Oblivious night
wears on, the morning of reckoning nears, I hear the thundering roar of its
chariot.
wears on, the morning of reckoning nears, I hear the thundering roar of its
chariot.
Tagore - Creative Unity
It is the restless sea of change, feeding its foaming flocks to lose them
over and over again, beating its hands against the calm of the sky.
Love, in the centre of this circling war-dance of light and dark, yours is
that green island, where the sun kisses the shy forest shade and silence is
wooed by birds' singing.
29
AMA AND VINAYAKA
AMA AND VINAYAKA
_Night on the battlefield:_ AMA _meets her father_ VINAYAKA.
AMA
Father!
VINAYAKA
Shameless wanton, you call me "Father"! you who did not shrink from a
Mussulman husband!
AMA
Though you have treacherously killed my husband, yet you are my father; and
I hold back a widow's tears, lest they bring God's curse on you. Since we
have met on this battlefield after years of separation, let me bow to your
feet and take my last leave!
VINAYAKA
Where will you go, Ama? The tree on which you built your impious nest is
hewn down. Where will _you_ take shelter?
AMA
I have my son.
VINAYAKA
Leave him! Cast never a fond look back on the result of a sin expiated with
blood! Think where to go.
AMA
Death's open gates are wider than a father's love!
VINAYAKA
Death indeed swallows sins as the sea swallows the mud of rivers. But you
are to die neither to-night nor here. Seek some solitary shrine of holy
Shiva far from shamed kindred and all neighbours; bathe three times a day
in sacred Ganges, and, while reciting God's name, listen to the last bell
of evening worship, that Death may look tenderly upon you, as a father on
his sleeping child whose eyes are still wet with tears. Let him gently
carry you into his own great silence, as the Ganges carries a fallen flower
on its stream, washing every stain away to render it, a fit offering, to
the sea.
AMA
But my son----
VINAYAKA
Again I bid you not to speak of him. Lay yourself once more in a father's
arms, my child, like a babe fresh from the womb of Oblivion, your second
mother.
AMA
To me the world has become a shadow. Your words I hear, but cannot take to
heart. Leave me, father, leave me alone! Do not try to bind me with your
love, for its bands are red with my husband's blood.
VINAYAKA
Alas! no flower ever returns to the parent branch it dropped from. How can
you call him _husband_ who forcibly snatched you from Jivaji to whom you
had been sacredly affianced? I shall never forget that night! In the
wedding hall we sat anxiously expecting the bridegroom, for the auspicious
hour was dwindling away. Then in the distance appeared the glare of
torches, and bridal strains came floating up the air. We shouted for joy:
women blew their conch-shells. A procession of palanquins entered the
courtyard: but while we were asking, "Where is Jivaji? " armed men burst out
of the litters like a storm, and bore you off before we knew what had
happened. Shortly after, Jivaji came to tell us he had been waylaid and
captured by a Mussulman noble of the Vijapur court. That night Jivaji and I
touched the nuptial fire and swore bloody death to this villain. After
waiting long, we have been freed from our solemn pledge to-night; and the
spirit of Jivaji, who lost his life in this battle, lawfully claims you for
wife.
AMA
Father, it may be that I have disgraced the rites of your house, but my
honour is unsullied; I loved him to whom I bore a son. I remember the night
when I received two secret messages, one from you, one from my mother;
yours said: "I send you the knife; kill him! " My mother's: "I send you the
poison; end your life! " Had unholy force dishonoured me, your double
bidding had been obeyed. But my body was yielded only after love had given
_me_--love all the greater, all the purer, in that it overcame the
hereditary recoil of our blood from the Mussulman.
_Enter_ RAMA, AMA'S _mother_
AMA
Mother mine, I had not hoped to see you again. Let me take dust from your
feet.
RAMA
Touch me not with impure hands!
AMA
I am as pure as yourself.
RAMA
To whom have you surrendered your honour?
AMA
To my husband.
RAMA
Husband? A Mussulman the husband of a Brahmin woman?
