Chapter Two

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Chapter Two

Bimala's Story

THIS was the time when Sandip Babu with his followers came to our
neighbourhood to preach __Swadeshi__.

There is to be a big meeting in our temple pavilion. We women
are sitting there, on one side, behind a screen. Triumphant
shouts of __Bande Mataram__ come nearer: and to them I am
thrilling through and through. Suddenly a stream of barefooted
youths in turbans, clad in ascetic ochre, rushes into the
quadrangle, like a silt-reddened freshet into a dry river-bed at
the first burst of the rains. The whole place is filled with an
immense crowd, through which Sandip Babu is borne, seated in a
big chair hoisted on the shoulders of ten or twelve of the
youths.

__Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram__! It seems
as though the skies would be rent and scattered into a thousand
fragments.

I had seen Sandip Babu's photograph before. There was something
in his features which I did not quite like. Not that he was bad-
looking--far from it: he had a splendidly handsome face. Yet, I
know not why, it seemed to me, in spite of all its brilliance,
that too much of base alloy had gone into its making. The light
in his eyes somehow did not shine true. That was why I did not
like it when my husband unquestioningly gave in to all his
demands. I could bear the waste of money; but it vexed me to
think that he was imposing on my husband, taking advantage of
friendship. His bearing was not that of an ascetic, nor even of
a person of moderate means, but foppish all over. Love of
comfort seemed to ... any number of such reflections come back
to me today, but let them be.

When, however, Sandip Babu began to speak that afternoon, and the
hearts of the crowd swayed and surged to his words, as though
they would break all bounds, I saw him wonderfully transformed.
Especially when his features were suddenly lit up by a shaft of
light from the slowly setting sun, as it sunk below the roof-line
of the pavilion, he seemed to me to be marked out by the gods as
their messenger to mortal men and women.

From beginning to end of his speech, each one of his utterances
was a stormy outburst. There was no limit to the confidence of
his assurance. I do not know how it happened, but I found I had
impatiently pushed away the screen from before me and had fixed
my gaze upon him. Yet there was none in that crowd who paid any
heed to my doings. Only once, I noticed, his eyes, like stars in
fateful Orion, flashed full on my face.

I was utterly unconscious of myself. I was no longer the lady of
the Rajah's house, but the sole representative of Bengal's
womanhood. And he was the champion of Bengal. As the sky had
shed its light over him, so he must receive the consecration of a
woman's benediction ...

It seemed clear to me that, since he had caught sight of me, the
fire in his words had flamed up more fiercely. Indra's [11]
steed refused to be reined in, and there came the roar of thunder
and the flash of lightning. I said within myself that his
language had caught fire from my eyes; for we women are not only
the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul
itself.

I returned home that evening radiant with a new pride and joy.
The storm within me had shifted my whole being from one centre to
another. Like the Greek maidens of old, I fain would cut off my
long, resplendent tresses to make a bowstring for my hero. Had
my outward ornaments been 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.

------

11. 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 nothing against your worship as such, but how is it you
propose to conduct your worship of God by hating other countries
in which He is equally manifest?"

"Hate is also an adjunct of worship. Arjuna won Mahadeva's
favour by wrestling with him. God will be with us in the end, if
we are prepared to give Him battle."

"If that be so, then those who are serving and those who are
harming the country are both His devotees. Why, then, trouble to
preach patriotism?"

"In the case of one's own country, it is different. There the
heart clearly demands worship."

"If you push the same argument further you can say that since God
is manifested in us, our __self__ has to be worshipped before
all else; because our natural instinct claims it."

"Look here, Nikhil, this is all merely dry logic. Can't you
recognize that there is such a thing as feeling?"

"I tell you the truth, Sandip," my husband replied. "It is my
feelings that are outraged, whenever you try to pass off
injustice as a duty, and unrighteousness as a moral ideal. The
fact, that I am incapable of stealing, is not due to my
possessing logical faculties, but to my having some feeling of
respect for myself and love for ideals."

I was raging inwardly. At last I could keep silent no longer.
"Is not the history of every country," I cried, "whether England,
France, Germany, or Russia, the history of stealing for the sake
of one's own country?"

"They have to answer for these thefts; they are doing so even
now; their history is not yet ended."

"At any rate," interposed Sandip Babu, "why should we not follow
suit? Let us first fill our country's coffers with stolen goods
and then take centuries, like these other countries, to answer
for them, if we must. But, I ask you, where do you find this
'answering' in history?"

