The Home and the World, Rabindranath Tagore [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗

have kept these to eat after you have helped me with your own

hands."

I could see that I was not wanted here. I went out of the room.

I could only preach and preach, so I mused, and get my effigy

burnt for my pains. I had not yet been able to bring back a

single soul from the path of death. They who have the power, can

do so by a mere sign. My words have not that ineffable meaning.

I am not a flame, only a black coal, which has gone out. I can

light no lamp. That is what the story of my life shows--my row

of lamps has remained unlit.

Sitting on the bare floor is a sign of mourning, and so, by

association of ideas, of an abject attitude of mind. [Trans.].

XVI

I returned slowly towards the inner apartments. The Bara Rani's

room must have been drawing me again. It had become an absolute

necessity for me, that day, to feel that this life of mine had

been able to strike some real, some responsive chord in some

other harp of life. One cannot realize one's own existence by

remaining within oneself--it has to be sought outside.

As I passed in front of my sister-in-law's room, she came out

saying: "I was afraid you would be late again this afternoon.

However. I ordered your dinner as soon as I heard you coming.

It will be served in a minute."

"Meanwhile," I said; "let me take out that money of yours and

have it kept ready to take with us."

As we walked on towards my room she asked me if the Police

Inspector had made any report about the robbery. I somehow did

not feel inclined to tell her all the details of how that six

thousand had come back. "That's just what all the fuss is

about," I said evasively.

When I went into my dressing-room and took out my bunch of keys,

I did not find the key of the iron safe on the ring. What an

absurdly absent-minded fellow I was, to be sure! Only this

morning I had been opening so many boxes and things, and never

noticed that this key was not there.

"What has happened to your key?" she asked me.

I went on fumbling in this pocket and that, but could give her no

answer. I hunted in the same place over and over again. It

dawned on both of us that it could not be a case of the key being

mislaid. Someone must have taken it off the ring. Who could it

be? Who else could have come into this room?

"Don't you worry about it," she said to me. "Get through your

dinner first. The Chota Rani must have kept it herself, seeing

how absent-minded you are getting."

I was, however, greatly disturbed. It was never Bimal's habit to

take any key of mine without telling me about it. Bimal was not

present at my meal-time that day: she was busy feasting Amulya in

her own room. My sister-in-law wanted to send for her, but I

asked her not to do so.

I had just finished my dinner when Bimal came in. I would have

preferred not to discuss the matter of the key in the Bara Rani's

presence, but as soon as she saw Bimal, she asked her: "Do you

know, dear, where the key of the safe is?"

"I have it," was the reply.

"Didn't I say so!" exclaimed my sister-in-law triumphantly.

"Our Chota Rani pretends not to care about these robberies, but

she takes precautions on the sly, all the same."

The look on Bimal's face made my mind misgive me. "Let the key

be, now," I said. "I will take out that money in the evening."

"There you go again, putting it off," said the Bara Rani. "Why

not take it out and send it to the treasury while you have it in

mind?"

"I have taken it out already," said Bimal.

I was startled.

"Where have you kept it, then?" asked my sister-in-law.

"I have spent it."

"Just listen to her! Whatever did you spend all that money on?"

Bimal made no reply. I asked her nothing further. The Bara Rani

seemed about to make some further remark to Bimala, but checked

herself. "Well, that is all right, anyway," she said at length,

as she looked towards me. "Just what I used to do with my

husband's loose cash. I knew it was no use leaving it with him--

his hundred and one hangers-on would be sure to get hold of it.

You are much the same, dear! What a number of ways you men know

of getting through money. We can only save it from you by

stealing it ourselves! Come along now. Off with you to bed."

The Bara Rani led me to my room, but I hardly knew where I was

going. She sat by my bed after I was stretched on it, and smiled

at Bimal as she said: "Give me one of your pans, Chotie darling--

what? You have none! You have become a regular mem-sahib. Then

send for some from my room."

"But have you had your dinner yet?" I anxiously enquired.

"Oh long ago," she replied--clearly a fib.

She kept on chattering away there at my bedside, on all manner of

things. The maid came and told Bimal that her dinner had been

served and was getting cold, but she gave no sign of having heard

it. "Not had your dinner yet? What nonsense! It's fearfully

late." With this the Bara Rani took Bimal away with her.

