Autobiographical Notes

Draft of a Letter to Nolini Kanta Gupta

Dear Nalini,

Quorsum haec incerta? Do you really mean to perpetrate

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the sexual union dignified by the name of marriage, or don't you? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you—to quote the language of the spider to the fly? Whither does all this tend, to fructuation (I was going to use another word) or fluctuation,—footballing and floating and flirting as much as exchange of eyes in the delicious brevity of kanya dekha and the subsequent vast freedom of imagination will give you of that modern amusement. But all this seems too Robindranathian, too ki jani ki, to come to a practical conclusion. To weigh in the subtle scales of amorous thought noses and chins and lips and eyes and the subtleties of expression is no doubt a charming mathematics, but it soars too much into the region of the infinite, there is no reason why it should work out into any sum of action. Saurin's more concrete and less poetic and philosophic mind seems to have realised this at an early stage and he wrote asking me whether it was worth while to marry with our ideas and aims under present social conditions. After about two months' absence of cogitation, I have returned a sort of non committal answer,—that I don't think it is—very, but it may turn out to be and on the whole he had better consult his antarâtman and act or not act accordingly.

c. 1919