AMA
I do not merit contempt: I am proud to say I never despised my husband
though a Mussulman. If Paradise will reward your devotion to your husband,
then the same Paradise waits for your daughter, who has been as true a
wife.
RAMA
Are you indeed a true wife?
AMA
Yes.
RAMA
Do you know how to die without flinching?
AMA
I do.
RAMA
Then let the funeral fire be lighted for you! See, there lies the body of
your husband.
AMA
Jivaji?
RAMA
Yes, Jivaji. He was your husband by plighted troth. The baffled fire of the
nuptial God has raged into the hungry fire of death, and the interrupted
wedding shall be completed now.
VINAYAKA
Do not listen, my child. Go back to your son, to your own nest darkened
with sorrow. My duty has been performed to its extreme cruel end, and
nothing now remains for you to do. --Wife, your grief is fruitless. Were the
branch dead which was violently snapped from our tree, I should give it to
the fire. But it has sent living roots into a new soil and is bearing
flowers and fruits. Allow her, without regret, to obey the laws of those
among whom she has loved. Come, wife, it is time we cut all worldly ties
and spent our remainder lives in the seclusion of some peaceful pilgrim
shrine.
RAMA
I am ready: but first must tread into dust every sprout of sin and shame
that has sprung from the soil of our life. A daughter's infamy stains her
mother's honour. That black shame shall feed glowing fire to-night, and
raise a true wife's memorial over the ashes of my daughter.
AMA
Mother, if by force you unite me in death with one who was not my husband,
then will you bring a curse upon yourself for desecrating the shrine of the
Eternal Lord of Death.
RAMA
Soldiers, light the fire; surround the woman!
AMA
Father!
VINAYAKA
Do not fear. Alas, my child, that you should ever have to call your father
to save you from your mother's hands!
AMA
Father!
VINAYAKA
Come to me, my darling child! Mere vanity are these man-made laws,
splashing like spray against the rock of heaven's ordinance. Bring your son
to me, and we will live together, my daughter. A father's love, like God's
rain, does not judge but is poured forth from an abounding source.
RAMA
Where would you go? Turn back! --Soldiers, stand firm in your loyalty to
your master Jivaji! do your last sacred duty by him!
AMA
Father!
VINAYAKA
Free her, soldiers! She is my daughter.
SOLDIERS
She is the widow of our master.
VINAYAKA
Her husband, though a Mussulman, was staunch in his own faith.
RAMA
Soldiers, keep this old man under control!
AMA
I defy you, mother! --You, soldiers, I defy! --for through death and love I
win to freedom.
30
A painter was selling pictures at the fair; followed by servants, there
passed the son of a minister who in youth had cheated this painter's father
so that he had died of a broken heart.
The boy lingered before the pictures and chose one for himself. The painter
flung a cloth over it and said he would not sell it.
After this the boy pined heart-sick till his father came and offered a
large price. But the painter kept the picture unsold on his shop-wall and
grimly sat before it, saying to himself, "This is my revenge. "
The sole form this painter's worship took was to trace an image of his god
every morning.
And now he felt these pictures grow daily more different from those he used
to paint.
This troubled him, and he sought in vain for an explanation till one day he
started up from work in horror, the eyes of the god he had just drawn were
those of the minister, and so were the lips.
He tore up the picture, crying, "My revenge has returned on my head! "
31
The General came before the silent and angry King and saluting him said:
"The village is punished, the men are stricken to dust, and the women cower
in their unlit homes afraid to weep aloud. "
The High Priest stood up and blessed the King and cried: "God's mercy is
ever upon you. "
The Clown, when he heard this, burst out laughing and startled the court.
The King's frown darkened.
"The honour of the throne," said the minister, "is upheld by the King's
prowess and the blessing of Almighty God. "
Louder laughed the Clown, and the King growled,--"Unseemly mirth! "
"God has showered many blessings upon your head," said the Clown; "the one
he bestowed on me was the gift of laughter. "
"This gift will cost you your life," said the King, gripping his sword with
his right hand.
Yet the Clown stood up and laughed till he laughed no more.
