 Chapter 1. Bimala's Story, Part 1. Mother, today there comes back to mind the Vermillion mark, the mark of Hindu waifud and the symbol of all the devotion that it implies at the parting of your hair, the saree, the dress of the Hindu women which you used to wear with its wide red border and those wonderful eyes of yours full of depth and peace. They came at the start of my life's journey, like the first streak of dawn giving me golden provision to carry me on my way. The sky which gives light is blue and my mother's face was dark but she had the radiance of holiness and her beauty would put to shame all the vanity of the beautiful. Everyone says that I resemble my mother. In my childhood I used to resent this. It made me angry with my mirror. I thought that it was God's unfairness which was wrapped around my limbs, that my dark features were not my due but had come to me by some misunderstanding. All that remained for me to ask of my God in reparation was that I might grow up to be a model of what a woman should be as one reads it in some epic poem. When the proposal came for my marriage an astrologer was sent who consulted my palm and said this girl has good signs she will become an ideal wife and all the women who heard it said no wonder for she resembles her mother. I was married into a Raja's house. When I was a child I was quite familiar with the description of the prince of the fairy story but my husband's face was not of a kind that one's imagination would place in a fairy land. It was dark even as mine was. The feeling of shrinking which I had about my own lack of physical beauty was lifted a little. At the same time a touch of regret was left lingering in my heart but when the physical appearance awaits the scrutiny of our senses and enters the sanctuary of our hearts then it can forget itself. I know from my childhood's experience how devotion is beauty itself in its inner aspect. When my mother arranged the different fruits carefully peeled by her own loving hands on the white stone plate and gently waved her fan to drive away the flies while my father sat down to his meals her service would lose itself in a beauty which passed beyond outward forms. Even in my infancy I could feel its power. It transcended all debates or doubts or calculations. It was pure music. I distinctly remember after my marriage when early in the morning I would cautiously and silently get up and take the dust of my husband's feet. A formal offering of reverence without waking him how at such moments I could feel the vermilion mark upon my forehead shining out like the morning star. One day he happened to awake and smile as he asked me what is that Bimala? What are you doing? I can never forget the shame of being detected by him. He might possibly have thought that I was trying to earn merit secretly but no no that had nothing to do with merit. It was my women's heart which misworship in order to love. My father-in-law's house was old in dignity from the days of the bachas. Some of its manners were of the moguls and patans. Some of its customs of Manu and Parashar. But my husband was absolutely modern. He was the first of the house to go through college course and take his MA degree. His elder brother had died young of drink and had left no children. My husband did not drink and was not given to dissipation. So foreign to the family was this abstinence that to many it hardly seemed decent. Purity they imagined was only becoming in those on whom fortune had not smiled. It is the moon which has room for stains not the stars. My husband's parents had died long ago and his old grandmother was mistress of the house. My husband was the apple of her eye the jewel on her bosom and so he never met with much difficulty in overstepping any of the ancient usages. When he brought in Miss Kilby to teach me and be my companion he stuck to his resolve in spite of the poison secreted by all the wagging tongues at home and outside. My husband had then just got through his BA examination and was reading for his MA degree. So he had to stay in Calcutta to attend college. He used to write to me almost every day a few lines only and simple words but his bold round handwriting would look up into my face also tenderly. I kept his letters in a sandalwood box and covered them every day with the flowers I gathered in the garden. At that time the prince of the fairy tale had faded like the moon in the morning light. I had the prince of my real world enthroned in my heart. I was his queen. I had my seat by his side but my real joy was that my true place was at his feet. Since then I have been educated and introduced to the modern age in its own language and therefore these words that I write seem to blush with shame in their prose setting. Except for my acquaintance with this modern standard of life I should know quite naturally that just as my being born a woman was not in my own hands so the elements of devotion in women's love is not like a hackneyed passage quoted from a romantic poem to be piously written down in round hand in a schoolgirl's copy book. But my husband would not give me any opportunity for worship. That was his greatness. They are cowards who claim absolute devotion from their wives as their right. That is a humiliation for both. His love for me seemed to overflow my limits by its flood of wealth and service but my necessity was more forgiving than for receiving. For love is a vagabond who can make his flowers bloom in the wayside dust better than in the crystal jars kept in the drawing room. My husband could not break completely with the old time traditions which prevailed in our family. It was difficult therefore for us to meet at any hour of the day we pleased. I knew exactly the time that he could come to me and therefore our meeting had all the care of loving preparation. It was like the rhyming of a poem. It had to come through the path of the meter. After finishing the day's work and taking my afternoon bath I would do up my hair and renew my vermilion mark and put on my saree carefully crinkled and then bringing back my body and mind from all distractions of household duties I would dedicate it at this special hour with special ceremonies to one individual. That time each day with him was short but it was infinite. My husband used to say that man and wife are equal in love because of their equal claim on each other. I never argued the point with him but my heart said that devotion never stands in the way of true equality. It only raises the level of the ground of meeting. Therefore the joy of the higher equality remains permanent. It never slides down to the vulgar level of triviality. My beloved it was worthy of you that you never expected worship from me but if you had accepted it you would have done me a real service. You showed your love by decorating me, by educating me, by giving me what I asked for and what I did not. I have seen what depth of love there was in your eyes when you gazed at me. I have known the secret sigh of pain you suppressed in your love for me. You love my body as if it were a flower of paradise. You love my whole nature as if it had been given you by some rare providence. Such lavish devotion made me proud to think that the wealth was all my own which drove you to my gate. But vanity such as this only checks the flow of free surrender in a woman's love. When I sit on the queen's throne and claim homage then the claim only goes on magnifying itself. It is never satisfied. Can there be any real happiness for a woman in merely feeling that she has power over a man? To surrender one's pride in devotion is women's only salvation. It comes back to me today how in the days of our happiness the fires of envy sprang up all around us. That was only natural for had I not stepped into my good fortune by a mere chance and without deserving it. But providence does not allow a run of luck to last forever unless its debt of honor be fully paid day by day through many a long day and thus made secure. God may grant us gifts but the merit of being able to take and hold them must be our own. Alas for the boons that slipped through unworthy hands. My husband's grandmother and mother were both renowned for their beauty and my widowed sister-in-law was also of a beauty rarely to be seen. When in turn fate left them desolate the grandmother vowed she would not insist on having beauty for her remaining grandson when he married. Only the auspicious marks with which I was endowed gained me an entry into this family. Otherwise I had no claim to be here. In this house of luxury but few of its ladies had received their mead of respect. They had however caught use to the ways of the family and managed to keep their heads above water buoyed up by their dignity as runnies of an ancient house in spite of their daily tears being drowned in the foam of wine and by the tinkle of the dancing girls' anklets. Was the credit due to me that my husband did not touch liquor nor squander his manhood in the markets of women's flesh? What charm did I know to soothe the wild and wandering mind of men? It was my good luck, nothing else. For fate proved utterly callous to my sister-in-law. Her festivity died out while yet the evening was early leaving the light of her beauty shining in vain over empty halls burning and burning with no accompanying music. His sister-in-law affected a contempt for my husband's modern notions. How absurd to keep the family ship laden with all the weight of its time honored glory sailing under the colors of his slip of a girl-wife alone. Often have I felt the lash of scorn, a thief who had stolen a husband's love, a sham hidden in the shamelessness of her new-fangled finery, the many colored garments of modern fashion with which my husband loved to adorn me roused jealous wrath. Is not she ashamed to make a show window of herself and with her looks too? My husband was aware of all this, but his gentleness knew no bounds. He used to implore me to forgive her. I remember I once told him, women's minds are so petty, so crooked. Like the feet of Chinese women, he replied. Has not the pressure of society crammed them into pettiness and crookedness? They are but pawns of the fate which gambles with them. What responsibility have they of their own? My sister-in-law never failed to get from my husband whatever she wanted. He did not stop to consider whether her requests were right or reasonable, but what exasperated me most was that she was not grateful for this. I had promised my husband that I would not talk back at her, but this set me raging all the more inwardly. I used to feel that goodness has a limit, which, if passed, somehow seems to make men cowardly. Shall I tell the whole truth? I have often wished that my husband had the manliness to be a little less good. My sister-in-law, the Bada Rani, the senior Rani, was still young and had no pretensions to saintliness. Rather, her talk and jest and laugh inclined to be forward. The young maids with whom she surrounded herself