The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore (children's ebooks online .txt) 📖

your own hands, then shall I know I have the sanction of my

country; and if, with that in my heart, I fall fighting, it shall

not be on the dust of some map-made land, but on a lovingly

spread skirt--do you know what kind of skirt?--like that of the

earthen-red sari you wore the other day, with a broad

blood-red border. Can I ever forget it? Such are the visions

which give vigour to life, and joy to death!"

Sandip's eyes took fire as he went on, but whether it was the

fire of worship, or of passion, I could not tell. I was reminded

of the day on which I first heard him speak, when I could not be

sure whether he was a person, or just a living flame.

I had not the power to utter a word. You cannot take shelter

behind the walls of decorum when in a moment the fire leaps up

and, with the flash of its sword and the roar of its laughter,

destroys all the miser's stores. I was in terror lest he should

forget himself and take me by the hand. For he shook like a

quivering tongue of fire; his eyes showered scorching sparks on

me.

"Are you for ever determined," he cried after a pause, "to make

gods of your petty household duties--you who have it in you to

send us to life or to death? Is this power of yours to be kept

veiled in a zenana? Cast away all false shame, I pray you; snap

your fingers at the whispering around. Take your plunge today

into the freedom of the outer world."

When, in Sandip's appeals, his worship of the country gets to be

subtly interwoven with his worship of me, then does my blood

dance, indeed, and the barriers of my hesitation totter. His

talks about Art and Sex, his distinctions between Real and

Unreal, had but clogged my attempts at response with some

revolting nastiness. This, however, now burst again into a glow

before which my repugnance faded away. I felt that my

resplendent womanhood made me indeed a goddess. Why should not

its glory flash from my forehead with visible brilliance? Why

does not my voice find a word, some audible cry, which would be

like a sacred spell to my country for its fire initiation?

All of a sudden my maid Khema rushed into the room, dishevelled.

"Give me my wages and let me go," she screamed. "Never in all my

life have I been so ..." The rest of her speech was drowned in

sobs.

"What is the matter?"

Thako, the Bara Rani's maid, it appeared, had for no rhyme or

reason reviled her in unmeasured terms. She was in such a state,

it was no manner of use trying to pacify her by saying I would

look into the matter afterwards.

The slime of domestic life that lay beneath the lotus bank of

womanhood came to the surface. Rather than allow Sandip a

prolonged vision of it, I had to hurry back within.

X

My sister-in-law was absorbed in her betel-nuts, the suspicion of

a smile playing about her lips, as if nothing untoward had

happened. She was still humming the same song.

"Why has your Thako been calling poor Khema names?" I burst out.

"Indeed? The wretch! I will have her broomed out of the house.

What a shame to spoil your morning out like this! As for Khema,

where are the hussy's manners to go and disturb you when you are

engaged? Anyhow, Chota Rani, don't you worry yourself with these

domestic squabbles. Leave them to me, and return to your

friend."

How suddenly the wind in the sails of our mind veers round! This

going to meet Sandip outside seemed, in the light of the zenana

code, such an extraordinarily out-of-the-way thing to do that I

went off to my own room, at a loss for a reply. I knew this was

my sister-in-law's doing and that she had egged her maid on to

contrive this scene. But I had brought myself to such an

unstable poise that I dared not have my fling.

Why, it was only the other day that I found I could not keep up

to the last the unbending hauteur with which I had demanded from

my husband the dismissal of the man Nanku. I felt suddenly

abashed when the Bara Rani came up and said: "It is really all my

fault, brother dear. We are old-fashioned folk, and I did not

quite like the ways of your Sandip Babu, so I only told the guard

... but how was I to know that our Chota Rani would take this as

an insult?--I thought it would be the other way about! Just my

incorrigible silliness!"

The thing which seems so glorious when viewed from the heights of

the country's cause, looks so muddy when seen from the bottom.

One begins by getting angry, and then feels disgusted.

I shut myself into my room, sitting by the window, thinking how

easy life would be if only one could keep in harmony with one's

surroundings. How simply the senior Rani sits in her verandah

with her betel-nuts and how inaccessible to me has become my

natural seat beside my daily duties! Where will it all end, I

asked myself? Shall I ever recover, as from a delirium, and

forget it all; or am I to be dragged to depths from which there

can be no escape in this life? How on earth did I manage to let

my good fortune escape me, and spoil my life so? Every wall of

this bedroom of mine, which I first entered nine years ago as a

bride, stares at me in dismay.