A shadow of dread fell upon the Court, for they heard that laughter echoing
in the depth of God's silence.
32
THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
_Prince Duryodhana, the son of the blind Kaurava King Dhritarashtra, and of
Queen Gandhari, has played with his cousins the Pandava Kings for their
kingdom, and won it by fraud. _
DHRITARASHTRA
You have compassed your end.
DURYODHANA
Success is mine!
DHRITARASHTRA
Are you happy?
DURYODHANA
I am victorious.
DHRITARASHTRA
I ask you again, what happiness have you in winning the undivided kingdom?
DURYODHANA
Sire, a Kshatriya thirsts not after happiness but victory, that fiery wine
pressed from seething jealousy. Wretchedly happy we were, like those
inglorious stains that lie idly on the breast of the moon, when we lived in
peace under the friendly dominance of our cousins. Then these Pandavas
milked the world of its wealth, and allowed us a share, in brotherly
tolerance. Now that they own defeat and expect banishment, I am no longer
happy but exultant.
DHRITARASHTRA
Wretch, you forget that both Pandavas and Kauravas have the same
forefathers.
DURYODHANA
It was difficult to forget that, and therefore our inequalities rankled in
my heart. At midnight the moon is never jealous of the noonday sun. But the
struggle to share one horizon between both orbs cannot last forever. Thank
heaven, that struggle is over, and we have at last won solitude in glory.
DHRITARASHTRA
The mean jealousy!
DURYODHANA
Jealousy is never mean--it is in the essence of greatness. Grass can grow
in crowded amity, not giant trees. Stars live in clusters, but the sun and
moon are lonely in their splendour. The pale moon of the Pandavas sets
behind the forest shadows, leaving the new-risen sun of the Kauravas to
rejoice.
DHRITARASHTRA
But right has been defeated.
DURYODHANA
Right for rulers is not what is right in the eyes of the people. The people
thrive by comradeship: but for a king, equals are enemies. They are
obstacles ahead, they are terrors from behind. There is no place for
brothers or friends in a king's polity; its one solid foundation is
conquest.
DHRITARASHTRA
I refuse to call a conquest what was won by fraud in gambling.
DURYODHANA
A man is not shamed by refusing to challenge a tiger on equal terms with
teeth and nails. Our weapons are those proper for success, not for suicide.
Father, I am proud of the result and disdain regret for the means.
DHRITARASHTRA
But justice----
DURYODHANA
Fools alone dream of justice--success is not yet theirs: but those born to
rule rely on power, merciless and unhampered with scruples.
DHRITARASHTRA
Your success will bring down on you a loud and angry flood of detraction.
DURYODHANA
The people will take amazingly little time to learn that Duryodhana is king
and has power to crush calumny under foot.
DHRITARASHTRA
Calumny dies of weariness dancing on tongue-tips. Do not drive it into the
heart to gather strength.
DURYODHANA
Unuttered defamation does not touch a king's dignity. I care not if love is
refused us, but insolence shall not be borne. Love depends upon the will of
the giver, and the poorest of the poor can indulge in such generosity. Let
them squander it on their pet cats, tame dogs, and our good cousins the
Pandavas. I shall never envy them. Fear is the tribute I claim for my royal
throne. Father, only too leniently you lent your ear to those who slandered
your sons: but if you intend still to allow those pious friends of yours to
revel in shrill denunciation at the expense of your children, let us
exchange our kingdom for the exile of our cousins, and go to the
wilderness, where happily friends are never cheap!
DHRITARASHTRA
Could the pious warnings of my friends lessen my love for my sons, then we
might be saved. But I have dipped my hands in the mire of your infamy and
lost my sense of goodness. For your sakes I have heedlessly set fire to the
ancient forest of our royal lineage--so dire is my love. Clasped breast to
breast, we, like a double meteor, are blindly plunging into ruin. Therefore
doubt not my love; relax not your embrace till the brink of annihilation be
reached. Beat your drums of victory, lift your banner of triumph. In this
mad riot of exultant evil, brothers and friends will disperse till nothing
remain save the doomed father, the doomed son and God's curse.
