The King's frown darkened.
"The honour of the throne," said the minister, "is upheld by the King's
prowess and the blessing of Almighty God."
Louder laughed the Clown, and the King growled,--"Unseemly mirth!"
"God has showered many blessings upon your head," said the Clown; "the one
he bestowed on me was the gift of laughter."
"This gift will cost you your life," said the King, gripping his sword with
his right hand.
Yet the Clown stood up and laughed till he laughed no more.
A shadow of dread fell upon the Court, for they heard that laughter echoing
in the depth of God's silence.
32
THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
_Prince Duryodhana, the son of the blind Kaurava King Dhritarashtra, and of
Queen Gandhari, has played with his cousins the Pandava Kings for their
kingdom, and won it by fraud._
DHRITARASHTRA
You have compassed your end.
DURYODHANA
Success is mine!
DHRITARASHTRA
Are you happy?
DURYODHANA
I am victorious.
DHRITARASHTRA
I ask you again, what happiness have you in winning the undivided kingdom?
DURYODHANA
Sire, a Kshatriya thirsts not after happiness but victory, that fiery wine
pressed from seething jealousy. Wretchedly happy we were, like those
inglorious stains that lie idly on the breast of the moon, when we lived in
peace under the friendly dominance of our cousins. Then these Pandavas
milked the world of its wealth, and allowed us a share, in brotherly
tolerance. Now that they own defeat and expect banishment, I am no longer
happy but exultant.
DHRITARASHTRA
Wretch, you forget that both Pandavas and Kauravas have the same
forefathers.
DURYODHANA
It was difficult to forget that, and therefore our inequalities rankled in
my heart. At midnight the moon is never jealous of the noonday sun. But the
struggle to share one horizon between both orbs cannot last forever. Thank
heaven, that struggle is over, and we have at last won solitude in glory.
DHRITARASHTRA
The mean jealousy!
DURYODHANA
Jealousy is never mean--it is in the essence of greatness. Grass can grow
in crowded amity, not giant trees. Stars live in clusters, but the sun and
moon are lonely in their splendour. The pale moon of the Pandavas sets
behind the forest shadows, leaving the new-risen sun of the Kauravas to
rejoice.
DHRITARASHTRA
But right has been defeated.
DURYODHANA
Right for rulers is not what is right in the eyes of the people. The people
thrive by comradeship: but for a king, equals are enemies. They are
obstacles ahead, they are terrors from behind. There is no place for
brothers or friends in a king's polity; its one solid foundation is
conquest.
DHRITARASHTRA
I refuse to call a conquest what was won by fraud in gambling.
DURYODHANA
A man is not shamed by refusing to challenge a tiger on equal terms with
teeth and nails. Our weapons are those proper for success, not for suicide.
Father, I am proud of the result and disdain regret for the means.
DHRITARASHTRA
But justice----
DURYODHANA
Fools alone dream of justice--success is not yet theirs: but those born to
rule rely on power, merciless and unhampered with scruples.
DHRITARASHTRA
Your success will bring down on you a loud and angry flood of detraction.
DURYODHANA
The people will take amazingly little time to learn that Duryodhana is king
and has power to crush calumny under foot.
DHRITARASHTRA
Calumny dies of weariness dancing on tongue-tips. Do not drive it into the
heart to gather strength.
DURYODHANA
Unuttered defamation does not touch a king's dignity. I care not if love is
refused us, but insolence shall not be borne. Love depends upon the will of
the giver, and the poorest of the poor can indulge in such generosity. Let
them squander it on their pet cats, tame dogs, and our good cousins the
Pandavas. I shall never envy them. Fear is the tribute I claim for my royal
throne. Father, only too leniently you lent your ear to those who slandered
your sons: but if you intend still to allow those pious friends of yours to
revel in shrill denunciation at the expense of your children, let us
exchange our kingdom for the exile of our cousins, and go to the
wilderness, where happily friends are never cheap!
DHRITARASHTRA
Could the pious warnings of my friends lessen my love for my sons, then we
might be saved. But I have dipped my hands in the mire of your infamy and
lost my sense of goodness. For your sakes I have heedlessly set fire to the
ancient forest of our royal lineage--so dire is my love. Clasped breast to
breast, we, like a double meteor, are blindly plunging into ruin. Therefore
doubt not my love; relax not your embrace till the brink of annihilation be
reached. Beat your drums of victory, lift your banner of triumph. In this
mad riot of exultant evil, brothers and friends will disperse till nothing
remain save the doomed father, the doomed son and God's curse.
