September 05, 2026

Who Bound You

I thought my invincible power would hold the world captive leaving me in a freedom undisturbed.

This line comes from Gitanjali, the 1910 collection of poems Tagore later translated into English himself, work that won him the Nobel Prize in 1913. The poem takes the form of a dialogue with a prisoner who confesses that no king or jailer chained him, he forged the chain himself while chasing wealth and power he mistook for freedom. Tagore wrote this while India lived under colonial rule, yet he turned the poem inward, suggesting that political freedom means little if we remain captive to our own ambitions. It speaks to autonomy today because the walls that confine us most are often the ones we build with our own hands and call security.