_Enter an Attendant_
Sire, Queen Gandhari asks for audience.
DHRITARASHTRA
I await her.
DURYODHANA
Let me take my leave. [_Exit. _
DHRITARASHTRA
Fly! For you cannot bear the fire of your mother's presence.
_Enter_ QUEEN GANDHARI, _the mother of_ DURYODHANA
GANDHARI
At your feet I crave a boon.
DHRITARASHTRA
Speak, your wish is fulfilled.
GANDHARI
The time has come to renounce him.
DHRITARASHTRA
Whom, my queen?
GANDHARI
Duryodhana!
DHRITARASHTRA
Our own son, Duryodhana?
GANDHARI
Yes!
DHRITARASHTRA
This is a terrible boon for you, his mother, to crave!
GANDHARI
The fathers of the Kauravas, who are in Paradise, join me in beseeching
you.
DHRITARASHTRA
The divine Judge will punish him who has broken His laws. But I am his
father.
GANDHARI
Am I not his mother? Have I not carried him under my throbbing heart? Yes,
I ask you to renounce Duryodhana the unrighteous.
DHRITARASHTRA
What will remain to us after that?
GANDHARI
God's blessing.
DHRITARASHTRA
And what will that bring us?
GANDHARI
New afflictions. Pleasure in our son's presence, pride in a new kingdom,
and shame at knowing both purchased by wrong done or connived at, like
thorns dragged two ways, would lacerate our bosoms. The Pandavas are too
proud ever to accept back from us the lands which they have relinquished;
therefore it is only meet that we draw some great sorrow down on our heads
so as to deprive that unmerited reward of its sting.
DHRITARASHTRA
Queen, you inflict fresh pain on a heart already rent.
GANDHARI
Sire, the punishment imposed on our son will be more ours than his. A judge
callous to the pain that he inflicts loses the right to judge. And if you
spare your son to save yourself pain, then all the culprits ever punished
by your hands will cry before God's throne for vengeance,--had they not
also their fathers?
DHRITARASHTRA
No more of this, Queen, I pray you. Our son is abandoned of God: that is
why I cannot give him up. To save him is no longer in my power, and
therefore my consolation is to share his guilt and tread the path of
destruction, his solitary companion. What is done is done; let follow what
must follow! [_Exit. _
GANDHARI
Be calm, my heart, and patiently await God's judgment.
Oblivious night
wears on, the morning of reckoning nears, I hear the thundering roar of its
chariot. Woman, bow your head down to the dust! and as a sacrifice fling
your heart under those wheels! Darkness will shroud the sky, earth will
tremble, wailing will rend the air and then comes the silent and cruel
end,--that terrible peace, that great forgetting, and awful extinction of
hatred--the supreme deliverance rising from the fire of death.
33
Fiercely they rend in pieces the carpet woven during ages of prayer for the
welcome of the world's best hope.
The great preparations of love lie a heap of shreds, and there is nothing
on the ruined altar to remind the mad crowd that their god was to have
come. In a fury of passion they seem to have burnt their future to cinders,
and with it the season of their bloom.
The air is harsh with the cry, "Victory to the Brute! " The children look
haggard and aged; they whisper to one another that time revolves but never
advances, that we are goaded to run but have nothing to reach, that
creation is like a blind man's groping.
I said to myself, "Cease thy singing. Song is for one who is to come, the
struggle without an end is for things that are. "
The road, that ever lies along like some one with ear to the ground
listening for footsteps, to-day gleans no hint of coming guest, nothing of
the house at its far end.
My lute said, "Trample me in the dust. "
I looked at the dust by the roadside. There was a tiny flower among thorns.
And I cried, "The world's hope is not dead! "
The sky stooped over the horizon to whisper to the earth, and a hush of
expectation filled the air. I saw the palm leaves clapping their hands to
the beat of inaudible music, and the moon exchanged glances with the
glistening silence of the lake.