"When Rome was answering for her sin no one knew it. All that
time, there was apparently no limit to her prosperity. But do
you not see one thing: how these political bags of theirs are
bursting with lies and treacheries, breaking their backs under
their weight?"

Never before had I had any opportunity of being present at a
discussion between my husband and his men friends. Whenever he
argued with me I could feel his reluctance to push me into a
corner. This arose out of the very love he bore me. Today for
the first time I saw his fencer's skill in debate.

Nevertheless, my heart refused to accept my husband's position.
I was struggling to find some answer, but it would not come.
When the word "righteousness" comes into an argument, it sounds
ugly to say that a thing can be too good to be useful.

All of a sudden Sandip Babu turned to me with the question: "What
do __you__ say to this?"

"I do not care about fine distinctions," I broke out. "I will
tell you broadly what I feel. I am only human. I am covetous.
I would have good things for my country. If I am obliged, I
would snatch them and filch them. I have anger. I would be
angry for my country's sake. If necessary, I would smite and
slay to avenge her insults. I have my desire to be fascinated,
and fascination must be supplied to me in bodily shape by my
country. She must have some visible symbol casting its spell
upon my mind. I would make my country a Person, and call her
Mother, Goddess, Durga--for whom I would redden the earth with
sacrificial offerings. I am human, not divine."

Sandip Babu leapt to his feet with uplifted arms and shouted
"Hurrah!"--The next moment he corrected himself and cried:
"__Bande Mataram__."

A shadow of pain passed over the face of my husband. He said to
me in a very gentle voice: "Neither am I divine: I am human. And
therefore I dare not permit the evil which is in me to be
exaggerated into an image of my country--never, never!"

Sandip Babu cried out: "See, Nikhil, how in the heart of a woman
Truth takes flesh and blood. Woman knows how to be cruel: her
virulence is like a blind storm. It is beautifully fearful. In
man it is ugly, because it harbours in its centre the gnawing
worms of reason and thought. I tell you, Nikhil, it is our women
who will save the country. This is not the time for nice
scruples. We must be unswervingly, unreasoningly brutal. We
must sin. We must give our women red sandal paste with which to
anoint and enthrone our sin. Don't you remember what the poet
says:

/*
Come, Sin, O beautiful Sin,
Let thy stinging red kisses pour down fiery red wine into our
blood.
Sound the trumpet of imperious evil
And cross our forehead with the wreath of exulting lawlessness,
O Deity of Desecration,
Smear our breasts with the blackest mud of disrepute,
unashamed.
*/

Down with that righteousness, which cannot smilingly bring rack
and ruin."

When Sandip Babu, standing with his head high, insulted at a
moment's impulse all that men have cherished as their highest, in
all countries and in all times, a shiver went right through my
body.

But, with a stamp of his foot, he continued his declamation: "I
can see that you are that beautiful spirit of fire, which burns
the home to ashes and lights up the larger world with its flame.
Give to us the indomitable courage to go to the bottom of Ruin
itself. Impart grace to all that is baneful."

It was not clear to whom Sandip Babu addressed his last appeal.
It might have been She whom he worshipped with his __Bande
Mataram__. It might have been the Womanhood of his country.
Or it might have been its representative, the woman before him.
He would have gone further in the same strain, but my husband
suddenly rose from his seat and touched him lightly on the
shoulder saying: "Sandip, Chandranath Babu is here."

I started and turned round, to find an aged gentleman at the
door, calm and dignified, in doubt as to whether he should come
in or retire. His face was touched with a gentle light like that
of the setting sun.

My husband came up to me and whispered: "This is my master, of
whom I have so often told you. Make your obeisance to him."

I bent reverently and took the dust of his feet. He gave me his
blessing saying: "May God protect you always, my little mother."
I was sorely in need of such a blessing at that moment.

 

Nikhil's Story

I

 

One day I had the faith to believe that I should be able to bear
whatever came from my God. I never had the trial. Now I think
it has come.

I used to test my strength of mind by imagining all kinds of evil
which might happen to me--poverty, imprisonment, dishonour,
death--even Bimala's. And when I said to myself that I should be
able to receive these with firmness, I am sure I did not
exaggerate. Only I could never even imagine one thing, and today
it is that of which I am thinking, and wondering whether I can
really bear it. There is a thorn somewhere pricking in my heart,
constantly giving me pain while I am about my daily work. It
seems to persist even when I am asleep. The very moment I wake
up in the morning, I find that the bloom has gone from the face
of the sky. What is it? What has happened?