When my husband came home, after his M.A. examination, he

brought for me this orchid belonging to some far-away land beyond

the seas. From beneath these few little leaves sprang such a

cascade of blossoms, it looked as if they were pouring forth from

some overturned urn of Beauty. We decided, together, to hang it

here, over this window. It flowered only that once, but we have

always been in hope of its doing so once more. Curiously enough

I have kept on watering it these days, from force of habit, and

it is still green.

It is now four years since I framed a photograph of my husband in

ivory and put it in the niche over there. If I happen to look

that way I have to lower my eyes. Up to last week I used

regularly to put there the flowers of my worship, every morning

after my bath. My husband has often chided me over this.

"It shames me to see you place me on a height to which I do not

belong," he said one day.

"What nonsense!"

"I am not only ashamed, but also jealous!"

"Just hear him! Jealous of whom, pray?"

"Of that false me. It only shows that I am too petty for you,

that you want some extraordinary man who can overpower you with

his superiority, and so you needs must take refuge in making for

yourself another 'me'."

"This kind of talk only makes me angry," said I.

"What is the use of being angry with me?" he replied. "Blame

your fate which allowed you no choice, but made you take me

blindfold. This keeps you trying to retrieve its blunder by

making me out a paragon."

I felt so hurt at the bare idea that tears started to my eyes

that day. And whenever I think of that now, I cannot raise my

eyes to the niche.

For now there is another photograph in my jewel case. The other

day, when arranging the sitting-room, I brought away that double

photo frame, the one in which Sandip's portrait was next to my

husband's. To this portrait I have no flowers of worship to

offer, but it remains hidden away under my gems. It has all the

greater fascination because kept secret. I look at it now and

then with doors closed. At night I turn up the lamp, and sit

with it in my hand, gazing and gazing. And every night I think

of burning it in the flame of the lamp, to be done with it for

ever; but every night I heave a sigh and smother it again in my

pearls and diamonds.

Ah, wretched woman! What a wealth of love was twined round each

one of those jewels! Oh, why am I not dead?

Sandip had impressed it on me that hesitation is not in the

nature of woman. For her, neither right nor left has any

existence--she only moves forward. When the women of our country

wake up, he repeatedly insisted, their voice will be unmistakably

confident in its utterance of the cry: "I want."

"I want!" Sandip went on one day--this was the primal word at

the root of all creation. It had no maxim to guide it, but it

became fire and wrought itself into suns and stars. Its

partiality is terrible. Because it had a desire for man, it

ruthlessly sacrificed millions of beasts for millions of years to

achieve that desire. That terrible word "I want" has taken flesh

in woman, and therefore men, who are cowards, try with all their

might to keep back this primeval flood With their earthen dykes.

They are afraid lest, laughing and dancing as it goes, it should

wash away all the hedges and props of their pumpkin field. Men,

in every age, flatter themselves that they have secured this

force within the bounds of their convenience, but it gathers and

grows. Now it is calm and deep like a lake, but gradually its

pressure will increase, the dykes will give way, and the force

which has so long been dumb will rush forward with the roar: "I

want!"

These words of Sandip echo in my heart-beats like a war-drum.

They shame into silence all my conflicts with myself. What do I

care what people may think of me? Of what value are that orchid

and that niche in my bedroom? What power have they to belittle

me, to put me to shame? The primal fire of creation burns in me.

I felt a strong desire to snatch down the orchid and fling it out

of the window, to denude the niche of its picture, to lay bare

and naked the unashamed spirit of destruction that raged within

me. My arm was raised to do it, but a sudden pang passed through

my breast, tears started to my eyes. I threw myself down and

sobbed: "What is the end of all this, what is the end?"

Sandip's Story

IV

When I read these pages of the story of my life I seriously

question myself: Is this Sandip? Am I made of words? Am I

merely a book with a covering of flesh and blood?

The earth is not a dead thing like the moon. She breathes. Her

rivers and oceans send up vapours in which she is clothed. She

is covered with a mantle of her own dust which flies about the

air. The onlooker, gazing upon the earth from the outside, can

see only the light reflected from this vapour and this dust. The

tracks of the mighty continents are not distinctly visible.

The man, who is alive as this earth is, is likewise always

enveloped in the