Chapter 3
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.