_Enter an Attendant_
Sire, Queen Gandhari asks for audience.
DHRITARASHTRA
I await her.
DURYODHANA
Let me take my leave. [_Exit._
DHRITARASHTRA
Fly! For you cannot bear the fire of your mother's presence.
_Enter_ QUEEN GANDHARI, _the mother of_ DURYODHANA
GANDHARI
At your feet I crave a boon.
DHRITARASHTRA
Speak, your wish is fulfilled.
GANDHARI
The time has come to renounce him.
DHRITARASHTRA
Whom, my queen?
GANDHARI
Duryodhana!
DHRITARASHTRA
Our own son, Duryodhana?
GANDHARI
Yes!
DHRITARASHTRA
This is a terrible boon for you, his mother, to crave!
GANDHARI
The fathers of the Kauravas, who are in Paradise, join me in beseeching
you.
DHRITARASHTRA
The divine Judge will punish him who has broken His laws. But I am his
father.
GANDHARI
Am I not his mother? Have I not carried him under my throbbing heart? Yes,
I ask you to renounce Duryodhana the unrighteous.
DHRITARASHTRA
What will remain to us after that?
GANDHARI
God's blessing.
DHRITARASHTRA
And what will that bring us?
GANDHARI
New afflictions. Pleasure in our son's presence, pride in a new kingdom,
and shame at knowing both purchased by wrong done or connived at, like
thorns dragged two ways, would lacerate our bosoms. The Pandavas are too
proud ever to accept back from us the lands which they have relinquished;
therefore it is only meet that we draw some great sorrow down on our heads
so as to deprive that unmerited reward of its sting.
DHRITARASHTRA
Queen, you inflict fresh pain on a heart already rent.
GANDHARI
Sire, the punishment imposed on our son will be more ours than his. A judge
callous to the pain that he inflicts loses the right to judge. And if you
spare your son to save yourself pain, then all the culprits ever punished
by your hands will cry before God's throne for vengeance,--had they not
also their fathers?
DHRITARASHTRA
No more of this, Queen, I pray you. Our son is abandoned of God: that is
why I cannot give him up. To save him is no longer in my power, and
therefore my consolation is to share his guilt and tread the path of
destruction, his solitary companion. What is done is done; let follow what
must follow! [_Exit._
GANDHARI
Be calm, my heart, and patiently await God's judgment. Oblivious night
wears on, the morning of reckoning nears, I hear the thundering roar of its
chariot. Woman, bow your head down to the dust! and as a sacrifice fling
your heart under those wheels! Darkness will shroud the sky, earth will
tremble, wailing will rend the air and then comes the silent and cruel
end,--that terrible peace, that great forgetting, and awful extinction of
hatred--the supreme deliverance rising from the fire of death.
33
Fiercely they rend in pieces the carpet woven during ages of prayer for the
welcome of the world's best hope.
The great preparations of love lie a heap of shreds, and there is nothing
on the ruined altar to remind the mad crowd that their god was to have
come. In a fury of passion they seem to have burnt their future to cinders,
and with it the season of their bloom.
The air is harsh with the cry, "Victory to the Brute!" The children look
haggard and aged; they whisper to one another that time revolves but never
advances, that we are goaded to run but have nothing to reach, that
creation is like a blind man's groping.
I said to myself, "Cease thy singing. Song is for one who is to come, the
struggle without an end is for things that are."
The road, that ever lies along like some one with ear to the ground
listening for footsteps, to-day gleans no hint of coming guest, nothing of
the house at its far end.
My lute said, "Trample me in the dust."
I looked at the dust by the roadside. There was a tiny flower among thorns.
And I cried, "The world's hope is not dead!"
The sky stooped over the horizon to whisper to the earth, and a hush of
expectation filled the air. I saw the palm leaves clapping their hands to
the beat of inaudible music, and the moon exchanged glances with the
glistening silence of the lake.
The road said to me, "Fear nothing!" and my lute said, "Lend me thy songs!"
34
TRANSLATIONS
BAUL SONGS[1]
[Footnote 1: The Bauls are a sect of religious mendicants in Bengal,
unlettered and unconventional, whose songs are loved and sung by the
people. The literal meaning of the word "Baul" is "the Mad."]