My mind has become so sensitive, that even my past life, which
came to me in the disguise of happiness, seems to wring my very
heart with its falsehood; and the shame and sorrow which are
coming close to me are losing their cover of privacy, all the
more because they try to veil their faces. My heart has become
all eyes. The things that should not be seen, the things I do
not want to see--these I must see.

The day has come at last when my ill-starred life has to reveal
its destitution in a long-drawn series of exposures. This
penury, all unexpected, has taken its seat in the heart where
plenitude seemed to reign. The fees which I paid to delusion for
just nine years of my youth have now to be returned with interest
to Truth till the end of my days.

What is the use of straining to keep up my pride? What harm if I
confess that I have something lacking in me? Possibly it is that
unreasoning forcefulness which women love to find in men. But is
strength mere display of muscularity? Must strength have no
scruples in treading the weak underfoot?

But why all these arguments? Worthiness cannot be earned merely
by disputing about it. And I am unworthy, unworthy, unworthy.

What if I am unworthy? The true value of love is this, that it
can ever bless the unworthy with its own prodigality. For the
worthy there are many rewards on God's earth, but God has
specially reserved love for the unworthy.

Up till now Bimala was my home-made Bimala, the product of the
confined space and the daily routine of small duties. Did the
love which I received from her, I asked myself, come from the
deep spring of her heart, or was it merely like the daily
provision of pipe water pumped up by the municipal steam-engine
of society?

I longed to find Bimala blossoming fully in all her truth and
power. But the thing I forgot to calculate was, that one must
give up all claims based on conventional rights, if one would
find a person freely revealed in truth.

Why did I fail to think of this? Was it because of the husband's
pride of possession over his wife? No. It was because I placed
the fullest trust upon love. I was vain enough to think that I
had the power in me to bear the sight of truth in its awful
nakedness. It was tempting Providence, but still I clung to my
proud determination to come out victorious in the trial.

Bimala had failed to understand me in one thing. She could not
fully realize that I held as weakness all imposition of force.
Only the weak dare not be just. They shirk their responsibility
of fairness and try quickly to get at results through the short-
cuts of injustice. Bimala has no patience with patience. She
loves to find in men the turbulent, the angry, the unjust. Her
respect must have its element of fear.

I had hoped that when Bimala found herself free in the outer
world she would be rescued from her infatuation for tyranny. But
now I feel sure that this infatuation is deep down in her nature.
Her love is for the boisterous. From the tip of her tongue to
the pit of her stomach she must tingle with red pepper in order
to enjoy the simple fare of life. But my determination was,
never to do my duty with frantic impetuosity, helped on by the
fiery liquor of excitement. I know Bimala finds it difficult to
respect me for this, taking my scruples for feebleness--and she
is quite angry with me because I am not running amuck crying
__Bande Mataram__.

For the matter of that, I have become unpopular with all my
countrymen because I have not joined them in their carousals.
They are certain that either I have a longing for some title, or
else that I am afraid of the police. The police on their side
suspect me of harbouring some hidden design and protesting too
much in my mildness.

What I really feel is this, that those who cannot find food for
their enthusiasm in a knowledge of their country as it actually
is, or those who cannot love men just because they are men--who
needs must shout and deify their country in order to keep up
their excitement--these love excitement more than their country.

To try to give our infatuation a higher place than Truth is a
sign of inherent slavishness. Where our minds are free we find
ourselves lost. Our moribund vitality must have for its rider
either some fantasy, or someone in authority, or a sanction from
the pundits, in order to make it move. So long as we are
impervious to truth and have to be moved by some hypnotic
stimulus, we must know that we lack the capacity for self-
government. Whatever may be our condition, we shall either need
some imaginary ghost or some actual medicine-man to terrorize
over us.

The other day when Sandip accused me of lack of imagination,
saying that this prevented me from realizing my country in a
visible image, Bimala agreed with him. I did not say anything in
my defence, because to win in argument does not lead to
happiness. Her difference of opinion is not due to any
inequality of intelligence, but rather to dissimilarity of
nature.

They accuse me of being unimaginative--that is, according to
them, I may have oil in my lamp, but no flame. Now this is
exactly the accusation which I bring against them. I would say
to them: "You are dark, even as the flints are. You must come to
violent conflicts and make a noise in order to produce your
sparks. But their disconnected flashes merely assist your pride,
and not your clear vision."

