19.

During my visits to India, when I used to sing my song ‘Ore Mor Kheya Ore Mor Neye’ for my brother Chitta while playing the harmonium, right from the beginning tears and tears would roll down his cheeks. This song means, “O my Boat, O my Boatman, O message of Transcendental Delight, carry me.”

In that song I have used poetic license. Some great poets coin hundreds and hundreds of words which you will not find in the dictionary. You have to study those great poets in order to know the meaning of some particular words. The word kheya we do find in the dictionary. It means ‘a small boat’. But the word neye, meaning ‘boatman’, you will not find in the dictionary. The proper Bengali word is nabik. Nabik means ‘pilot’. From nabik, how can you come to neye? I learnt this word from Tagore. It happened that Tagore once wanted a short word, a very sweet word, so he transformed nabik into neye.

Nowadays the dictionary writers are very clever. Formerly, for centuries, there were quite a few words that were not available in the dictionary. Now the dictionary has started accepting those coined words because such-and-such a writer used the word. Before, we learnt things from the dictionary. Now the dictionary is learning from the great authors.⁴⁰