1
This longing to meet in the play of love, my Lover, is not only mine but
yours.
Your lips can smile, your flute make music, only through delight in my
love; therefore you are importunate even as I.
2
I sit here on the road; do not ask me to walk further.
If your love can be complete without mine let me turn back from seeking
you.
I refuse to beg a sight of you if you do not feel my need.
I am blind with market dust and mid-day glare, and so wait, in hopes that
your heart, my heart's lover, will send you to find me.
3
I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath.
Mornings and evenings in summer and in rains, I am fashioned to music.
Should I be wholly spent in some flight of song, I shall not grieve, the
tune is so dear to me.
4
My heart is a flute he has played on. If ever it fall into other hands let
him fling it away.
My lover's flute is dear to him, therefore if to-day alien breath have
entered it and sounded strange notes, let him break it to pieces and strew
the dust with them.
5
In love the aim is neither pain nor pleasure but love only.
While free love binds, division destroys it, for love is what unites.
Love is lit from love as fire from fire, but whence came the first flame?
In your being it leaps under the rod of pain.
Then, when the hidden fire flames forth, the in and the out are one and all
barriers fall in ashes.
Let the pain glow fiercely, burst from the heart and beat back darkness,
need you be afraid?
The poet says, "Who can buy love without paying its price? When you fail to
give yourself you make the whole world miserly."
6
Eyes see only dust and earth, but feel with the heart, and know pure joy.
The delights blossom on all sides in every form, but where is your heart's
thread to make a wreath of them?
My master's flute sounds through all things, drawing me out of my lodgings
wherever they may be, and while I listen I know that every step I take is
in my master's house.
For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea, and he is the
landing-place.
7
Strange ways has my guest.
He comes at times when I am unprepared, yet how can I refuse him?
I watch all night with lighted lamp; he stays away; when the light goes out
and the room is bare he comes claiming his seat, and can I keep him
waiting?
I laugh and make merry with friends, then suddenly I start up, for lo! he
passes me by in sorrow, and I know my mirth was vain.
I have often seen a smile in his eyes when my heart ached, then I knew my
sorrow was not real.
Yet I never complain when I do not understand him.
8
I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.
Though you never make the shore, though you let me sink, why should I be
foolish and afraid?
Is reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself with you?
If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea?
Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.
I live in you whatever and however you appear. Save me or kill me as you
wish, only never leave me in other hands.
9
Make way, O bud, make way, burst open thy heart and make way.
The opening spirit has overtaken thee, canst thou remain a bud any longer?
III
1
Come, Spring, reckless lover of the earth, make the forest's heart pant for
utterance!
Come in gusts of disquiet where flowers break open and jostle the new
leaves!
Burst, like a rebellion of light, through the night's vigil, through the
lake's dark dumbness, through the dungeon under the dust, proclaiming
freedom to the shackled seeds!
Like the laughter of lightning, like the shout of a storm, break into the
midst of the noisy town; free stifled word and unconscious effort,
reinforce our flagging fight, and conquer death!
2
I have looked on this picture in many a month of March when the mustard is
in bloom--this lazy line of the water and the grey of the sand beyond, the
rough path along the river-bank carrying the comradeship of the field into
the heart of the village.
I have tried to capture in rhyme the idle whistle of the wind, the beat of
the oar-strokes from a passing boat.
I have wondered in my mind how simply it stands before me, this great
world: with what fond and familiar ease it fills my heart, this encounter
with the Eternal Stranger.
3
The ferry-boat plies between the two villages facing each other across the
narrow stream.
The water is neither wide nor deep--a mere break in the path that enhances
the small adventures of daily life, like a break in the words of a song
across which the tune gleefully streams.
While the towers of wealth rise high and crash to ruin, these villages talk
to each other across the garrulous stream, and the ferry-boat plies between
them, age after age, from seed-time to harvest.
4
In the evening after they have brought their cattle home, they sit on the
grass before their huts to know that you are among them unseen, to repeat
in their songs the name which they have fondly given you.
While kings' crowns shine and disappear like falling stars, around village
huts your name rises through the still night from the simple hearts of your
lovers whose names are unrecorded.