I have been noticing for some time that there is a gross cupidity
about Sandip. His fleshly feelings make him harbour delusions
about his religion and impel him into a tyrannical attitude in
his patriotism. His intellect is keen, but his nature is coarse,
and so he glorifies his selfish lusts under high-sounding names.
The cheap consolations of hatred are as urgently necessary for
him as the satisfaction of his appetites. Bimala has often
warned me, in the old days, of his hankering after money. I
understood this, but I could not bring myself to haggle with
Sandip. I felt ashamed even to own to myself that he was trying
to take advantage of me.

It will, however, be difficult to explain to Bimala today that
Sandip's love of country is but a different phase of his covetous
self-love. Bimala's hero-worship of Sandip makes me hesitate all
the more to talk to her about him, lest some touch of jealousy
may lead me unwittingly into exaggeration. It may be that the
pain at my heart is already making me see a distorted picture of
Sandip. And yet it is better perhaps to speak out than to keep
my feelings gnawing within me.

II

 

I have known my master these thirty years. Neither calumny, nor
disaster, nor death itself has any terrors for him. Nothing
could have saved me, born as I was into the traditions of this
family of ours, but that he has established his own life in the
centre of mine, with its peace and truth and spiritual vision,
thus making it possible for me to realize goodness in its truth.

My master came to me that day and said: "Is it necessary to
detain Sandip here any longer?"

His nature was so sensitive to all omens of evil that he had at
once understood. He was not easily moved, but that day he felt
the dark shadow of trouble ahead. Do I not know how well he
loves me?

At tea-time I said to Sandip: "I have just had a letter from
Rangpur. They are complaining that I am selfishly detaining you.
When will you be going there?"

Bimala was pouring out the tea. Her face fell at once. She
threw just one enquiring glance at Sandip.

"I have been thinking," said Sandip, "that this wandering up and
down means a tremendous waste of energy. I feel that if I could
work from a centre I could achieve more permanent results."

With this he looked up at Bimala and asked: "Do you not think so
too?"

Bimala hesitated for a reply and then said: "Both ways seem good
--to do the work from a centre, as well as by travelling about.
That in which you find greater satisfaction is the way for you."

"Then let me speak out my mind," said Sandip. "I have never yet
found any one source of inspiration suffice me for good. That is
why I have been constantly moving about, rousing enthusiasm in
the people, from which in turn I draw my own store of energy.
Today you have given me the message of my country. Such fire I
have never beheld in any man. I shall be able to spread the fire
of enthusiasm in my country by borrowing it from you. No, do not
be ashamed. You are far above all modesty and diffidence. You
are the Queen Bee of our hive, and we the workers shall rally
around you. You shall be our centre, our inspiration."

Bimala flushed all over with bashful pride and her hand shook as
she went on pouring out the tea.

Another day my master came to me and said: "Why don't you two go
up to Darjeeling for a change? You are not looking well. Have
you been getting enough sleep?"

I asked Bimala in the evening whether she would care to have a
trip to the Hills. I knew she had a great longing to see the
Himalayas. But she refused ... The country's Cause, I suppose!

I must not lose my faith: I shall wait. The passage from the
narrow to the larger world is stormy. When she is familiar with
this freedom, then I shall know where my place is. If I discover
that I do not fit in with the arrangement of the outer world,
then I shall not quarrel with my fate, but silently take my leave
... Use force? But for what? Can force prevail against Truth?

 

Sandip's Story

I

 

The impotent man says: "That which has come to my share is mine."
And the weak man assents. But the lesson of the whole world is:
"That is really mine which I can snatch away." My country does
not become mine simply because it is the country of my birth. It
becomes mine on the day when I am able to win it by force.

Every man has a natural right to possess, and therefore greed is
natural. It is not in the wisdom of nature that we should be
content to be deprived. What my mind covets, my surroundings
must supply. This is the only true understanding between our
inner and outer nature in this world. Let moral ideals remain
merely for those poor anaemic creatures of starved desire whose
grasp is weak. Those who can desire with all their soul and
enjoy with all their heart, those who have no hesitation or
scruple, it is they who are the anointed of Providence. Nature
spreads out her riches and loveliest treasures for their benefit.
They swim across streams, leap over walls, kick open doors, to
help themselves to whatever is worth taking. In such a getting
one can rejoice; such wresting as this gives value to the thing
taken.

