Tagore was for everything natural. He did not like anything that was artificially imposed upon. He was dead against tinkering with his physique and its well-being. He believed in copability and capability of his own body as it fought against external elements. Self-reliance was his mantra. No wonder, Tagore had relatively a trouble free eighty year life. The only thing that nagged him throughout his life was piles. He got it operated in 1913 in England as he had been facing recurrence of bleeding and pain. It needed poet’s close friend Sir William Rothenstein to persuade him to see a surgeon as he was operated at Duchess nursing home on 30th June by Dr. Pollard. He stayed at that nursing home for more than two weeks. It was his first and last hospitalization. Unfortunately piles did make a comeback with a vengeance and problems persisted till he breathed his last. Actually piles played a significant role in Tagore’s literary life as when he came to London to treat it, he carried with him the manuscript of Geetanjali. The rest is history.
Tagore did not like to be vaccinated. He did not take vaccines for typhoid, cholera or pox that had gone berserk then. Once chicken pox had a free run in Bolpur and threatened to travel to Shantiniketon. And it did. The doctor of ashram, Mr. Shachin Mukherjee, became a busy man vaccinating all and sundry. The only man left to be inoculated was Tagore. On the repeated prodding of ashram people, the doctor came to him. Tagore then was writing at his trademark table. He looked up and asked: Why do you come to me, doctor? When the doctor was fumbling for an answer, Tagore himself volunteered: Go to those people who have bouts of spring invading their life again and again. I am well past that phase! (In Bengali pox is called “basonto” that has its own intrinsic amorous association. “Basonto” translates to spring in English.) Tagore then smiled to his secretary Mr. Anil Kumar Chando as he evidently seemed to relish his own pun-rich punch. Then he got back to his own writing. Doctor had to make a hasty retreat.
Tagore wrote to Kumar Jayantonath Roy just two years before his death that he did not fear death at all if it came without any hassles. He then would court it with a smiling face. Tagore wanted a peaceful death.
But that peace eluded him. He had to face a painful death as a twenty-five minutes long Supra Pubic Systostomy (an incision that drained out accumulated urine and inserted a pipe that would take care of future deposition) went woefully wrong and turned septic. It spread to his whole body and led to his death just after a ravishing rakhee purnima night when a bright moon held sway over nature.
A Bishu Pagol might have sung somewhere for his dear one who had made him fall in love with life madly — O chand, chokher jole laglo joar dukher paarabare…