5
In Baby's world, the trees shake their leaves at him, murmuring verses in
an ancient tongue that dates from before the age of meaning, and the moon
feigns to be of his own age--the solitary baby of night.
In the world of the old, flowers dutifully blush at the make-believe of
faery legends, and broken dolls confess that they are made of clay.
6
_My world_, when I was a child, you were a little girl-neighbour, a loving
timid stranger.
Then you grew bold and talked to me across the fence, offering me toys and
flowers and shells.
Next you coaxed me away from my work, you tempted me into the land of the
dusk or the weedy corner of some garden in mid-day loneliness.
At length you told me stories about bygone times, with which the present
ever longs to meet so as to be rescued from its prison in the moment.
7
How often, great Earth, have I felt my being yearn to flow over you,
sharing in the happiness of each green blade that raises its signal banner
in answer to the beckoning blue of the sky!
I feel as if I had belonged to you ages before I was born. That is why, in
the days when the autumn light shimmers on the mellowing ears of rice, I
seem to remember a past when my mind was everywhere, and even to hear
voices as of playfellows echoing from the remote and deeply veiled past.
When, in the evening, the cattle return to their folds, raising dust from
the meadow paths, as the moon rises higher than the smoke ascending from
the village huts, I feel sad as for some great separation that happened in
the first morning of existence.
8
My mind still buzzed with the cares of a busy day; I sat on without noting
how twilight was deepening into dark. Suddenly light stirred across the
gloom and touched me as with a finger.
I lifted my head and met the gaze of the full moon widened in wonder like a
child's. It held my eyes for long, and I felt as though a love-letter had
been secretly dropped in at my window. And ever since my heart is breaking
to write for answer something fragrant as Night's unseen flowers--great as
her declaration spelt out in nameless stars.
9
The clouds thicken till the morning light seems like a bedraggled fringe to
the rainy night.
A little girl stands at her window, still as a rainbow at the gate of a
broken-down storm.
She is my neighbour, and has come upon the earth like some god's rebellious
laughter. Her mother in anger calls her incorrigible; her father smiles and
calls her mad.
She is like a runaway waterfall leaping over boulders, like the topmost
bamboo twig rustling in the restless wind.
She stands at her window looking out into the sky.
Her sister comes to say, "Mother calls you." She shakes her head.
Her little brother with his toy boat comes and tries to pull her off to
play; she snatches her hand from his. The boy persists and she gives him a
slap on the back.
The first great voice was the voice of wind and water in the beginning of
earth's creation.
That ancient cry of nature--her dumb call to unborn life--has reached this
child's heart and leads it out alone beyond the fence of our times: so
there she stands, possessed by eternity!
10
The kingfisher sits still on the prow of an empty boat, while in the
shallow margin of the stream a buffalo lies tranquilly blissful, its eyes
half closed to savour the luxury of cool mud.
Undismayed by the barking of the village cur, the cow browses on the bank,
followed by a hopping group of _saliks_ hunting moths.
I sit in the tamarind grove, where the cries of dumb life congregate--the
cattle's lowing, the sparrows' chatter, the shrill scream of a kite
overhead, the crickets' chirp, and the splash of a fish in the water.
I peep into the primeval nursery of life, where the mother Earth thrills at
the first living clutch near her breast.
11
At the sleepy village the noon was still like a sunny midnight when my
holidays came to their end.
My little girl of four had followed me all the morning from room to room,
watching my preparations in grave silence, till, wearied, she sat by the
doorpost strangely quiet, murmuring to herself, "Father must not go!"
This was the meal hour, when sleep daily overcame her, but her mother had
forgotten her and the child was too unhappy to complain.
At last, when I stretched out my arms to her to say farewell, she never
moved, but sadly looking at me said, "Father, you must not go!"
And it amused me to tears to think how this little child dared to fight the
giant world of necessity with no other resource than those few words,
"Father, you must not go!"
12
Take your holiday, my boy; there are the blue sky and the bare field, the
barn and the ruined temple under the ancient tamarind.
My holiday must be taken through yours, finding light in the dance of your
eyes, music in your noisy shouts.
To you autumn brings the true holiday freedom: to me it brings the
impossibility of work; for lo! you burst into my room.
Yes, my holiday is an endless freedom for love to disturb me.
13
In the evening my little daughter heard a call from her companions below
the window.
