No one could have imagined that this year's 80th birthday of Mr. Tagore would be celebrated by me. The changes in personnel are so wonderful that people are afraid. If there is Shima today, he must be the first to be happy. Just look at the year when the old man turned 70 years ago, and he fidgeted a few months ago thinking about how to celebrate, how to satisfy the old man. He must go to India in person, but at the same time, the environment makes it impossible for him to leave Shanghai, so he is so anxious that he scratches his head and scratches his ears, and he doesn't even bother to move his pen; It wasn't until the problem was solved that it slowly quieted down. Later, it took him several months to travel from Europe to India, and when he met the old man himself, he realized his wish. After returning, he also said: "This time I finally weighed my heart, and when the old man is eighty years old, it will be fun to invite the old man to come to Shanghai!" "But a young man walked backwards ahead of the old man.
I was very stranger to Tagore, and when he first came to China, I had not yet met Shima; Although Shima told me for the first time when he went abroad after he met me, that he must introduce me to Tagore when he went to meet him, and asked me to send him a photograph, I didn't have any thoughts in my head.
It wasn't until Shima met the old man that he sent a letter saying that after the old man saw our photo, he told me very clearly about my personality, temperament, and temperament, as if he had seen me. Shima admired this so much that he wanted to call me to his old man's house right away. At the same time, the old man also told me that in a year or two, he would definitely come to my house in person, hoping to see me, and told me to prepare earlier. Since then, I have felt in my heart that the old man is really a strange person, a writer and at the same time a good look! Maybe the Indians have a little bit of illusion.
Soon after my comrade Mo got married, a telegram suddenly came from his old man's house, saying that he would come to Shanghai in a month and that he was going to stay at my house. Good! This time we are busy, and the two of us don't know what to do. The house is small, of course, there is no magnificent furniture in the home of a poor scholar, it is not satisfactory to look at the east, it is not satisfactory to look at the west, and there is no room that can be lived in by the simple upstairs and downstairs. rejected him, and was afraid of hurting his good intentions; Accept him, and there is no place to arrange.
A week has passed, and there is still no preparation, but the two of them are relatively worried. At this time, the telegram came again, saying that the ship would arrive in Shanghai the next afternoon. This time I was really blind, there were three and a half rooms in total, and I was afraid that he would bring too many people to live, and it was too late to move for a while, so I had to take it head-on.
As soon as we arrived at the dock, the boat had already arrived. We saw that the dock was full of people, and the colorful heads of people dazzled my eyes in the sun! I exclaimed, "Why are there all Indians here today!" Are they coming for a meeting? Shima said, "You're so confused, aren't you here to pick up the old man!" "That's when I realized. The admiration in my heart was a little uncomfortable at this time, because what I usually fear most is the red-haired foreigners on the road, but today I want to see so many, and they stared at the two of us one by one, and they didn't even dare to move when I hid by Shima's side. At that time, except for fear, everything else was forgotten, and even what to do was a little confused. It was not until I had squeezed into the crowd and reached the deck that I took a breath of relief, as if I had just woken up from a great dream, and was greeted by the owner of the ship, and found the old man's room.
Shima was so happy that he ran and jumped all the way forward, as if he had forgotten about me behind him, and I had to quietly follow behind; It wasn't until I walked into a small room that I saw Shima shaking hands with an old man with white hair, who I knew must be the old poet he admired most in his life. I looked up and down carefully, and at the same time I felt a strange meaning in my heart, and the first feeling was, why is this Indian not terrible at all? There is no fierce gaze, the face does not feel strangely dark, and the tone of the voice has an indescribable beauty, low like a yellow warbler out of the valley, where it cries tactfully and looks at me with a smile. I stood there as if unconscious, and I didn't even hear what Shima was telling me, nor did I step forward, nor did I retreat, but I just looked at him directly, and I forgot to say what Shima had taught me at home, and the old man saw my abnormal attitude, and gently held my hand and spoke to me in a low voice.
We talked for a long time in the boat, and the old man was very close to me, and he did not have the slightest arrogance. I told him that my house was too small to see anyone, and he said that the younger he was, the more he liked it, otherwise some of their compatriots invited him to live in a high-rise building, would he come to my house? This made it impossible for me to be polite any longer, and I had to accompany him back to our dilapidated house. He was so pleased that he didn't want an Indian-style room that we had prepared for him, but asked us to let him sleep in our broken bed. He fell in love with our bed with a red tent, and he said he loved its exotic vibe. He lived the same way as we did, and he was very casual in everything, except that he got up very early in the morning, and he must have gotten up at five o'clock, so that I could not sleep peacefully. He stayed for a week, but I learned a lot, every time the Indian compatriots invited him to dinner, he must take us with him, I have never eaten Indian food, even a few times, and the vast people of India have also been there, there are really many different places. It was an indescribably pleasant time, and Shima was even more happy, following the old man all day and night. Although he didn't live for long, the relationship between the three of us became closer because of it.
At this time, Shima promised him that he would go to celebrate his birthday when he was seventy years old. Who knew that Shima was suffering in the year he went. When the old man heard this thunderbolt-like bad news at this time, he must not know how to regret it. It's no wonder that Shima has a special respect for his old man, and his affection for Shima is also extraordinary, needless to say, the letters are constant all year round. It's a pity that many of those hard-to-get letters were lost after Shima's death, and I still regret it when I think about it now! For I have been living in a fog since the bad news, and I have not even asked about anything outside my body, otherwise I would have taken out a lot of souvenirs to-day, and all that remains now is a little poem and a precious self-portrait by Tagore for the two of us.