The road said to me, "Fear nothing! " and my lute said, "Lend me thy songs! "
34
TRANSLATIONS
BAUL SONGS[1]
[Footnote 1: The Bauls are a sect of religious mendicants in Bengal,
unlettered and unconventional, whose songs are loved and sung by the
people. The literal meaning of the word "Baul" is "the Mad. "]
1
This longing to meet in the play of love, my Lover, is not only mine but
yours.
Your lips can smile, your flute make music, only through delight in my
love; therefore you are importunate even as I.
2
I sit here on the road; do not ask me to walk further.
If your love can be complete without mine let me turn back from seeking
you.
I refuse to beg a sight of you if you do not feel my need.
I am blind with market dust and mid-day glare, and so wait, in hopes that
your heart, my heart's lover, will send you to find me.
3
I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath.
Mornings and evenings in summer and in rains, I am fashioned to music.
Should I be wholly spent in some flight of song, I shall not grieve, the
tune is so dear to me.
4
My heart is a flute he has played on. If ever it fall into other hands let
him fling it away.
My lover's flute is dear to him, therefore if to-day alien breath have
entered it and sounded strange notes, let him break it to pieces and strew
the dust with them.
5
In love the aim is neither pain nor pleasure but love only.
While free love binds, division destroys it, for love is what unites.
Love is lit from love as fire from fire, but whence came the first flame?
In your being it leaps under the rod of pain.
Then, when the hidden fire flames forth, the in and the out are one and all
barriers fall in ashes.
Let the pain glow fiercely, burst from the heart and beat back darkness,
need you be afraid?
The poet says, "Who can buy love without paying its price? When you fail to
give yourself you make the whole world miserly. "
6
Eyes see only dust and earth, but feel with the heart, and know pure joy.
The delights blossom on all sides in every form, but where is your heart's
thread to make a wreath of them?
My master's flute sounds through all things, drawing me out of my lodgings
wherever they may be, and while I listen I know that every step I take is
in my master's house.
For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea, and he is the
landing-place.
7
Strange ways has my guest.
He comes at times when I am unprepared, yet how can I refuse him?
I watch all night with lighted lamp; he stays away; when the light goes out
and the room is bare he comes claiming his seat, and can I keep him
waiting?
I laugh and make merry with friends, then suddenly I start up, for lo! he
passes me by in sorrow, and I know my mirth was vain.
I have often seen a smile in his eyes when my heart ached, then I knew my
sorrow was not real.
Yet I never complain when I do not understand him.
8
I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.
Though you never make the shore, though you let me sink, why should I be
foolish and afraid?
Is reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself with you?
If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea?
Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.
I live in you whatever and however you appear. Save me or kill me as you
wish, only never leave me in other hands.
9
Make way, O bud, make way, burst open thy heart and make way.
The opening spirit has overtaken thee, canst thou remain a bud any longer?
III
1
Come, Spring, reckless lover of the earth, make the forest's heart pant for
utterance!
Come in gusts of disquiet where flowers break open and jostle the new
leaves!
Burst, like a rebellion of light, through the night's vigil, through the
lake's dark dumbness, through the dungeon under the dust, proclaiming
freedom to the shackled seeds!
Like the laughter of lightning, like the shout of a storm, break into the
midst of the noisy town; free stifled word and unconscious effort,
reinforce our flagging fight, and conquer death!
2
I have looked on this picture in many a month of March when the mustard is
in bloom--this lazy line of the water and the grey of the sand beyond, the
rough path along the river-bank carrying the comradeship of the field into
the heart of the village.
I have tried to capture in rhyme the idle whistle of the wind, the beat of
the oar-strokes from a passing boat.
I have wondered in my mind how simply it stands before me, this great
world: with what fond and familiar ease it fills my heart, this encounter
with the Eternal Stranger.
3
The ferry-boat plies between the two villages facing each other across the
narrow stream.
The water is neither wide nor deep--a mere break in the path that enhances
the small adventures of daily life, like a break in the words of a song
across which the tune gleefully streams.
While the towers of wealth rise high and crash to ruin, these villages talk
to each other across the garrulous stream, and the ferry-boat plies between
them, age after age, from seed-time to harvest.