She timidly went down the dark stairs holding a lamp in her hand, shielding
it behind her veil.
I was sitting on my terrace in the star-lit night of March, when at a
sudden cry I ran to see.
Her lamp had gone out in the dark spiral staircase. I asked, "Child, why
did you cry?"
From below she answered in distress, "Father, I have lost myself!"
When I came back to the terrace under the star-lit night of March, I looked
at the sky, and it seemed that a child was walking there treasuring many
lamps behind her veils.
If their light went out, she would suddenly stop and a cry would sound from
sky to sky, "Father, I have lost myself!"
14
The evening stood bewildered among street lamps, its gold tarnished by the
city dust.
A woman, gaudily decked and painted, leant over the rail of her balcony, a
living fire waiting for its moths.
Suddenly an eddy was formed in the road round a street-boy crushed under
the wheels of a carriage, and the woman on the balcony fell to the floor
screaming in agony, stricken with the grief of the great white-robed Mother
who sits in the world's inner shrine.
15
I remember the scene on the barren heath--a girl sat alone on the grass
before the gipsy camp, braiding her hair in the afternoon shade.
Her little dog jumped and barked at her busy hands, as though her
employment had no importance.
In vain did she rebuke it, calling it "a pest," saying she was tired of its
perpetual silliness.
She struck it on the nose with her reproving forefinger, which only seemed
to delight it the more.
She looked menacingly grave for a few moments, to warn it of impending
doom; and then, letting her hair fall, quickly snatched it up in her arms,
laughed, and pressed it to her heart.
16
He is tall and lean, withered to the bone with long repeated fever, like a
dead tree unable to draw a single drop of sap from anywhere.
In despairing patience, his mother carries him like a child into the sun,
where he sits by the roadside in the shortening shadows of each forenoon.
The world passes by--a woman to fetch water, a herd-boy with cattle to
pasture, a laden cart to the distant market--and the mother hopes that some
least stir of life may touch the awful torpor of her dying son.
17
If the ragged villager, trudging home from the market, could suddenly be
lifted to the crest of a distant age, men would stop in their work and
shout and run to him in delight.
For they would no longer whittle down the man into the peasant, but find
him full of the mystery and spirit of his age.
Even his poverty and pain would grow great, released from the shallow
insult of the present, and the paltry things in his basket would acquire
pathetic dignity.
18
With the morning he came out to walk a road shaded by a file of deodars,
that coiled the hill round like importunate love.
He held the first letter from his newly wedded wife in their village home,
begging him to come to her, and come soon.
The touch of an absent hand haunted him as he walked, and the air seemed to
take up the cry of the letter: "Love, my love, my sky is brimming with
tears!"
He asked himself in wonder, "How do I deserve this?"
The sun suddenly appeared over the rim of the blue hills, and four girls
from a foreign shore came with swift strides, talking loud and followed by
a barking dog.
The two elder turned away to conceal their amusement at something strange
in his insignificance, and the younger ones pushed each other, laughed
aloud, and ran off in exuberant mirth.
He stopped and his head sank. Then he suddenly felt his letter, opened and
read it again.
19
The day came for the image from the temple to be drawn round the holy town
in its chariot.
The Queen said to the King, "Let us go and attend the festival."
Only one man out of the whole household did not join in the pilgrimage. His
work was to collect stalks of spear-grass to make brooms for the King's
house.
The chief of the servants said in pity to him, "You may come with us."
He bowed his head, saying, "It cannot be."
The man dwelt by the road along which the King's followers had to pass. And
when the Minister's elephant reached this spot, he called to him and said,
"Come with us and see the God ride in his chariot!"
"I dare not seek God after the King's fashion," said the man.
"How should you ever have such luck again as to see the God in his
chariot?" asked the Minister.
"When God himself comes to my door," answered the man.
The Minister laughed loud and said, "Fool! 'When God comes to your door!'
yet a King must travel to see him!"
"Who except God visits the poor?" said the man.
20
Days were drawing out as the winter ended, and, in the sun, my dog played
in his wild way with the pet deer.
The crowd going to the market gathered by the fence, and laughed to see the
love of these playmates struggle with languages so dissimilar.
The spring was in the air, and the young leaves fluttered like flames. A
gleam danced in the deer's dark eyes when she started, bent her neck at the
movement of her own shadow, or raised her ears to listen to some whisper in
the wind.