I could divine that there was some connection between the taking

out of this six thousand and the robbing of the other. But I

have no curiosity to learn the nature of it. I shall never ask.

Providence leaves our life moulded in the rough--its object being

that we ourselves should put the finishing touches, shaping it

into its final form to our taste. There has always been the

hankering within me to express some great idea in the process of

giving shape to my life on the lines suggested by the Creator.

In this endeavour I have spent all my days. How severely I have

curbed my desires, repressed myself at every step, only the

Searcher of the Heart knows.

But the difficulty is, that one's life is not solely one's own.

He who would create it must do so with the help of his

surroundings, or he will fail. So it was my constant dream to

draw Bimal to join me in this work of creating myself. I loved

her with all my soul; on the strength of that, I could not but

succeed in winning her to my purpose--that was my firm belief.

Then I discovered that those who could simply and naturally draw

their environment into the process of their self-creation

belonged to one species of the genus "man",--and I to another. I

had received the vital spark, but could not impart it. Those to

whom I have surrendered my all have taken my all, but not myself

with it.

My trial is hard indeed. Just when I want a helpmate most, I am

thrown back on myself alone. Nevertheless, I record my vow that

even in this trial I shall win through. Alone, then, shall I

tread my thorny path to the end of this life's journey ...

I have begun to suspect that there has all along been a vein of

tyranny in me. There was a despotism in my desire to mould my

relations with Bimala in a hard, clear-cut, perfect form. But

man's life was not meant to be cast in a mould. And if we try to

shape the good, as so much mere material, it takes a terrible

revenge by losing its life.

I did not realize all this while that it must have been this

unconscious tyranny of mine which made us gradually drift apart.

Bimala's life, not finding its true level by reason of my

pressure from above, has had to find an outlet by undermining its

banks at the bottom. She has had to steal this six thousand

rupees because she could not be open with me, because she felt

that, in certain things, I despotically differed from her.

Men, such as I, possessed with one idea, are indeed at one with

those who can manage to agree with us; but those who do not, can

only get on with us by cheating us. It is our unyielding

obstinacy, which drives even the simplest to tortuous ways. In

trying to manufacture a helpmate, we spoil a wife.

Could I not go back to the beginning? Then, indeed, I should

follow the path of the simple. I should not try to fetter my

life's companion with my ideas, but play the joyous pipes of my

love and say: "Do you love me? Then may you grow true to

yourself in the light of your love. Let my suggestions be

suppressed, let God's design, which is in you, triumph, and my

ideas retire abashed."

But can even Nature's nursing heal the open wound, into which our

accumulated differences have broken out? The covering veil,

beneath the privacy of which Nature's silent forces alone can

work, has been torn asunder. Wounds must be bandaged--can we not

bandage our wound with our love, so that the day may come when

its scar will no longer be visible? It is not too late? So much

time has been lost in misunderstanding; it has taken right up to

now to come to an understanding; how much more time will it take

for the correcting? What if the wound does eventually heal?--can

the devastation it has wrought ever be made good?

There was a slight sound near the door. As I turned over I saw

Bimala's retreating figure through the open doorway. She must

have been waiting by the door, hesitating whether to come in or

not, and at last have decided to go back. I jumped up and

bounded to the door, calling: "Bimal."

She stopped on her way. She had her back to me. I went and took

her by the hand and led her into our room. She threw herself

face downwards on a pillow, and sobbed and sobbed. I said

nothing, but held her hand as I sat by her head.

When her storm of grief had abated she sat up. I tried to draw

her to my breast, but she pushed my arms away and knelt at my

feet, touching them repeatedly with her head, in obeisance. I

hastily drew my feet back, but she clasped them in her arms,

saying in a choking voice: "No, no, no, you must not take away

your feet. Let me do my worship."

I kept still. Who was I to stop her? Was I the god of her

worship that I should have any qualms?

Bimala's Story

XXIII

Come, come! Now is the time to set sail towards that great

confluence, where the river of love meets the sea of worship. In

that pure blue all the weight of its muddiness sinks and

disappears.

I now fear nothing--neither myself, nor anybody else. I have

passed through fire. What was inflammable has been burnt to

ashes; what is left is deathless.