were also impugned into a degree. But there was none to gain say her, for was not this the custom of the house? It seemed to me that my good fortune in having a stainless husband was a special eyesore to her. He, however, felt more the sorrow of her lot than the defects of her character. Part 2. My husband was very eager to take me out of Pardha. Pardha, which means screen, is the seclusion of the Zanana, and all the customs peculiar to it. One day I said to him, what do I want with the outside world? The outside world may want you, he replied. If the outside world has caught on so long without me, it may go on for some time longer. It need not pine to death for want of me. Let it perish for all I care. That is not troubling me. I am thinking about myself. Oh, indeed, tell me what about yourself? My husband was silent with a smile. I knew his way, and protested at once. No, no, you are not going to run away from me like that. I want to have this out with you. Can one ever finish a subject with words? Do stop speaking in riddles. Tell me. What I want is that I should have you, and you should have me, more fully in the outside world. That is where we are still in debt to each other. Is anything wanting then in the love we have here at home? Here you are wrapped up in me. You know neither what you have nor what you want. I cannot bear to hear you talk like this. I would have you come into the heart of the outer world and meet reality, merely going on with your household duties, living all your life in the world of household conventions and the drudgery of household tasks. You are not made for that. If we meet and recognize each other in the real world, then only will our love be true. If there be any drawback here to our full recognition of each other, then I have nothing to say. But as for myself, I feel no want. Well, even if the drawback is only on my side, why shouldn't you help to remove it? Such discussions repeatedly occurred. One day he said, The greedy man who is fond of his fish stew has no compunction in cutting up the fish according to his need. But the man who loves the fish wants to enjoy it in the water. And if that is impossible, he waits on the bank. And even if he comes back home without a sight of it, he has the consolation of knowing that the fish is all right. Perfect game is the best of all. But if that is impossible, then the next best game is perfect losing. I never liked the way my husband had of talking on this subject. But that is not the reason why I refuse to leave Fizanana. His grandmother was still alive. My husband had filled more than 120 percent of the house with the 20th century against her taste, but she had borne it uncomplainingly. She would have borne it likewise if the daughter-in-law of the Raja's house had left its seclusion. She was even prepared for this happening. But I did not consider it important enough to give her the pain of it. I have read in books that we are called caged birds. I cannot speak for others, but I had so much in this cage of mine that there was no room for it in the universe. At least that is what I then felt. The grandmother in her old age was very fond of me. At the bottom of her fondness was the thought that with the conspiracy of favorable stars which attended me, I had been able to attract my husband's love. Were not men naturally inclined to plunge downwards? None of the others, for all their beauty, had been able to prevent their husbands going headlong into the burning depths which consumed and destroyed them. She believed that I had been the means of extinguishing this fire, so deadly to the men of the family. So she kept me in the shelter of her bosom, and trembled if I was in the least bit unwell. His grandmother did not like the dresses and ornaments my husband brought from European shops to deck me with. But she reflected, men will have some absurd hobby or other which is sure to be expensive. It is no use trying to check their extravagance. One is glad enough if they stop short of ruin. If my Nikhil had not been busy dressing up his wife, there is no knowing whom else he might have spent his money on. So whenever any new trace of mine arrived, she used to send for my husband and make merry over it. Thus it came about that it was her taste which changed. The influence of the modern age fell so strongly upon her that her evenings refused to pass if I did not tell her stories out of English books. After his grandmother's death, my husband wanted me to go and live with him in Calcutta. But I could not bring myself to do that. Was not this our house, which she had kept under her sheltering through all her trials and troubles, would not a curse come upon me if I deserted it and went off to town? This was the thought that kept me back, as her empty seat reproachfully looked up at me. That noble lady had come into the house at the age of eight and had died in her seventy ninth year. She had not spent a happy life. Fate had hurled shaft after shaft at her breast, only to draw out more and more the imperishable spirit within. This great house was hallowed with her tears. What should I do in the dust of Calcutta away from it? My husband's idea was that this would be a good opportunity for leaving to my sister-in-law the consolation of ruling over the household, giving our life at the same time more room to branch out in Calcutta. That is just where my difficulty came in. She had worried my life out. She ill-broke my husband's happiness, and for this she was to be rewarded. And what of the day when we should have to come back here? Should I then get back my seat at the head? What do you want with that seat, my husband would say? Are there not more precious things in life? Men never understand these things. They have their nests in the outside world. They little know the whole of what the household stands for. In these matters they ought to follow womanly guidance. Such were my thoughts at that time. I felt the real point was that one ought to stand up for one's right. To go away and leave everything in the hands of the enemy would be nothing short of owning defeat. But why did not my husband compel me to go with him to Calcutta? I know the reason. He did not use his power just because he had it. Part 3 If one had to fill in little by little the gap between day and night, it would take an eternity to do it. But the sun rises and the darkness is dispelled. A moment is sufficient to overcome and in finite distance. One day there came the new era of Sadeshi. The nationalist movement in Bengal, but as to how it happened, we had no distinct vision. There was no gradual slope connecting the past with the present. For that reason, I imagine, the new epoch came in like a flood, breaking down the dykes and sweeping all our prudence and fear about it. We had no time even to think about or understand what had happened or what was about to happen. My sight and my mind, my hopes and my desires became red with the passion of this new age. Though up to this time the walls of the home, which was the ultimate world to my mind, remained unbroken, yet I stood looking over into the distance and I heard a voice from the far horizon, whose meaning was not perfectly clear to me, but whose call went straight to my heart. From the time my husband had been a college student, he had been trying to get the things required by our people produced in our own country. There are plenty of tate trees in our district. He tried to invent an apparatus for extracting the juice and boiling it into sugar and tracal. I heard that it was a great success, only it extracted more money than juice. After a while he came to the conclusion that our attempts at reviving our industries were not succeeding for want of a bank of our own. He was at that time trying to teach me political economy. This alone would not have done much harm, but he also took it into his head to teach his countrymen ideas of thrift, so as to pave the way for a bank. And then he actually started a small bank. Its high rate of interest, which made the villagers flock so enthusiastically to put in their money, ended by swamping the bank altogether. The old officers of the estate felt troubled and frightened. There was jubilation in the enemy's camp. Of all the family, only my husband's grandmother remained unmoved. She would scold me, saying, Why are you all plaguing him so? Is it the fate of the estate that is worrying you? How many times have I seen this estate in the hands of the court receiver? Are men like women? Men are born spent thrifts and only know how to waste. Look here child, count yourself fortunate that your husband is not wasting himself as well. My husband's list of charities was a long one. He would assist to the bitter end of utter failure anyone who wanted to invent a new loom or rice husking machine. But what annoyed me most was the way that Sandeep Babu used to fleece him on the pretext of Swadeshi word. Whenever he wanted to start a newspaper or travel about preaching the cause or take a change of air by the advice of his doctor, my husband would unquestioningly supply him with the money. This was over and above the regular living allowance which Sandeep Babu also received from him. The strangest part of it was that my husband and Sandeep Babu did not agree in their opinions. As soon as the Swadeshi Tom reached my blood, I said to my husband, I must burn all my foreign clothes. Why burn them, said he. You need not wear them as long as you please. As long as I please, not in this life. Very well, do not wear them for the rest of your life then. But why this bonfire business? Would you thwart me in my resolve? What I want to say is this. Why not try to build up something? You should not waste even a tenth part of your energies in this destructive excitement. Such excitement will give us the energy to build. That is as much as to say that you cannot light the house unless you set fire to it. Then there came another trouble. When Miss Kilby first came to our house there was a great flutter which afterwards calmed down when they got used to her. Now the whole thing was stirred up afresh. I had never bothered myself before as to whether Miss Kilby was European or Indian. But I began to do so now. I said to my husband, we must get rid of Miss Kilby. He kept silent. I talked to him wildly and he went away sad at heart. After a fit of weeping, I felt in a more reasonable mood when we met at night. I cannot, my husband said, look upon Miss Kilby through a mist of abstraction just because she's English. Cannot you get over the barrier of her name after such a long acquaintance? Cannot you realize that she loves you? I felt a little ashamed and replied with some sharpness. Let her remain. I'm not over anxious to send her away and Miss Kilby remained. But one day I was told that she had been insulted by a young fellow on her way to church. This was a boy whom we were supporting. My husband turned him out of the house. There was not a single soul that day who could forgive