful writings. And you're just filled up and your heart and soul is nourished with the sublime, especially if you find yourself connecting what you read with what you practice.
Rabindra geet were songs written by Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali and they made me fall in love with the language. If someone can teach me, I'm so ready to learn! It's a beautiful poetic language. So when I spotted Tagore in my syllabus under Indian Writings paper, I was thrilled.
Here's a beautiful geet from his Gitanjali, the Nobel prize winning collection of songs.
Now as Muslims we know that cleanliness is part of faith. But we think of that often as literal cleanliness, you know keeping our body and surroundings neat and clean. When I read this piece, I thought of how there are levels to purity.
Our body is an amaanah from Allah, something He owns and crafted with His hands, so the first verse is understood. The next three verses had a profound impact upon me, for I was looking at it through the lens of my Deen.
Truly it is Allah who has gifted us with rationality and the capacity to think. So should we not keep our mind free of the filth of lies? Because He is the Ultimate Truth and that implies two things. One, that we should purify our mind of lies, that we tell others and ourselves. Two, that no matter what the world seems to rationalize and claim as logical and true, of it goes against His Truth then they are lies and should not be entertained.
Now there was one lecture of NAK's (I think) in which he referred to the heart as a house. And that when we let shaitan in, he takes over the interior decor and furnishing and fills it up with all kinds of trash. And the Noor of Allah is driven out of such a heart. When we fill our heart with the Divine, then surely we need to make sure it stays clean of such trash that the devil would like us to keep inside. The lamp of the heart would get clogged up with dirt otherwise and the light within would be extinguished and invisible. It's up to us to work on our imaan and keep it fresh like a flower in bloom, like a growing tree. Then only will Divine love stay within. If not the Noor of Allah will be driven out of our hearts by blackness.
The last one made me think of one who is always in possession of Taqwa, such that their eyes only see what pleases Allah, their limbs only act in a manner pleasing to Allah and their tongues only speak that which is pleasing to Allah. Basically all their senses and actions are directed the need to attain the pleasure of Allah. Also, it made me think of Allah's 99 names, His perfect attributes that we cannot copy such perfection, but it needs to inspire our behaviour.
Tagore was a deeply spiritual man, but his spirituality was a universal kind. He took up things from all kinds of philosophy and included them in his words. However, when sir asked us to read the poem, these were the first impressions I had formed in my mind.
For those who do not know, Rabindranath Tagore is an Indian poet, musician and artist, who won the Nobel prize in the year 1913. The first non European to win the title. He is the one who penned our national anthem Jana Gana Mana and that of Bangladesh Amar Shonar Bangla. He's a ginormous figure as far as Bengali literature is concerned. And if you've heard or read his work in Bengali, then the English ones seem lesser in comparison.
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