Mother, your baby is silly! She is so absurdly childish!
She does not know the difference between the lights in the
streets and the stars.
When we play at eating with pebbles, she thinks they are real
food, and tries to put them into her mouth.
When I open a book before her and ask her to learn her a, b,
c, she tears the leaves with her hands and roars for joy at
nothing; this is your baby's way of doing her lesson.
When I shake my head at her in anger and scold her and call
her naughty, she laughs and thinks it great fun.
Everybody knows that father is away, but if in play I call
aloud "Father," she looks about her in excitement and thinks that
father is near.
When I hold my class with the donkeys that our washer man
brings to carry away the clothes and I warn her that I am the
schoolmaster, she will scream for no reason and call me dada.
Your baby wants to catch the moon. She is so funny; she calls
Ganesh Ganush.
Mother, your baby is silly! She is so absurdly childish!
Notes
(This poem is from 'The Crescent Moon' by Tagore)
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Comments
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This expresses a child's frustration of having to tend the 'inferior' baby - and put up with her antics, which are just beyond those of say, a seven year old's, yet expresses so well how, in a mature view, her actions are "superior" and demonstrate why we delight in a new child's view and need to be reminded of it from time to time by being in their presence.
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I guess it is Tagore's way to show the simple joy and pleasure that we tend to take for granted or ignore. The baby she's the joy and wonder of words, shapes, colors. the world that we've sadly outgrown. I don't know it he intended the tone to be light and whimsical but it is, to me at least.
The title is interesting and maybe suggests something else...maybe he isn't actually superior but indeed the inferior one for what he has lost...or maybe it's just a comic piece, with nothing deeper intended. What do you think?
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