my husband for that act, not even I. This time Miss Kilby left of her own accord. She shed tears when she came to say goodbye, but my mood would not melt. To slander the poor boy so and such a fine boy too who would forget his daily bath and food in his enthusiasm for Swadeshi. My husband escorted Miss Kilby to the railway station in his own carriage. I was sure he was going too far. When exaggerated accounts of the incident gave rise to a public scandal which found its way to the newspapers, I felt he had been rightly served. I had often become anxious at my husband's doing, but had never before been ashamed. Yet now I had to blush for him. I did not know exactly nor did I care what wrong poor Noren might or might not have done to Miss Kilby, but the idea of sitting in judgment on such a matter at such a time. I should have refused to damp the spirit which prompted young Noren to defy the English woman. I could not but look upon it as a sign of cowardice in my husband that he should fail to understand the simple thing. And so I blushed for him. And yet it was not that my husband refused to support Swadeshi or was in any way against the cause. Only he had not been able wholeheartedly to accept the spirit of Bandi Mataram, the opening words of a song by Bunkim Chatterjee, the famous Bengali novelist, which means Hail Mother. I am willing, he said, to serve my country, but my worship I reserve for right, which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a God is to bring a curse upon it. End of chapter 1 This was the time when Sandeep Babu, with his followers, came to our neighborhood to preach Swadeshi. There is to be a big meeting in our temple pavilion. We women are sitting there on one side behind a screen. Crimeful shouts of Bandi Mataram came nearer and to them. I am thrilling through and through. Suddenly a stream of barefooted youths and turbans clad in ascetic ochre rushes into the quadrangle like a silk-threadened fresher into a dry riverbed at the first bust of the rains. The whole place is filled with an immense crowd through which Sandeep Babu is born, seated in a big chair, hoisted on the shoulders of ten or twelve of the youths. It seems as though the skies would be rent and scattered into a thousand fragments. I had seen Sandeep Babu's photograph before. There was something in his features, which I did not quite like. Not that he was bad looking, far from it. He had a splendidly handsome face. Yet I know not why it seemed to me. In spite of all its brilliance, that too much of base alloy had gone into its making. The light in his eyes somehow did not shine true. That was why I did not like it when my husband unquestioningly gave in to all his demands. I could bear the waste of money, but it wakes me to think that he was imposing on my husband, taking advantage of friendship. His blaring was not that of an ascetic, not even of a person of moderate means, but forpished all over. Love of comfort seemed to, any number of such reflections, come back to me today, but let them be. When, however, Sandeep Babu began to speak at afternoon, and the hearts of the crowd swayed and surged to his words, as though they would break all bounds. I saw him wonderfully transform, especially when his features were suddenly lit up by a shaft of light from the slowly setting sun, as it sung below the roofline of the pavilion. He seemed to me to be marked out by the guards as their messenger to mortal men and women. From beginning to end of his beat, each one of his utterances was a stormy outburst. There was no limit to the confidence of his assurance. I do not know how it happened, but I found I had impatiently pushed away the screen from before me, and had fixed my gaze upon him. Yet there was none in that crowd who paid any heat to my doings. Only once I noticed his eyes like stars in faithful orient flashed full on my face. I was utterly unconscious of myself. I was no longer the lady of the Raja's house, but the sole representative of Bengal's womanhood, and he was the champion of Bengal. As the sky had shed its light over him, so he must receive the consecration of a woman's benediction. It seemed clear to me that, since he had caught sight of me, the fire in his words had framed up more fiercely. Indra's teeth refused to be reined in, and there came the roar of thunder and the flash of lightning. I said within myself that his language had caught fire from eyes. Far we women are not only the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul itself. I returned home that evening, radiant with a new pride and joy. The storm within me had shifted my whole being from one center to another. Like the Greek maidens of old, I feigned to cut off my long, breast-planted tresses to make a bowstring for my hero. Had my outward ornaments been connected with my inner feelings, then my necklace, my omelettes, my bracelets could all have bussed their bones and flung themselves over the SMB like a shower of meteors. Only some personal sacrifice I felt could help me to bear the tumult of my exaltation. When my husband came home later, I was trembling lest he should utter a sound out of tune with the triumph one beyond which was still ringing in my ears. Lest his fanatism for truth should lead him to express disapproval of anything that had been said that afternoon. For then, I should have openly defied and humiliated him, but he did not say a word, which I did not lie here. He should have said, Sandip had brought me to my senses. I now realize how mistaken I have been all this time. I somehow felt that he was quite fully silent, that he obstinately refused to be enthusiastic. I asked how long Sandip Babu was going to be with us. He is off to Rangpur early tomorrow morning, said my husband. Must it be tomorrow? Yes, he is already engaged to speak there. I was silent for a while and then asked again, could he not possibly stay a day longer? That may hardly be possible, but why? I want to invite him to dinner and attend on him myself. My husband was surprised. He had often entreated me to be present when he had particular friends to dinner, but I had never let myself be persuaded. He gazed at me, curiously, in silence. With a look, I did not quite understand. I was suddenly overcome with a sense of shame. No, no, I explained. That would never do. Why not? Said he. I will ask him myself and if it is at all possible, he will surely stay on for tomorrow. It turned out to be quite possible. I will tell the exact truth. That day, I reproached my creator because he had not been supposedly beautiful. Not to see any heart but because beauty is blurry. In this great day, the men of the country should realize its goddess in its womanhood. But alas, the eyes of men fail to discern the goddess if outward beauty be lacking. Would Sandeep Babu find the Shakti of the motherland manifest in me or would he simply take me to be an ordinary domestic woman? That morning, I centered my flowing hair and tied it in a loose knot, wound by a cunningly intertwined red silk ribbon. Dinner, you see, was to be served at midday and there was no time to dry my hair after my bath and do it uprighted in the ordinary way. I put on a gold-bodied white sari and my short-skinned masculine jacket. It was also gold-bodied. I felt that there was a certain restraint about my costume and that nothing could well have been simpler. But my sister-in-law, who happened to be passing by, stopped dead before me, surveyed me from head to foot and with compressed lips smiled a meaning smile. When I asked her the reason, I am admiring your get-up, she said. What is there so entertaining about it? I inquired, considerably annoyed. It is superb, she said. I was only thinking that one of those low-necked English bodices would have made it perfect. Not only her mouth and eyes, but her old body seemed to ripple with suppressed laughter as she left the room. I was very, very angry and wanted to change everything and put on my everyday clothes. But I cannot tell exactly why I could not carry out my impulse. Women are the ornaments of society. Thus, I reasoned with myself and my husband would never like it if I appeared before Sandeep Babu unworthily clad. My idea had been to make my appearance after they had sat down to dinner. In the bustle of looking after reserving, the first awkwardness would have passed off. But dinner was not ready in time and it was getting late. Meanwhile, my husband had sent for me to introduce the guest. I was feeling horribly shy about looking Sandeep Babu in the face. However, I managed to recover myself enough to say, I am so sorry dinner is getting late. He boldly came and sat right beside me as he replied. I get a dinner of some kind every day, but the goddess of plenty keeps behind the scenes. Now that the goddess herself has appeared, it matters little if the dinner lags behind. He was just as emphatic in his spanners as he was in his public speaking. He had no hesitation and seemed to be accustomed to occupy and challenge his chosen seat. He claimed the right to intimacy so confidently that the blame would seem to belong to those who should dispute it. I was in terror, lest Sandeep Babu should take me for a shrinking, old fashioned bundle of inanity. But for the life of me, I could not sparkle in repartees, such as my charm or dazzling. What could have possessed me? I angrily wondered to appear before him in such an absurd way. I was about to retire when dinner was over, but Sandeep Babu, as bold as ever, placed himself in my way. You must not, he said. Think being greedy. It was not the dinner that kept me staying on. It was your invitation. If you were to run away now, that would not be playing fair with your guest. If he had not said these words with a cattle's ease, they would have been out of tune. But after all, he was such a great friend of my husband that I was like his sister. While I was struggling to climb up this highway of intimacy, my husband came to the rescue saying, Why not come back to us after you have taken your dinner? But you must give your word, said Sandeep Babu, before we let you off. I will come, said I, with a slight smile. Let me tell you, continued Sandeep Babu, why I cannot trust you. Nikhil has been married these nine years, and all this while you have eluded me. If you do this again for another nine years, we shall never meet again. I took up the spirit of his remark as I dropped my voice to reply. Why, even then, should we not meet? My horoscope tells me I need to die early. None of my four fathers have survived their thirtieth year. I am now twenty-seven. He knew this would go home. This time there must have been a shade of concern in my low voice. As I said, the blessings of the whole country are due to our evil influence of the stars. Then the blessings of the country must be voiced by its goddess. This is the reason for my anxiety that you should return, so that my talisman will begin to work from today. Sandeep Babu had such a way of taking things by storm, that I got