The Home and the World - Rabindranath Tagore (books to read in your 30s .txt) 📗
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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
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