Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/165

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
XI
SHANTI NIKETAN
141

Early in the morning, at 4.30, a choir of boys go round the school singing songs, and rouse the sleepers up into the beauty and calm of early dawn. As soon as they are up the boys set to cleaning their own rooms, for from the beginning they are taught not to despise any manual work, but to do for themselves without the help of servants as far as possible. After that they all have to go through some physical exercises in the open air, followed by the morning bath, after which each retired for a quarter of an hour's quiet meditation.

A recent visitor to the school gives us a fuller account of this early morning meditation.

At 6 A. M. a most musical gong tempted us to look out. The guest house in which we were staying was in the centre of a rural garden. Dotted about among the trees were a number of separate dormitory buildings of the simplest type. Out of them the boys were streaming, each with his mat, to take up a place under some secluded tree for the fifteen minutes of meditation which was to follow. There was something strangely moving in the sight of these little figures in white, pricking out the scene all round, each under his several shrub or tree. Then another gong, after which they all move reverently in procession into the school temple.

A very brief service comes after breakfast; before school, the boys are assembled and chant together a "Mantra" from the Upanishads. Morning school is from 8 till 11.30. All classes