no opportunity of presenting what I never should have committed in another. So, he concluded with a laugh, I am going to hold this husband of yours as a hostage till you come back. As I was coming away, he explained, may I trouble you for a trifle? I started and turned wrong. Don't be alarmed, he said. It's merely a glass of water. You might have noticed that I did not drink any water with my dinner. I take it a little later. Upon this, I had to make a show of interest and ask him the reason. He began to give these three of his dyspepsia. I was told how he had been a martyr to eat for seven months and how after the usual course of nuisances, which included different allopathic and homeopathic misadventures, he had obtained the most wonderful results by indigenous methods. Do you know, he added, which is why God has built even my informities in such a manner that they yield only unto the bombardment of Sodeshi pills. My husband at this broke his silence. You must confess, Sadi, that you have as immense an attraction for foreign medicine as the earth has for meteors. You have three shells in your sitting row full of Sunday Babu broken. Do you know what they are? They are definitive police. They come, not because they are wanted, but because they are imposed on us by the rule of this modern age. Exacting fines and inflicting injuries. My husband could not bear exaggerations and I could see he dislike this, but all ornaments are exaggerations. They are not made by blood, but by man. Once I remember in defense of some untruth of mine, I said to my husband, only the trees and bees and birds tell unmitigated truths because these poor things have not the power in man. In this man show their superiority to the lower creatures and women beat even men. Neither is a profusion of ornament unbecoming of a woman, nor a profusion of untruths. As I came out into the passage leading to the Zalana, I found my sister-in-law standing near a window overlooking the reception rooms, peeping through the Venetian shutter. You hear, I asked in surprise. Ears dropping, she said. 5. When I returned, Sunday Babu was tenderly quality. I am afraid we have spoiled your appetite, he said. I felt greatly ashamed. Indeed, I had been too indecently recovered my dinner. With a little calculation, it would become quite evident that my non-eating had surpassed the eating. But I had no idea that anyone could have been deliberately calculating. I suppose Sunday Babu detected my feeling of shame, which only augmented it. I was sure, he said, that you had the impulse of the wild deer to run away. But it is a great boon that you took the trouble to keep your promise with me. I could not think of any suitable reply and so I sat down, blushing and uncomfortable at one end of the sofa. The vision that I had of myself as the Shakti of womanhood, incarnate, crowning Sunday Babu simply with my presence, majestic and unashamed, filled me all together. Sunday Babu deliberately started a discussion with my husband. He knew that his scheme would flash to the best effect in an argument. I have often since observed that he never lost an opportunity for a passage at arms, whenever I happen to be present. He was familiar with my husband's views on the cult of one-day mother and began in a provoking way. So you do not allow that there is room for an appeal to the imagination in patriotic work. It has its place, Sandeep, I admit. But I do not believe in giving it the whole place. I would know my country in its frank reality. And for this I am both afraid and ashamed to make use of hypnotic texts of patriotism. What you call hypnotic texts, I call truth. I truly believe my country to be my God. I worship humanity. God manifests himself, both in man and in his country. If that is what you really believe, there should be no difference for you between man and man, and so between country and country. Quite true, but my powers are limited, so my worship of humanity is continued in the worship of my country. I have nothing against your worship as such, but how is it you propose to conduct your worship of God by hating other countries in which he is equally manifest? Hate is an adjunct of worship. Arjuna won Mahadeva's favor by wrestling with him. God will be with us in the end if we are prepared to give him battle. If that be so, then those who are serving and those who are harming the country are both his devotees. Why then trouble to preach patriotism? In the case of one's own country, it's different. There, the heart clearly demands worship. If you push the same argument further, you can say that since God is manifested in us, our self has to be worshiped before all else, because our natural instinct claims it. Look here, Nikhil, this is all nearly dry logic. Can't you recognize that there is such a thing as feeling? I tell you the truth, Sandeep, my husband replied. It's my feelings that are outraged, wherever you try to pass off injustice as a duty and unrighteousness as a moral ideal. The fact that I am incapable of stealing is not due to my possessing logical faculties, but to my having some feeling of respect for myself and love for ideals. I was raging inwardly. At last I could keep silent no longer. It's not the history of every country. I cried whether England, France, Germany or Russia, the history of stealing for the sake of one's own country. They have to answer for these thefts. They are doing so even now. Their history is not ended. At any rate, interpose, Sandeep Babu. Why should we not follow suit? Let us first fill our country's coffers with stolen goods and then take centuries like these other countries. So answer for them, if we must. But I ask you, where do you find this answering in history? When Rome was answering for her sin, no one knew it. All that time there was apparently no limit to her prosperity. But do you not see one thing? How these political backs of theirs are busting with lies and treacheries, breaking their backs under their weight? Never before had I had any opportunity of being present at a discussion between my husband and his friends. Whenever he argued with me, I could feel his reluctance to push me into a corner. This arose out of the very love he bore me. Today, for the first time, I saw his fencers still in debate. Nevertheless, my heart refused to accept my husband's position. I was struggling to find some answer, but it would not come. When the word, righteousness, comes into an argument, it sounds ugly to say that I think can be too good to be useful. All of a sudden, Sandeep Babu turned to me with a question. What do you say to this? I do not care about fine distinctions. I broke up. I will tell you broadly what I feel. I am only human. I am cowardice. I would have put things for my country. If I am obliged, I would snatch them and filch them. I have angered. I would be angry for my country's sake. If necessary, I would smite and slay to avenge her insults. I have my desire to be fascinated. And fascination must be supplied to me in bodily shape by my country. She must have some visible symbol casting its spell on my mind. I would make my country a person and call her mother Goddess Dugga, for whom I would redden the earth with sacrificial offerings. I am human, not divine. Sandeep Babu leapt to his feet with uplifted arms and shouted, Hurrah! The next moment he corrected himself and cried, Bandhe Mataram. A shadow of pain passed over the face of my husband. He said to me in a very gentle voice, Neither I am divine, I am human. And therefore I dare not permit the evil which is in me to be exaggerated into an image of my country. Never, never. Sandeep Babu cried out, See, Nikhil, how in the heart of a woman, Truth takes flesh and blood. Woman knows how to be queer. Her virulence is like a blind star. It is beautifully fearful. In man, it is ugly. Because it harbors in its center the annoying worms of prison and thought. I tell you, Nikhil, it is our women who will save the country. This is not the time for nice groupers. We must unswervingly, unreasoningly brutal. We must sin. We must give our women red sandal paste, with which to anoint and enthrone our sin. Don't you remember what the poet says? Come, sin, O beautiful sin. Let thy stinging red kisses pour down fairy red wine into our blood. Sound the trumpet of imperious Eve, and cross our forehead with the wreath of exulting lawlessness. O deity of desecration, near our breasts with the blackest mud off, disrepute and nashim, down with the righteousness, which cannot smilingly bring wrack and ruin. When Sandeep Babu, standing with his head high, insulted at Eve, moments impulse all that men have cherished as their highest in all countries and in all times, a shiver went right through my body. But with the stamp of his foot, he continued his declamation. I can see that you are the beautiful spirit of fire, which burns the home to ashes and lights of the larger world with its flame. Give to us the indomitable courage to go to the bottom of ruin itself, in part grace to all that is painful. It was not clear to whom Sandeep Babu addressed his last appeal. It might have been she whom he worshipped with his Vande Mataram. It might have been the woman who ruled of his country, or it might have been its representative, the woman before him. He would have gone further in the same street, but my husband suddenly rose from his seat and touched him lightly on the shoulder saying, Sandeep, Sandeep Babu is here. I started and turned round to find an aged gentleman at the door, calm and dignified in doubt as to whether he should come in or return. His face was touched with a gentle light like that of the setting sun. My husband came up to me and whispered, This is my master of whom I have so often told you, make your obeisance to him. I bent reverently and took the dust off his feet. He gave me his blessing saying, May God protect you always, my little mother. I was sorely in need of such a blessing at that moment. Nickel's story One day I had the faith to believe that I should be able to back whatever came from my God. I never had the trial. Now I think it has come. I used to test my strength of mind by imagining all kinds of evil, which might happen to me poverty, imprisonment, dishonor, death, even bimlas. And when I said to myself that I should be able to receive these with firmness, I'm sure I did not exaggerate. Only I could never even imagine one thing. And today it is that of which I am thinking and wondering whether I can really bear it. There is a thorn somewhere pricking in my heart constantly giving me pain while I am about my daily work. It seems to persist even when I am asleep. The very moment I wake up in the morning, I find that the bloom has gone from the face of the sky. What is it? What has happened? My mind has become so sensitive that even my past life, which came to me in the disguise of happiness, seems to ring my very heart with its falsehood. And the shame and sorrow which are coming close to me are losing their cover