[Translated from Bengali to English by Kshitish Chandra Sen]
[New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914;
Copyright, 1914, by Drama League of America,
by The Macmillan Company]
I
[A street. A few wayfarers, and a CITY GUARD]
FIRST MAN. Ho, Sir!
CITY GUARD. What do you want?
SECOND MAN. Which way should we go? We are strangers here.
Please tell us which street we should take.
CITY GUARD. Where do you want to go?
THIRD MAN. To where those big festivities are going to be held,
you know. Which way do we go?
CITY GUARD. One street is quite as good as another here. Any
street will lead you there. Go straight ahead, and you cannot
miss the place. [Exit.]
FIRST MAN. Just hear what the fool says: "Any street will lead
you there!" Where, then, would be the sense of having so many
streets?
SECOND MAN. You needn't be so awfully put out at that, my man.
A country is free to arrange its affairs in its own way. As for
roads in our country--well, they are as good as non-existent;
narrow and crooked lanes, a labyrinth of ruts and tracks. Our
King does not believe in open thoroughfares; he thinks that
streets are just so many openings for his subjects to fly away
from his kingdom. It is quite the contrary here; nobody stands
in your way, nobody objects to your going elsewhere if you like
to; and yet the people are far from deserting this kingdom. With
such streets our country would certainly have been depopulated in
no time.
FIRST MAN. My dear Janardan, I have always noticed that this is
a great fault in your character.
JANARDAN. What is?
FIRST MAN. That you are always having a fling at your country.
How can you think that open highways may be good for a country?
Look here, Kaundilya; here is a man who actually believes that
open highways are the salvation of a country.
KAUNDILYA. There is no need, Bhavadatta, of my pointing out
afresh that Janardan is blessed with an intelligence which is
remarkably crooked, which is sure to land him in danger some day.
If the King comes to hear of our worthy friend, he will make it a
pretty hard job for him to find any one to do him his funeral
rites when he is dead.
BHAVADATTA. One can't help feeling that life becomes a burden in
this country; one misses the joys of privacy in these streets--
this jostling and brushing shoulders with strange people day and
night makes one long for a bath. And nobody can tell exactly
what kind of people you are meeting with in these public roads--
ugh!
KAUNDILYA. And it is Janardan who persuaded us to come to this
precious country! We never had any second person like him in our
family. You knew my father, of course; he was a great man, a
pious man if ever there was one. He spent his whole life within
a circle of a radius of 49 cubits drawn with a rigid adherence to
the injunctions of the scriptures, and never for a single day did
he cross this circle. After his death a serious difficulty
arose--how cremate him within the limits of the 49 cubits and yet
outside the house? At length the priests decided that though we
could not go beyond the scriptural number, the only way out of
the difficulty was to reverse the figure and make it 94 cubits;
only thus could we cremate him outside the house without
violating the sacred books. My word, that was strict observance!
Ours is indeed no common country.
BHAVADATTA. And yet, though Janardan comes from the very same
soil, he thinks it wise to declare that open highways are best
for a country.
[Enter GRANDFATHER with a band of boys]
GRANDFATHER. Boys, we will have to vie with the wild breeze of
the south to-day--and we are not going to be beaten. We will
sing till we have flooded all streets with our mirth and song.