At a time, when my unpopularity with a part of my readers had reached
the nadir of its glory, and my name had become the central orb of the
journals, to be attended through space with a perpetual rotation of
revilement, I felt the necessity to retire to some quiet place and
endeavour to forget my own existence.
I have a house in the country some miles away from Calcutta, where I
can remain unknown and unmolested. The villagers there have not, as yet,
come to any conclusion about me. They know I am no mere holiday-maker or
pleasure-seeker; for I never outrage the silence of the village nights
with the riotous noises of the city. Nor do they regard me as ascetic,
because the little acquaintance they have of me carries the savour of
comfort about it. I am not, to them, a traveller; for, though I am a
vagabond by nature, my wandering through the village fields is aimless.
They are hardly even quite certain whether I am married or single; for
they have never seen me with my children. So, not being able to classify
me in any animal or vegetable kingdom that they know, they have long
since given me up and left me stolidly alone.
But quite lately I have come to know that there is one person in the
village who is deeply interested in me. Our acquaintance began on a
sultry afternoon in July. There had been rain all the morning, and the
air was still wet and heavy with mist, like eyelids when weeping is
over.
I sat lazily watching a dappled cow grazing on the high bank of the
river. The afternoon sun was playing on her glossy hide. The simple
beauty of this dress of light made me wonder idly at man's deliberate
waste of money in setting up tailors' shops to deprive his own skin of
its natural clothing.
While I was thus watching and lazily musing, a woman of middle age came
and prostrated herself before me, touching the ground with her forehead.
She carried in her robe some bunches of flowers, one of which she
offered to me with folded hands. She said to me, as she offered it:
"This is an offering to my God."
She went away. I was so taken aback as she uttered these words, that
I could hardly catch a glimpse of her before she was gone. The whole
incident was entirely simple, but it left a deep impression on my mind;
and as I turned back once more to look at the cattle in the field,
the zest of life in the cow, who was munching the lush grass with deep
breaths, while she whisked off the flies, appeared to me fraught with
mystery. My readers may laugh at my foolishness, but my heart was full
of adoration. I offered my worship to the pure joy of living, which is
God's own life. Then, plucking a tender shoot from the mango tree, I
fed the cow with it from my own hand, and as I did this I had the
satisfaction of having pleased my God.
The next year when I returned to the village it was February. The cold
season still lingered on. The morning sun came into my room, and I was
grateful for its warmth. I was writing, when the servant came to tell me
that a devotee, of the Vishnu cult, wanted to see me. I told him, in
an absent way, to bring her upstairs, and went on with my writing. The
Devotee came in, and bowed to me, touching my feet. I found that she was
the same woman whom I had met, for a brief moment, a year ago.
I was able now to examine her more closely. She was past that age when
one asks the question whether a woman is beautiful or not. Her stature
was above the ordinary height, and she was strongly built; but her body
was slightly bent owing to her constant attitude of veneration. Her
manner had nothing shrinking about it. The most remarkable of her
features were her two eyes. They seemed to have a penetrating power
which could make distance near.
With those two large eyes of hers, she seemed to push me as she entered.
"What is this?" she asked. "Why have you brought me here before your
throne, my God? I used to see you among the trees; and that was much
better. That was the true place to meet you."
She must have seen me walking in the garden without my seeing her. For
the last few clays, however, I had suffered from a cold, and had been
prevented from going out. I had, perforce, to stay indoors and pay my
homage to the evening sky from my terrace. After a silent pause the
Devotee said to me: "O my God, give me some words of good."
I was quite unprepared for this abrupt request, and answered her on the
spur of the moment: "Good words I neither give nor receive. I simply
open my eyes and keep silence, and then I can at once both hear and see,
even when no sound is uttered. Now, while I am looking at you, it is as
good as listening to your voice."
The Devotee became quite excited as I spoke, and exclaimed: "God speaks
to me, not only with His mouth, but with His whole body."
I said to her: "When I am silent I can listen with my whole body. I have
come away from Calcutta here to listen to that sound."
The Devotee said: "Yes, I know that, and therefore I have come here to
sit by you."
Before taking her leave, she again bowed to me, and touched my feet.
I could see that she was distressed, because my feet were covered. She
wished them to be bare.
Early next morning I came out, and sat on my terrace on the roof. Beyond
the line of trees southward I could see the open country chill and
desolate. I could watch the sun rising over the sugar-cane in the East,
beyond the clump of trees at the side of the village. Out of the deep
shadow of those dark trees the village road suddenly appeared. It
stretched forward, winding its way to some distant villages on the
horizon, till it was lost in the grey of the mist.
That morning it was difficult to say whether the sun had risen or not. A
white fog was still clinging to the tops of the trees. I saw the Devotee
walking through the blurred dawn, like a mist-wraith of the morning
twilight. She was singing her chant to God, and sounding her cymbals.
The thick haze lifted at last; and the sun, like the kindly grandsire of
the village, took his seat amid all the work that was going on in home
and field.
When I had just settled down at my writing-table, to appease the hungry
appetite of my editor in Calcutta, there came a sound of footsteps on
the stair, and the Devotee, humming a tune to herself, entered, and
bowed before me. I lifted my head from my papers.
She said to me: "My God, yesterday I took as sacred food what was left
over from your meal."