of privacy. All the more because they try to wield their faces. My heart has become all eyes. The things that should not be seen, the things I do not want to see, these I must see. The day has come to a loss when my ill-starred life has to reveal its destitution in a long drawn series of exposures. This penury, all unexpected, has taken its seat in the heart where plenitude seemed to ring. The feasts which I pay to delusion for just nine years of my youth have now to be returned with interest to truth till the end of my days. What is the use of straining to keep up my pride? What harm if I confess that I have something lacking in me? Possibly it is that unreasoning forcefulness which women love to find in men. But each strength mere display of muscularity, must strength their nose-cruples in treading the weak underfoot. But why all these arguments? Worthiness cannot be earned merely by disputing about it. And I am unworthy, unworthy, unworthy. What if I am unworthy? The true value of love is this, that it can never bless the unworthy with its own prodigality. For the worthy there are many rewards on God's earth, but God has specially reserved love for the unworthy. Up till now, Vimla was my home made Vimla, the product of the confined space and the daily routine of small duties. Did the love which I received from her, I asked myself, come from the deep spring of her heart, or was it merely like the daily provision of pipe water pumped up by the municipal steam engine of society? I longed to find Vimla blossoming fully in all her truth and power. But the thing I forgot to calculate was, that one must give up all claims based on conventional rights, if one would find a person freely revealing truth. Why did I fail to think of this? I said, because of the husband's pride of possession over his wife? No, it was because I placed the fullest trust upon love. I was vain enough to think that I had the power in me to bear the sight of truth in its awful nakedness. It was tempting providence, but still I clung to my proud determination to come out victorious in the trial. Vimla had failed to understand me in one thing. She could not fully realize that I had as weakness all in position of force. Only the weak dare not be just. They shut their responsibility of fairness and try quickly to get at results through the shortcuts of injustice. Vimla has no patience with patience. She loves to find in men the turbulent, the angry, the unjust. Her respect must have its element of fear. I had hoped that when Vimla found herself free in the outer world, she would be rescued from her infatuation for tyranny. But now I feel sure that this infatuation is deep down in her nature. Her love is for the boisterous. From the tip of her tongue to the pit of her stomach, she must tingle with red pepper in order to enjoy the simple fire of life. But my determination was never to do my duty with frantic impetuousity helped on by the fiery liquor of excitement. I know Vimla finds it difficult to respect me for this, taking my scruples for feebleness, and she is quite angry with me because I am not running, I am not crying. For the matter of that, I have become unpopular with all my countrymen because I have not joined them in their carousels. They are certain that either I have a longing for some title or else that I am afraid of the police. The police on their side suspect me of harboring some hidden design and protesting too much in my mildness. What I really feel is this, that those who cannot find food for their enthusiasm in the knowledge of their country as it actually is, or those who cannot love men just because they are men, who needs, must shout and to deify their country in order to keep up their excitement, these love excitement more than their country. To try to give our infatuation a higher place than truth is a sign of inner enslaveishness. Where our minds are free, we find ourselves lost. Our moribund, vitality must have for its rider either some fantasy or someone in authority or a sanction from the pundits in order to make it move. So long as we are impervious to truth and have to be moved by some hypnotic stimulus, we must know that we lack the capacity for self-government. Whatever may be our condition, we shall either need some imaginary ghost or some actual medicine man to terrorize over us. The other day when Sandeep accused me of lack of imagination saying that this prevented me from realizing my country in a visible image. Himala agreed the tip. I did not say anything in my defense because to win an argument does not lead to happiness. Her difference of opinion is not due to any inequality of intelligence but rather to dissimilarity of nature. They accused me of being unimaginative, that is according to them I may have oil in my lamp but no flay. Now this is exactly the accusation which I bring against them. I would say to them you are dark even as the flings are. You must come to violent conflicts and make a noise in order to produce your sparks. But their disconnected flashes merely assist your pride and not your clear vision. I have been noticing for some time that there is a gross stupidity about Sandeep. His fleshly feelings make him harbor delusions about his religion and impel him into a tyrannical attitude in his patriotism. His intellect is deep but his nature is coarse and so he glorifies his selfish lusts and high-sounding names. The cheap consolations of hatred are as urgently necessary for him as the satisfaction of his appetites. Bimala has often owned me in the old days of his hankering after money. I understood this but I could not bring myself to haggle with Sandeep. I felt ashamed even to own to myself that he was trying to take advantage of me. It will however be difficult to explain to Bimala today that Sandeep's love of country is but a different face of his covetous self-love. Bimala's hero ship of Sandeep makes me hesitate all the more to talk to her about him. Less some touch of jealousy may lead me unwittingly into exaggeration. It may be that the pain at my heart is already making me see a distorted picture of Sandeep and yet it is better perhaps to speak out than to keep my feelings annoying within me. 2. I have known my master these 30 years. Neither callum me, nor disaster, nor death itself as any terrors for him. Nothing could have saved me, born as I was into the traditions of this family of hours, but that he has established his own life in the center of mind with its peace and truth and spiritual vision, thus making it possible for me to realize goodness in its truth. My master came to me that day itself. Is it necessary to detain Sandeep here any longer? His nature was so sensitive to all omens of evil that he had at once understood. He was not easily moved, but that day he felt the dark shadow of trouble ahead. Do I not know how well he loves me? At tea time, I said to Sandeep, I have just had a letter from Rangpur. They are complaining that I am selfishly detaining you. When will you be going there? Bimala was pouring out the tea. The face fell at once. She threw just one inquiring glance at Sandeep. I have been thinking, said Sandeep, that this honoring up and down means a tremendous waste of energy. I feel that if I could work from the center, I could achieve more permanent results. With this he looked up at Bimala and asked, do you not think so too? Bimala hesitated for a reply and then said, both ways seem good to do the work from the center as well as by traveling above. That in which you find greater satisfaction is the way for you. Then let me speak out my mind, said Sandeep. I have never yet found any one source of inspiration suffice me for good. That's why I have been constantly moving about, rousing enthusiasm in the people from which in turn I draw my own store of energy. Today you have given me the message of my country. Such fire I have never beheld in any man. I shall be able to spread the fire of enthusiasm in my country by borrowing it from you. No, do not be ashamed. You are far above all modesty and diffidence. You are the queen bee of our hive and lead the workers to rally around you. You shall be our center, our inspiration. Bimala flashed all over with bashful pride and her hands shook as she went on pouring out the tea. Another day my master came to me and said, why don't you two go up to Darjeeling for a change? You are not looking well. Have you been getting endlessly? I asked Bimala in the evening whether she would care to have a trip to the hills. I knew she had a great longing to see the Himalayas. But she refused. The country's cause, I suppose. I must not lose my faith. I shall wait. The passage from the narrow to the larger world is stormy. When she is familiar with this freedom, then I shall know where my place is. If I discover that I do not fit in with the arrangement on the outer world, then I shall not quarrel with my fate, but silently take my leave. Use force? But for what? Can force prevail against truth? Sandeep story 1. The important man says that which has come to my share is mine and the weak man ascends. But the lesson of the whole world is that is really mine which I can snatch away. My country does not become mine simply because it is the country of my birth. It becomes mine on the day when I am able to win it by force. Every man has a natural right to possess and therefore greed is natural. It is not in the wisdom of nature that we should be content to be deprived. What my mind covets, my surroundings must supply. This is the only true understanding between our inner and outer nature in this world. Let moral ideals remind me only for those poor, enemy creatures of starved desire whose grasp is sweet. Those who can desire with all their soul and enjoy with all their heart, those who have no hesitation or scruple, it is they who are the anointed of providence. Nature spreads out a riches and loveliest treasures for that benefit. They swim across streams, leap over walls, kick open doors to help themselves to whatever is worth taking. In such a getting one can rejoice, such resting as this gives value to the thing taken. Nature surrenders herself but only to the robber, for she delights in this forceful desire, this forceful abduction. And so she does not put the garland of her acceptance around the lean, scraggy neck of the ascetic. The music of the wedding march is struck. The time of the wedding I must not let pass. My heart therefore is eager. For who is the bridegroom? It is I. The bridegroom's place belongs to him who torch in hand can come in time. The bridegroom in nature's wedding hall comes unexpected and uninvited. Ashamed? No, I am never ashamed. I ask for whatever I want and I do not always wait to ask before I take it. Those who are deprived by their own diffidence, dignify their privation by their name of modesty. The world into which we are born is the world of reality. When a man goes away from the market of real things with empty hands and empty stomach, really filling his bag with