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

connected with my inner feelings, then

my necklet, my armlets, my bracelets, would all have burst their

bonds and flung themselves over that assembly 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 triumphant paean which was

still ringing in my ears, lest his fanaticism 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

like either.

He should have said: "Sandip has brought me to my senses. I now

realize how mistaken I have been all this time."

I somehow felt that he was spitefully 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

exclaimed, "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 made me surpassingly beautiful--not to steal

any heart away, but because beauty is glory. 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 Sandip 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 scented my flowing hair and tied it in a loose

knot, bound 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 up plaited in the ordinary way.

I put on a gold-bordered white sari, and my short-sleeve

muslin jacket was also gold-bordered.

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 enquired,

considerably annoyed.

"It's 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 whole 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 Sandip Babu unworthily clad.

My idea had been to make my appearance after they had sat down to

dinner. In the bustle of looking after the serving 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 Sandip 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 manners as he was in his public

speaking. He had no hesitation and seemed to be accustomed to

occupy, unchallenged, 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 Sandip 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 might charm or dazzle him.

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 Sandip Babu, as

bold as ever, placed himself in my way.

"You must not," he said, "think me 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 careless 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 high wave 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 Sandip Babu, "before we let

you off."

"I will come," said I, with a slight smile.

"Let me tell you," continued Sandip 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 am to die early. None of my forefathers

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 sure to avert the 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 may begin to work from today."

Sandip Babu had such a way of taking things by storm that I got

no opportunity of resenting what I never should have permitted 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 exclaimed: "May I trouble you for a

trifle?"

I started and turned round.

"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 the history of his dyspepsia. I was

told how he had been a martyr to it for seven months, and how,

after the usual course of nuisances, which included different

allopathic and homoeopathic misadventures, he had obtained the

most wonderful results by indigenous methods.

"Do you know," he added, with a smile, "God has built even my

infirmities in such a manner that they yield only under the

bombardment of Swadeshi pills."

My husband, at this, broke his silence. "You must confess," said

he, "that you have as immense an attraction for foreign medicine

as the earth has for meteors. You have three shelves in your

sitting-room full of..."

Sandip Babu broke in: "Do you know what they are? They are the

punitive 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

disliked this. But all ornaments are exaggerations. They are

not made by God, but by man. Once I remember in defence of some

untruth of mine I said to my husband: "Only the trees and beasts

and birds tell unmitigated truths, because these poor things have

not the power to invent. In this men show their superiority to

the lower creatures, and women beat even men. Neither is a

profusion of ornament unbecoming for a woman, nor a profusion of

untruth."

As I came out into the passage leading to the zenana I found my

sister-in-law, standing near a window overlooking the reception

rooms, peeping through the venetian shutter.

"You here?" I asked in surprise.

"Eavesdropping!" she replied.

The Jupiter Pluvius of Hindu mythology.

V

When I returned, Sandip Babu was tenderly apologetic. "I am

afraid we have spoilt your appetite," he said.

I felt greatly ashamed. Indeed, I had been too indecently quick

over 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 Sandip 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 Sandip Babu simply with my presence, majestic

and unashamed, failed me altogether.

Sandip Babu deliberately started a discussion with my husband.

He knew that his keen wit flashed 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 happened to be

present.

He was familiar with my husband's views on the cult of _Bande

Mataram_, 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, Sandip, 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