Where the mind is without fear

Just read this on Sayesha's blog. The poem she mentions is really beautiful and inspiring. In fact, now that I pause to think, it reminds me of a Hindi poem that I studied in school. I think the title was "Behta paani nirmala".

Anyway, my all time favorite poem is "Where the mind is without fear" by Gurudev Rabindranath Thakur (it is the quintessential Bengali in me that makes me mention 'Thakur' instead of 'Tagore').

Here is the passage from the poem/prayer that I love:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever widening thought and action --
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

The original Bengali poem, of which the above is a translation:



I just love the idea of the grand vision that Gurudev had for our country. Surprisingly, this poem continues to hold importance for our country today as much as it did when it was written. And if you carefully observe, the poem asks us to constantly redefine the limits of what we think is 'possible' and go beyond and achieve even more.

"Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake"

Just so beautiful...