pig-sounding words. I wonder why he ever came into this world at all. Did these men get their appointment from the epicures of the religious world to play set tunes on sweet pyre steaks in that pleasure garden where blossom airy nothings? I neither affect those tunes nor do I find any sustenance in those blossoms. What I desire, I desire positively, superlatively. I want to knead it with both my hands and both my feet. I want to spare it all over my body. I want to gauze myself with it to the full. These cranial pipes of those who have worn themselves out by their moral fastings till they have become flat and pale like starved vermin infesting a long desert at bed will never reach my ear. I could conceal nothing because that would be covered. But if I cannot bring myself to concealment, concealment is needful. That also is covered. Because you have your greed, you build your walls. Because I have my greed, I break through them. You use your power. I use my craft. These are the realities of life. On these depend kingdoms and empires and all the great enterprises of men. As for those avatars who come down from their paradise to talk to us in some holy jargon, their words are not real. Therefore, in spite of all the applause they get, these sayings of theirs only find a place in the hiding corners of the weak. They are despised by those who are strong, the rulers of the world. Those who have had the courage to see this have one success. While those poor riches who are dragged one way by nature and the other way by these avatars, they set one foot in the boat of the real and the other in the boat of the unreal and thus are in a pitiable plight able neither to advance nor to keep their pace. There are many men who seem to have been born only with an obsession to die. Possibly, there is a beauty like that of a sunset in this lingering death in life which seems to fascinate them. Nikhil lives this kind of life. If life, it may be called. Years ago, I had a great argument with him on this point. It is true, he said, that you cannot get anything except by force. But then what is this force? And then also what is this getting? The strength I believe in is the strength of pronouncing. So you, I explained, are infatuated with the glory of bankruptcy. Just as desperately as a chick is infatuated about the bankruptcy of its shell, he replied. The shell is real enough, yet it is given up in exchange for intangible light and air. A sorry exchange. I suppose you would call it. When once Nikhil gets on to metaphor, there is no hope of making him see that he is merely dealing with words, not with realities. Well, well, let him be happy with these metaphors. We are the flesh eaters of the world. We have teeth and nails. We pursue and grab and tear. We are not satisfied with chewing in the evening, the cut of the grass we have eaten in the morning. Anyhow, we cannot allow your metaphor mongers to bar the door to our sustenance. In that case, we shall simply steal or rob for a fee. People will say that I am starting some novel theory just because those who are moving in this world or in the habit of talking differently, though they are really acting up to it all the time. Therefore, they fail to understand, as I do, that this is the only working model principle. In point of fact, I know that my idea is not an empty theory at all, for it has been proved in practical life. I have found that my way always wins over the hearts of women who are creatures of this world of reality and do not roam about in cloudland as men do an idea filled balloons. Women find in my features, my manner, my gait, my speech, a masterful passion. Not a passion dried thin with the heat of asceticism, not a passion with its face turned back at every step in doubt and debate, but a full-blooded passion. It roars and rolls on like a flood with a cry, I want, I want, I want. Women feel in their own heart of hearts that this indomitable passion is the lifeblood of the world, acknowledging no law but itself and therefore victorious. For this reason, they have so often abandoned themselves to be swept away on the flood tide of my passion, wrecking not as to whether it takes them to life or to death. This power which wins is women, is the power of mighty men, power which wins the world of reality. Those who imagine the greater desirability of another world nearly shift their desires from earth to skies. It reminds to be seen how high their gushing fountain will play and for how long, but this much is certain. Women were not created for these pure creatures, these lotus eaters of idealism. Affinity when it suited my need, I have often said that God has created special paths of men and women and that the union of such is the only legitimate union, rather than all unions made by law. The reason of it is that though man wants to follow nature, he can find no pressure in it unless he screams himself some phrase and that is why this world is so overflowing with lies. Affinity, why shouldn't there be only one? There may be affinity with thousands. It was never in my agreement with nature that I should overlook all my innumerable affinities for the sake of only one. I have discovered many in my own life up to now, yet that has not closed the door to one more and that one is clearly visible to my eyes. She has also discovered her own affinity to me and then if I do not win, I am a coward. End of Chapter 2 of The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore Recording by Raju from Burleson, Texas, United States, Ramina45 at Hotmail.com Chapter 3 Bimala Story 6. I wonder what could have happened to my feeling of shame? The fact is I had no time to think about myself. My days and nights were passing in a while like an eddy with myself in the center. No gap was left for hesitation or delicacy to enter. One day my sister-in-law remarked to my husband, up to now the women of this house have been kept weeping. Here comes the men's turn. We must see that they do not miss it. She continued turning to me. I see you are out for the fray. Chotarani, hurl your shafts straight at their hearts. Her keen eyes looked me up and down. Not one of the colors into which my toilet, my dress, my manners, my speech had blossomed out and escaped her. I am ashamed to speak of it today, but I felt no shame then. Something within me was at work of which I was not even conscious. I used to overdress. It's true, but more like an automation with no particular design. No doubt I knew which effort of mine would prove specially pleasing to Sandeep Babu, but that required no intuition for he would discuss it openly before all of them. One day he said to my husband, Do you know, Nikhil, when I first saw our queen bee, she was sitting there so demurely in her gold-bodied sari. Her eyes were gazing inquiringly into space, like stars which had lost their way, just as if she had been for ages standing on the edge of some darkness, looking out for something unknown. But when I saw her, I felt a cruel run through me. It seemed to me that the gold border of her sari was her own inner fire flaming out and twining around her. That's the flame we want, visible fire. Look here, queen bee, you really must do us the favor of dressing once more as a living flame. So long, I had been like a small river at the border of a village. My rhythm and my language were different from what they are now. But the tide came up from the sea and my breast healed, my bangs gave way, and the great drum beats of the sea waves echoed in my mad current. I could not understand the meaning of that sound in my blood. Where was that former self of mine? Whence came foaming into me this surging flood of glory? Sandeep's hungry eyes burnt like the lamps of worship before my shrine. All his gaze proclaimed that I was a wonder in beauty and power, and the loudness of his praise, spoken and unspoken, drowned all other voices in my world. Had the creator created me afresh, I wondered. Did he wish to make up now for neglecting me so long? I, who before was plain, had become suddenly beautiful. I, who before had been of no account now felt, in myself, all the splendor of Bengal itself. For Sandeep Babu was not a mere individual. In him was the confluence of millions of minds of the country. When he called me the queen of bee of the hive, I was acclaimed with a chorus of praise by all our patriot workers. After that, the loud gist of my sister-in-law could not touch me any longer. My relations with all the world underwent a change. Sandeep Babu made it clear how all the country was in need of me. I had no difficulty in believing this at the time, for I felt that I had the power to do everything. Divine strength had come to me. It was something which I had never felt before, which was beyond myself. I had no time to question it to find out what was its nature. It seemed to belong to me and yet to transcend me. It comprehended the whole of Bengal. Sandeep Babu would consult me about every little thing touching the cause. At first, I felt very awkward and would hang back, but that soon wore off. Whatever I suggested seemed to astonish him. He would go into raptures and say, Men can only think. You women have a way of understanding without thinking. Women was created out of God's own fancy. Man, he had to hammer into shape. Letters used to come to Sandeep Babu from all parts of the country, which was submitted to me for my opinion. Occasionally, he disagreed with me, but I would not argue with him. Then, after a day or two, as if a new light had suddenly dawned upon him, he would send for me and say, It was my mistake. Your suggestion was the correct one. He would often confess to me that wherever he had taken steps, contrary to my advice, he had gone wrong. Thus, I gradually came to be convinced that behind whatever was taking place was Sandeep Babu and behind Sandeep Babu was the plain common sense of a woman. The glory of a great responsibility filled my being. My husband had no place in our councils. Sandeep Babu treated him as a younger brother, of whom personally one may be very fond and yet have no use for his business advice. He would tenderly and smilingly talk about my husband's childlike innocence, saying that his curious doctrine and perversities of mind had a flavor of humor, which made them all the more lovable. It was seemingly this very affection for Nikhil, which led Sandeep Babu to forbear from troubling him with the burden of the country. Nature has many anodines in her pharmacy, which she secretly administers when vital relations are being insidiously severe, so that none may know of the operation, till at last one awakes to know what a great rent has been made. When the knife was busy with my life's most intimate tie, my mind was so clouded with fumes of intoxicating gas that I was not in the least aware of what a cruel thing was happening. Possibly this is woman's nature. When her passion is roused, she loses a sensibility for all that is outside it. When, like the river, we women keep