_2nd Asarh (June) 1892._
Yesterday, the first day of _Asarh_,[1] the enthronement of the rainy
season was celebrated with due pomp and circumstance. It was very hot the
whole day, but in the afternoon dense clouds rolled up in stupendous
masses.
[Footnote 1: June-July, the commencement of the rainy season.]
I thought to myself, this first day of the rains, I would rather risk
getting wet than remain confined in my dungeon of a cabin.
The year 1293 [1] will not come again in my life, and,
for the matter of that, how many more even of these first days
of _Asarh_ will come? My life would be sufficiently long could it
number thirty of these first days of _Asarh_ to which the poet of the
_Meghaduta_[2] has, for me at least, given special distinction.
[Footnote 1: Of the Bengal era.]
[Footnote 2: In the _Meghaduta_ (Cloud Messenger) of Kalidas a famous
description of the burst of the Monsoon begins with the words: _On the
first day of Asarh_.]
It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should
take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting
sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white
flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!
A thousand years ago Kalidas welcomed that first day of _Asarh_; and
once in every year of my life that same day of _Asarh_ dawns in all
its glory--that self-same day of the poet of old Ujjain, which has brought
to countless men and women their joys of union, their pangs of separation.
Every year one such great, time-hallowed day drops out of my life; and the
time will come when this day of Kalidas, this day of the _Meghaduta_,
this eternal first day of the Rains in Hindustan, shall come no more for
me. When I realise this I feel I want to take a good look at nature, to
offer a conscious welcome to each day's sunrise, to say farewell to each
day's setting sun, as to an intimate friend.
What a grand festival, what a vast theatre of festivity! And we cannot
even fully respond to it, so far away do we live from the world! The light
of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot
reach our hearts--so many millions of miles further off are we!
The world into which I have tumbled is peopled with strange beings. They
are always busy erecting walls and rules round themselves, and how careful
they are with their curtains lest they should see! It is a wonder to me
they have not made drab covers for flowering plants and put up a canopy to
ward off the moon. If the next life is determined by the desires of this,
then I should be reborn from our enshrouded planet into some free and open
realm of joy.
Only those who cannot steep themselves in beauty to the full, despise it
as an object of the senses. But those who have tasted of its
inexpressibility know how far it is beyond the highest powers of mere eye
or ear--nay, even the heart is powerless to attain the end of its
yearning.
_P.S._--I have left out the very thing I started to tell of. Don't be
afraid, it won't take four more sheets. It is this, that on the evening of
the first day of _Asarh_ it came on to rain very heavily, in great
lance-like showers. That is all.