Rabindranath Tagore’s son Samindranath, called Sami, was, as Dutta and Robinson  write, “a beautiful boy who had already shown signs of being the child who would take after his father.”
While he was on a visit to Monghyr in Bihar, Samindranath died of cholera when he only was eleven years old – on 23 November 1907, the same day his mother had died five years before. Dutta and Robinson quote Tagore:
“When his last moment was about to come I was sitting alone in the dark in an adjoining room, praying intently for his passing away to his next stage of existence in perfect peace and well-being. At a particular point of time my mind seemed to float in a sky where there was neither darkness nor light, but a profound depth of calm, a boundless sea of consciousness without a ripple or murmur.
I saw the vision of my son lying in the heart of the Infinite and I was about to cry to my friend, who was nursing the boy in the next room, that the child was safe, that he had found his liberation.
I felt like a father who had sent his son across the sea, relieved to learn of his safe arrival and succes in finding his place. I felt at once that the physcial nearness of our dear ones to ourselves is not the final meaning of their protection. It is merely a means of satisfaction to our own selves and not necessarily the best that could be wished for them.”
Even though Rabindranath had suffered many bereavements shortly before, his son Rathindranath writes later that Samindranath’s death had a particularly strong impact on his father and left him more lonely than the previous losses.
Dutta, Krishna, and Andrew Robinson. Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995, p. 148.
Ibid., p. 148-9.
Tagore, Rathindranath. On the Edges of Time. Westport,Ct: Greenwood Press, 1978.