to our banks, we give nourishment with all that we have. When we overflow them, we destroy it with all that we are. Sandeep's story 2. I can see that something has gone wrong. I got an inkling of it the other day. Ever since my arrival, Nikhil's sitting room had become a thing amphibious. Half woman's apartment, half men's. Bimala had access to it from the Zanana. It was not bought to me from the outer side. If we had only gone slow and made use of our privileges with some restraint, we might not have fallen foul of other people. But we went ahead so vehemently that we could not think of the consequences. Whenever bee comes into Nikhil's room, I somehow got to know of it from mine. There are the tinkle of bangles and other little sounds. The door is perhaps shut with a shade of unnecessary vehemence. The bookcase is a trifle stiff and creaks if jerked open. When I enter, I find bee, with her back to the door, ever so busy selecting a book from the shelves. And as I offer to assist her in this difficult task, she starts and protests, and then we naturally get on to other topics. The other day, on an inauspicious Thursday afternoon, I sallied forth from my room at the call of these same songs. There was a man on guard in the passage. I walked on without so much as glancing at him. But as I approached the door, he put himself in my way, saying, Not that way, sir. Not that way. Why? The Rani mother is there. Oh, very well. Tell your Rani mother that Sandeep Babu wants to see her. That cannot be, sir. It's against orders. I felt highly indignant. I order you. I said in a raised voice. Go and announce me. The fellow was somewhat taken aback at my attitude. In the meantime, I had neared the door. I was on the point of reaching it when he followed after me and took me by the arm saying, No, sir, you must not. What? To be touched by a flunky? I snatched away my arm and gave the man a sounding blow. At this moment, bee came out of the room to find the man about to insult me. I shall never forget the picture of her wrath. That bee's beautiful is a discovery of my own. Most of our people would see nothing in her. Her tall, slim figure, these boars, would call lanky. But it is just this lethargy of hers that I admire, like an uplifting fountain of life, coming direct out of the depths of the creator's heart. Her complexion is dark, but it is the lustrous darkness of a sword blade, keen and scintillating. Nanku, she commanded as she stood in the doorway, pointing with her finger. Leave us. Do not be angry with him, said I. If it is against orders, it is I who should retire. Bee's voice was still trembling as she replied, You must not go. Come in. It was not a request, but again a command. I followed her in and taking a chair, fanned myself with a fan, which was on the table. Bee scribbled something with a pencil on a sheet of paper, and summoning a servant, handed it to him, saying, Take this to the Maharaja. Forgive me, I resumed. I was unable to control myself and hid that man of yours. You served him right, said Bee. But it was not the poor fellow's fault. After all, he was only obeying his orders. Here Nikhil came in, and as he did so, I left my seat with a rapid movement, and went and stood near the window with my back to the room. Nanku, the guard, has insulted Sandeep Babu, said Bee to Nikhil. Nikhil seemed to be so genuinely surprised that I had to turn around and stare at him. Even an outrageously good man fails in keeping up his pride of truthfulness before his wife, if he be the proper kind of woman. He insolently stood in the way when Sandeep Babu was coming in here, continued Bee. He said he had orders. Whose orders? asked Nikhil. How am I to know? exclaimed Bee impatiently, her eyes brimming over with mortification. Nikhil sent for the man and questioned him. It was not my fault. Nanku repeated sullenly. I had my orders. Who gave you the order? The Bararani mother. We were all silent for a while after the man had left. Bee said, Nanku must go. Nikhil remained silent. I could see that his sense of justice would not allow this. There was no end to his calm. But this time he was up against a tough problem. Bee was not the woman to take things lying down. She would have to get even with her sister-in-law by punishing this fellow. And as Nikhil remained silent, her eyes flashed fire. She knew not how to pour her scorn upon her husband's feebleness of spirit. Nikhil left the room after a while without another word. The next day, Nanku was not to be seen. On enquiry, I learned that he had been sent off to some other part of the estates and that his wages had not suffered by such transfer. I could catch glimpses of the ravages of the storm raging over this behind the scenes. All I can say is that Nikhil is a curious creature quite out of the common. The upshot was that after this Bee began to send for me to the sitting room for a chat without any contrivance or pretence of its being an accident. Thus, from bare suggestion, we came to broad hint. The implied came to be expressed. The daughter-in-law of a princely house lives in a starry region so remote from the ordinary outsider that there is not even a regular road for his approach. What a triumphal progress of truth was this, which gradually but persistently thrust aside veil after veil of obscuring custom till at length nature herself was laid bare. Truth, of course, it was the truth. The attraction of man and woman for each other is fundamental. The whole world of matter from the speck of dust upwards is ranged on its side and yet men would keep it hidden away out of sight behind a tissue of words and with homemade sanctions and prohibitions make of it a domestic utensil. Why is as observed as melting down the solar system to make a watch chain for one's son-in-law? When, in spite of all, reality awakes at the call of what is but naked truth. What a gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts is there. But can one carry on a quarrel with a storm? It never takes the trouble to reply. It only gives their shaking. I am enjoying the sight of this truth as it gradually reveals itself. These trembling of steps, these turnings of the face are sweet to me and sweet are the deceptions which deceive not only others but also be herself. When reality has to meet the unreal, deception is its principal weapon for its enemies always try to shame reality by calling it gross and so it needs must hide itself or else put on some disguise. The circumstances are such that it dare not frankly evoke. Yes, I am gross because I am true, I am flesh, I am passion, I am hunger, unashamed and cruel. All is now clear to me. The curtain flaps and through it I can see the preparations for the catastrophe. The little red ribbon which peeps through the luxuriant mosses of her hair with its flush of secret longing. It is a lolling tongue of the red storm cloud. I feel the warmth of each turn of her sari, each suggestion of a raiment of which even the wearer may not be fully conscious. Bee was not conscious because she was ashamed of the reality to which men have given a bad name calling it Satan and so it has to steal into the garden of paradise in the gaze of a snake and whispered secrets into the ears of man's chosen consort and make her rebel ears then farewell to all ease and after that comes death. My poor little queen bee is living in a dream. She knows not which way she is treading. It would not be safe to awaken her before the time. It's best for me to pretend to be equally unconscious. The other day at dinner she was gazing at me in a curious sort of way, little realising what such glances mean. As my eyes met hers, she turned away with the flush. You are surprised at my appetite, I remark. I can hide everything except that I am greedy. Anyhow, why trouble to blush for me since I am shameless. This only made her colour more furiously as she stammered. No no no, I was only. I know I interrupted. Women have a weakness for greedy men, for it is this greed of ours which gives them the upper hand. The indulgence which I have always received at their hands has made me all the more shameless. I do not mind your watching the good things disappear, not one bit. I mean to enjoy every one of them. The other day I was reading an English book in which sex problems were treated in an nauseously realistic manner. I had left it lying in the sitting room. As I went there the next afternoon, for something or other, I found we seated with this book in her hand. When she heard my footsteps, she hurriedly put it down and placed another book over it, a volume of Mrs. Hammond's poems. I have never been able to make out, I began. Why women are so shy about being caught reading poetry? We men, lawyers, mechanics or what not, may well feel ashamed. If we must read poetry, it should be at dead of night, within closed doors. But new women are so akin to pussy. The creator himself is a lyric poet and Jaideva must have practiced the divine art seated at his feet. We made no reply, but only blushed uncomfortably. She made as if she would leave the room, whereupon I protested. No, no, pray read on. I will just take a book I left here and run away. With which I took up my book from the table. Lucky you did not think of glancing over its pages, I continued. Or you would have wanted to chastise me. Indeed, why ask me? Because it is not poetry, said I. Only blunt things, bluntly put, without any finicking niceness. I wish Nikhil would read it. Be frowned a little as she murmured. What makes you wish that? He is a man, you see, one of us. My only quarrel with him is that he delights in a misty vision of this world. Have you not observed how this trait of his makes him look on Sadeshi? As if it was some poem of which the meter must be kept correct at every step. We with the clubs of our prose are the iconoclasts of meter. What has your book to do with Sadeshi? You would know if you only read it. Nikhil wants to go by made up maxims in Sadeshi as in everything else. So he knocks up against human nature at every turn and then falls to abusing it. He never will realize that human nature was created long before phrases were and will survive them too. B was silent for a while and then gravely said, Is it not a part of human nature to try and rise superior to itself? I smiled inwardly. These are not your words. I thought to myself. You have learned them from Nikhil. You are a healthy human being. Your flesh and blood have responded to the call of reality. You are burning in every vein with life fire. Do I not know it? How long should they keep you cool with the wet towel of moral precepts? The weak are in the majority, I said aloud. They are continuously poisoning the ears of men by repeating these shibbolets. Nature has denied them strength. It is thus that they try to enfeeble others. We women are weak, replied Bimala. So I suppose we must join in the conspiracy of the weak. Women weak, I exclaimed with a laugh. Men billod you as delicate and fragile so as to delude you into