4
In the evening after they have brought their cattle home, they sit on the
grass before their huts to know that you are among them unseen, to repeat
in their songs the name which they have fondly given you.
While kings' crowns shine and disappear like falling stars, around village
huts your name rises through the still night from the simple hearts of your
lovers whose names are unrecorded.
5
In Baby's world, the trees shake their leaves at him, murmuring verses in
an ancient tongue that dates from before the age of meaning, and the moon
feigns to be of his own age--the solitary baby of night.
In the world of the old, flowers dutifully blush at the make-believe of
faery legends, and broken dolls confess that they are made of clay.
6
_My world_, when I was a child, you were a little girl-neighbour, a loving
timid stranger.
Then you grew bold and talked to me across the fence, offering me toys and
flowers and shells.
Next you coaxed me away from my work, you tempted me into the land of the
dusk or the weedy corner of some garden in mid-day loneliness.
At length you told me stories about bygone times, with which the present
ever longs to meet so as to be rescued from its prison in the moment.
7
How often, great Earth, have I felt my being yearn to flow over you,
sharing in the happiness of each green blade that raises its signal banner
in answer to the beckoning blue of the sky!
I feel as if I had belonged to you ages before I was born. That is why, in
the days when the autumn light shimmers on the mellowing ears of rice, I
seem to remember a past when my mind was everywhere, and even to hear
voices as of playfellows echoing from the remote and deeply veiled past.
When, in the evening, the cattle return to their folds, raising dust from
the meadow paths, as the moon rises higher than the smoke ascending from
the village huts, I feel sad as for some great separation that happened in
the first morning of existence.
8
My mind still buzzed with the cares of a busy day; I sat on without noting
how twilight was deepening into dark. Suddenly light stirred across the
gloom and touched me as with a finger.
I lifted my head and met the gaze of the full moon widened in wonder like a
child's. It held my eyes for long, and I felt as though a love-letter had
been secretly dropped in at my window. And ever since my heart is breaking
to write for answer something fragrant as Night's unseen flowers--great as
her declaration spelt out in nameless stars.
9
The clouds thicken till the morning light seems like a bedraggled fringe to
the rainy night.
A little girl stands at her window, still as a rainbow at the gate of a
broken-down storm.
She is my neighbour, and has come upon the earth like some god's rebellious
laughter. Her mother in anger calls her incorrigible; her father smiles and
calls her mad.
She is like a runaway waterfall leaping over boulders, like the topmost
bamboo twig rustling in the restless wind.
She stands at her window looking out into the sky.
Her sister comes to say, "Mother calls you. " She shakes her head.
Her little brother with his toy boat comes and tries to pull her off to
play; she snatches her hand from his. The boy persists and she gives him a
slap on the back.
The first great voice was the voice of wind and water in the beginning of
earth's creation.
That ancient cry of nature--her dumb call to unborn life--has reached this
child's heart and leads it out alone beyond the fence of our times: so
there she stands, possessed by eternity!
10
The kingfisher sits still on the prow of an empty boat, while in the
shallow margin of the stream a buffalo lies tranquilly blissful, its eyes
half closed to savour the luxury of cool mud.
Undismayed by the barking of the village cur, the cow browses on the bank,
followed by a hopping group of _saliks_ hunting moths.
I sit in the tamarind grove, where the cries of dumb life congregate--the
cattle's lowing, the sparrows' chatter, the shrill scream of a kite
overhead, the crickets' chirp, and the splash of a fish in the water.
I peep into the primeval nursery of life, where the mother Earth thrills at
the first living clutch near her breast.
11
At the sleepy village the noon was still like a sunny midnight when my
holidays came to their end.
My little girl of four had followed me all the morning from room to room,
watching my preparations in grave silence, till, wearied, she sat by the
doorpost strangely quiet, murmuring to herself, "Father must not go! "
This was the meal hour, when sleep daily overcame her, but her mother had
forgotten her and the child was too unhappy to complain.