thinking yourself weak. But it is you women who are strong. Men make a great outward show of their so-called freedom. But those who know their inner minds are aware of their bondage. They have manufactured scriptures with their own hands to bind themselves. With their very idealism, they have made golden fetters of women to wind round their body and mind. If men had not that extraordinary faculty of entangling themselves in measures of their own contriving, nothing could have kept them bound. But as for you women, you have decided to conceive reality with body and soul. You have given birth to reality. You have suckled reality at your breast. B was well-read for a woman and would not easily give in to my arguments. If that were true, she objected, men would not have found women attractive. Women realized the danger, I replied. They know that men love delusions, so they give them full measure by borrowing their own phrases. They know that man, the drunkard, values intoxication more than food and so they try to pass themselves off as an intoxicant. As a matter of fact, but for the sake of man, woman has no need for any make believe. Why then are you troubling to destroy the illusion? For freedom, I want the country to be free. I want human relations to be free. 3. I was aware that it is unsafe suddenly to awake a sleepwalker. But I am so impetuous by nature. A halting gate does not suit me. I knew I was overboard that day. I knew that the first shock of such ideas is apt to be almost intolerable. But with women, it's always a velocity that wins. Just as we were getting on nicely, who should walk in but Nikhil's old tutor Chandranath Babu. The world would have been not half a bad place to live in, but for these cool masters who make one want to quit in disgust. The Nikhil type wants to keep the world always a school. This incarnation of a school turned up that afternoon at the psychological moment. We all remind schoolboys in some corner of our hearts and I even I felt somewhat pulled up. As for poor B, she at once took her place solemnly like the topmost girl of the class on the front bench. All of a sudden she seemed to remember that she had to face her examination. Some people are so like the eternal points man lying in wait by the line to shunt one stream of thought from one rail to another. Chandranath Babu had no sooner come in than he cast about for some excuse to retire mumbling. I beg your pardon. I before he could finish be went up to him and made a profound saying pray do not leave us sir will you not take a seat she looked like drowning person clutching at him for support the little covered but possibly I was mistaken it's quite likely that there was a touch of womanly while in it she wanted perhaps to raise her value in my eyes she might have been pointedly saying to me please don't imagine for a moment that I'm entirely overcome by you my respect for Chandranath Babu is even greater well indulge in your respect by all means school masters thrive on it but not being one of them I have no use for that empty compliment Chandranath Babu began to talk about Swadeshi I thought I would let him go on with his monologues there is nothing like letting an old man talk himself out it makes him feel that he is winding up the world forgetting all the while how far away the real world is from his wagging tongue but even my worst enemy would not accuse me of patience and when Chandranath Babu went on to say if you expect to gather fruit where we have shown no seed then we I had to interrupt him who wants fruit I cried we go by the author of the Gita who says that we are concerned only with doing not with the fruit of our deeds what is it then that you do want us Chandranath Babu taunts I exclaim which cost nothing to plant taunts do not obstruct others only he replied they have a way of hurting one's own feet that's all right for a copy book I retorted but the real thing is that we have this burning at heart now we have only to cultivate taunts for other souls afterwards when they hurt us we shall find leisure to repent but why be frightened even of that when at last we have to die it will be time enough to get cold while we are on fire let us see and boy Chandranath Babu smile see by all means he said but do not mistake it for work or heroism nations which have got on in the world have done so by action not by abolition those who have always lain in dread of work when with a start they awake to their sorry plight they look to shortcuts and scamping for their deliverance I was girding up my loins to deliver a crushing reply when Nikhil came back Chandranath Babu rose and looking towards B said let me go now my little mother I have some work to attend to as he left I showed Nikhil the book in my hand I was telling Queen Bee about this book I said 99% of people have to be deluded with lies but it is easier to delude this perpetual people of the school master with the truth he's best cheated openly so in playing with him the simplest course was to lay my cards on the table Nikhil read the title on the cover but said nothing these writers I continued are busy with their brooms sweeping away the dust of epithets with which men have covered up this world of hours so as I was saying I wish you would read it I have read it said Nikhil well what do you say it's all very well for those who really care to think but poison for those who share thought what do you mean those who preach equal rights of property should not be thieves for if they are they would be preaching lies when passion is in the ascendant this kind of book is not rightly understood passion I replied is the street lamp which gives us to call it untrue is as hopeless as to expect to see better by plucking out our natural eyes Nikhil was visibly growing excited I accept the truth of passion he said only when I recognize the truth of restraint by pressing what we want to see right into our eyes we only injure them we do not see so does the violence of passion which would leave no space between the mind and its object defeat its purpose it is simply your intellectual forgery I replied which makes you indulge in moral delicacy ignoring the savage side of truth this merely helps you to mystify things and so you fail to do your work with any degree of strength the intrusion of strength said Nikhil impatiently where strength is out of place does not help you in your work but why are we arguing about these things vain arguments only brush off the fresh bloom of truth I wanted B to join in the discussion but she had not said a word up to now could I have given her to rude a shock leaving her aside with doubts and wanting to learn her lesson afresh from the school master still a thorough shaking up is essential one must begin by realizing that things supposed to be unshakable can be shaken I'm glad I had this talk with you I said to Nikhil for I was on the point of lending this book to queen bee to read what harm said Nikhil if I could read the book why not Bimala too all I want to say is that in Europe people look at everything from the viewpoint of science but man is neither mere physiology nor biology nor psychology nor even sociology for God's sake don't forget that man is infinitely more than the natural science of himself you laugh at me calling me this cool masters people but that is what you are not high you want to find the truth of man from your science teachers and not from your own inner being but why all this excitement I mark because I see you are bent on insulting man and making him petty where on earth do you see all that in the air in my outrage feelings you would go on wounding the great the unselfish the beautiful in man what mad idea is this of yours Nikhil suddenly stood up I tell you plainly Sunday he said man may be wounded unto death but he will not die this is the reason why I'm ready to suffer all knowing all with eyes open with these words he hurriedly left the room I was staring blankly at this retreating figure when the sound of a book falling from the table made me turn to find bee following him with quick nervous steps making a detour to avoid passing too near me a curious creature that Nikhil he feels the danger threatening his home and yet why does he not turn me out I know he is waiting for Bimal to give him the cue if Bimal tells him that their mating has been a misfit he will bow his head and admit that it may have been a blunder he has not the strength of mind to understand that to acknowledge a mistake is the greatest of all mistakes he is a typical example of how ideas make for weakness I have not seen another like him so whimsical a product of nature he would hardly do as a character in a novel or drama to say nothing of real life and be I'm afraid her dream life is over from today she has at length understood the nature of the current which is bearing her along now she must either advance or retreat open height the chances are she will now advance a step and then retreat a step but that does not disturb me when one is on fire this rushing to and fro makes the blaze all the fiercer the fright she has got will only find her passion perhaps I had better not say much to her but simply select some modern books for her to read let her gradually come to the conviction that to acknowledge and respect passion as the supreme reality is to be modern not to be ashamed of it not to glorify restraint if she finds shelter in some such word as modern she will find strength be that as it may I must see this out to the end of the fifth act I cannot unfortunately boast of being merely a spectator seated in the royal box applauding now and again there's a wrench at my heart a pang in every now when I have put out the light and am in my bed little touches little glances little words flit about and fill the darkness when I get up in the morning I thrill with lively anticipations my blood seems to course through me to the strains of music there was a double photo frame on the table with bees photographed by the side of nickels I had taken out hers yesterday I showed be the empty side and said theft becomes necessary only because of miserliness so its sin must be divided between the miser and the thief do you not think so it was not a good one observed be simply with a little smile what is to be done said I a portrait cannot be better than a portrait I must be content with it such as it is we took up a book and began to turn over the pages if you are annoyed I went on I must make a shift to fill up the vacancy today I have filled it up this photograph of mine was taken in my early youth my face was then fresher and so was my mind then I still cherished some illusions about this world and the next faith deceives men but it has one great merit it imparts the radiance to the features my portrait now reposes next to nickels for are not the two of us old friends end of chapter three of home and the world by Rabindranath Tagore translated by Suresh Tagore recording by Raju from Burleson Texas Ramina 45 at Hotmail.com