At last, when I stretched out my arms to her to say farewell, she never
moved, but sadly looking at me said, "Father, you must not go! "
And it amused me to tears to think how this little child dared to fight the
giant world of necessity with no other resource than those few words,
"Father, you must not go! "
12
Take your holiday, my boy; there are the blue sky and the bare field, the
barn and the ruined temple under the ancient tamarind.
My holiday must be taken through yours, finding light in the dance of your
eyes, music in your noisy shouts.
To you autumn brings the true holiday freedom: to me it brings the
impossibility of work; for lo! you burst into my room.
Yes, my holiday is an endless freedom for love to disturb me.
13
In the evening my little daughter heard a call from her companions below
the window.
She timidly went down the dark stairs holding a lamp in her hand, shielding
it behind her veil.
I was sitting on my terrace in the star-lit night of March, when at a
sudden cry I ran to see.
Her lamp had gone out in the dark spiral staircase. I asked, "Child, why
did you cry? "
From below she answered in distress, "Father, I have lost myself! "
When I came back to the terrace under the star-lit night of March, I looked
at the sky, and it seemed that a child was walking there treasuring many
lamps behind her veils.
If their light went out, she would suddenly stop and a cry would sound from
sky to sky, "Father, I have lost myself! "
14
The evening stood bewildered among street lamps, its gold tarnished by the
city dust.
A woman, gaudily decked and painted, leant over the rail of her balcony, a
living fire waiting for its moths.
Suddenly an eddy was formed in the road round a street-boy crushed under
the wheels of a carriage, and the woman on the balcony fell to the floor
screaming in agony, stricken with the grief of the great white-robed Mother
who sits in the world's inner shrine.
15
I remember the scene on the barren heath--a girl sat alone on the grass
before the gipsy camp, braiding her hair in the afternoon shade.
Her little dog jumped and barked at her busy hands, as though her
employment had no importance.
In vain did she rebuke it, calling it "a pest," saying she was tired of its
perpetual silliness.
She struck it on the nose with her reproving forefinger, which only seemed
to delight it the more.
She looked menacingly grave for a few moments, to warn it of impending
doom; and then, letting her hair fall, quickly snatched it up in her arms,
laughed, and pressed it to her heart.
16
He is tall and lean, withered to the bone with long repeated fever, like a
dead tree unable to draw a single drop of sap from anywhere.
In despairing patience, his mother carries him like a child into the sun,
where he sits by the roadside in the shortening shadows of each forenoon.
The world passes by--a woman to fetch water, a herd-boy with cattle to
pasture, a laden cart to the distant market--and the mother hopes that some
least stir of life may touch the awful torpor of her dying son.
17
If the ragged villager, trudging home from the market, could suddenly be
lifted to the crest of a distant age, men would stop in their work and
shout and run to him in delight.
For they would no longer whittle down the man into the peasant, but find
him full of the mystery and spirit of his age.
Even his poverty and pain would grow great, released from the shallow
insult of the present, and the paltry things in his basket would acquire
pathetic dignity.
18
With the morning he came out to walk a road shaded by a file of deodars,
that coiled the hill round like importunate love.
He held the first letter from his newly wedded wife in their village home,
begging him to come to her, and come soon.
The touch of an absent hand haunted him as he walked, and the air seemed to
take up the cry of the letter: "Love, my love, my sky is brimming with
tears! "
He asked himself in wonder, "How do I deserve this? "
The sun suddenly appeared over the rim of the blue hills, and four girls
from a foreign shore came with swift strides, talking loud and followed by
a barking dog.
The two elder turned away to conceal their amusement at something strange
in his insignificance, and the younger ones pushed each other, laughed
aloud, and ran off in exuberant mirth.
He stopped and his head sank. Then he suddenly felt his letter, opened and
read it again.
19
The day came for the image from the temple to be drawn round the holy town
in its chariot.
The Queen said to the King, "Let us go and attend the festival. "
Only one man out of the whole household did not join in the pilgrimage. His
work was to collect stalks of spear-grass to make brooms for the King's
house.
The chief of the servants said in pity to him, "You may come with us. "
He bowed his head, saying, "It cannot be. "
The man dwelt by the road along which the King's followers had to pass. And
when the Minister's elephant reached this spot, he called to him and said,
"Come with us and see the God ride in his chariot! "
"I dare not seek God after the King's fashion," said the man.
"How should you ever have such luck again as to see the God in his
chariot? " asked the Minister.
"When God himself comes to my door," answered the man.
The Minister laughed loud and said, "Fool! 'When God comes to your door! '
yet a King must travel to see him! "
"Who except God visits the poor? " said the man.
20
Days were drawing out as the winter ended, and, in the sun, my dog played
in his wild way with the pet deer.
The crowd going to the market gathered by the fence, and laughed to see the
love of these playmates struggle with languages so dissimilar.
The spring was in the air, and the young leaves fluttered like flames. A
gleam danced in the deer's dark eyes when she started, bent her neck at the
movement of her own shadow, or raised her ears to listen to some whisper in
the wind.
The message comes floating with the errant breeze, with the rustle and
glimmer abroad in the April sky. It sings of the first ache of youth in the
world, when the first flower broke from the bud, and love went forth
seeking that which it knew not, leaving all it had known.
And one afternoon, when among the _amlak_ trees the shadow grew grave and
sweet with the furtive caress of light, the deer set off to run like a
meteor in love with death.
It grew dark, and lamps were lighted in the house; the stars came out and
night was upon the fields, but the deer never came back.
My dog ran up to me whining, questioning me with his piteous eyes which
seemed to say, "I do not understand! "
But who does ever understand?
21
Our Lane is tortuous, as if, ages ago, she started in quest of her goal,
vacillated right and left, and remained bewildered for ever.
Above in the air, between her buildings, hangs like a ribbon a strip torn
out of space: she calls it her sister of the blue town.
She sees the sun only for a few moments at mid-day, and asks herself in
wise doubt, "Is it real? "
In June rain sometimes shades her band of daylight as with pencil
hatchings. The path grows slippery with mud, and umbrellas collide. Sudden
jets of water from spouts overhead splash on her startled pavement. In her
dismay, she takes it for the jest of an unmannerly scheme of creation.
The spring breeze, gone astray in her coil of contortions, stumbles like a
drunken vagabond against angle and corner, filling the dusty air with
scraps of paper and rag. "What fury of foolishness! Are the Gods gone mad? "
she exclaims in indignation.
But the daily refuse from the houses on both sides--scales of fish mixed
with ashes, vegetable peelings, rotten fruit, and dead rats--never rouse
her to question, "Why should these things be? "
She accepts every stone of her paving. But from between their chinks
sometimes a blade of grass peeps up. That baffles her. How can solid facts
permit such intrusion?
On a morning when at the touch of autumn light her houses wake up into
beauty from their foul dreams, she whispers to herself, "There is a
limitless wonder somewhere beyond these buildings. "
But the hours pass on; the households are astir; the maid strolls back from
the market, swinging her right arm and with the left clasping the basket of
provisions to her side; the air grows thick with the smell and smoke of
kitchens. It again becomes clear to our Lane that the real and normal
consist solely of herself, her houses, and their muck-heaps.
22
The house, lingering on after its wealth has vanished, stands by the
wayside like a madman with a patched rag over his back.
Day after day scars it with spiteful scratches, and rainy months leave
their fantastic signatures on its bared bricks.
In a deserted upper room one of a pair of doors has fallen from rusty
hinges; and the other, widowed, bangs day and night to the fitful gusts.
One night the sound of women wailing came from that house. They mourned the
death of the last son of the family, a boy of eighteen, who earned his
living by playing the part of the heroine in a travelling theatre.
A few days more and the house became silent, and all the doors were locked.
Only on the north side in the upper room that desolate door would neither
drop off to its rest nor be shut, but swung to and fro in the wind like a
self-torturing soul.
After a time children's voices echo once more through that house. Over the
balcony-rail women's clothes are hung in the sun, a bird whistles from a
covered cage, and a boy plays with his kite on the terrace.
A tenant has come to occupy a few rooms.