Nature surrenders herself, but only to the robber. For she
delights in this forceful desire, this forceful abduction. And
so she does not put the garland of her acceptance round the lean,
scraggy neck of the ascetic. The music of the wedding march is
struck. The time of the wedding I must not let pass. My heart
therefore is eager. For, who is the bridegroom? It is I. The
bridegroom's place belongs to him who, torch in hand, can come in
time. The bridegroom in Nature's wedding hall comes unexpected
and uninvited.

Ashamed? No, I am never ashamed! I ask for whatever I want, and
I do not always wait to ask before I take it. Those who are
deprived by their own diffidence dignify their privation by the
name of modesty. The world into which we are born is the world
of reality. When a man goes away from the market of real things
with empty hands and empty stomach, merely filling his bag with
big sounding words, I wonder why he ever came into this hard
world at all. Did these men get their appointment from the
epicures of the religious world, to play set tunes on sweet,
pious texts in that pleasure garden where blossom airy nothings?
I neither affect those tunes nor do I find any sustenance in
those blossoms.

What I desire, I desire positively, superlatively. I want to
knead it with both my hands and both my feet; I want to smear it
all over my body; I want to gorge myself with it to the full.
The scrannel pipes of those who have worn themselves out by their
moral fastings, till they have become flat and pale like starved
vermin infesting a long-deserted bed, will never reach my ear.

I would conceal nothing, because that would be cowardly. But if
I cannot bring myself to conceal when concealment is needful,
that also is cowardly. Because you have your greed, you build
your walls. Because I have my greed, I break through them. You
use your power: I use my craft. These are the realities of life.
On these depend kingdoms and empires and all the great
enterprises of men.

As for those __avatars__ who come down from their paradise to
talk to us in some holy jargon--their words are not real.
Therefore, in spite of all the applause they get, these sayings
of theirs only find a place in the hiding corners of the weak.

They are despised by those who are strong, the rulers of the
world. Those who have had the courage to see this have won
success, while those poor wretches who are dragged one way by
nature and the other way by these ava tars, they set one foot in
the boat of the real and the other in the boat of the unreal, and
thus are in a pitiable plight, able neither to advance nor to
keep their place.

There are many men who seem to have been born only with an
obsession to die. Possibly there is a beauty, like that of a
sunset, in this lingering death in life which seems to fascinate
them. Nikhil lives this kind of life, if life it may be called.
Years ago, I had a great argument with him on this point.

"It is true," he said, "that you cannot get anything except by
force. But then what is this force? And then also, what is this
getting? The strength I believe in is the strength of
renouncing."

"So you," I exclaimed, "are infatuated with the glory of
bankruptcy."

"Just as desperately as the chick is infatuated about the
bankruptcy of its shell," he replied. "The shell is real enough,
yet it is given up in exchange for intangible light and air. A
sorry exchange, I suppose you would call it?"

When once Nikhil gets on to metaphor, there is no hope of making
him see that he is merely dealing with words, not with realities.
Well, well, let him be happy with his metaphors. We are the
flesh-eaters of the world; we have teeth and nails; we pursue and
grab and tear. We are not satisfied with chewing in the evening
the cud of the grass we have eaten in the morning. Anyhow, we
cannot allow your metaphor-mongers to bar the door to our
sustenance. In that case we shall simply steal or rob, for we
must live.

People will say that I am starting some novel theory just because
those who are moving in this world are in the habit of talking
differently though they are really acting up to it all the time.
Therefore they fail to understand, as I do, that this is the only
working moral principle. In point of fact, I know that my idea
is not an empty theory at all, for it has been proved in
practical life. I have found that my way always wins over the
hearts of women, who are creatures of this world of reality and
do not roam about in cloud-land, as men do, in idea-filled
balloons.

Women find in my features, my manner, my gait, my speech, a
masterful passion--not a passion dried thin with the heat of
asceticism, not a passion with its face turned back at every step
in doubt and debate, but a full-blooded passion. It roars and
rolls on, like a flood, with the cry: "I want, I want, I want."
Women feel, in their own heart of hearts, that this indomitable
passion is the lifeblood of the world, acknowledging no law but
itself, and therefore victorious. For this reason they have so
often abandoned themselves to be swept away on the flood-tide of
my passion, recking naught as to whether it takes them to life or
to death. This power which wins these women is the power of
mighty men, the power which wins the world of reality.

Those who imagine the greater desirability of another world
merely shift their desires from the earth to the skies. It
remains to be seen how high their gushing fountain will play, and
for how long. But this much is certain: women were not created
for these pale creatures--these lotus-eaters of idealism.

"Affinity!" When it suited my need, I have often said that God
has created special pairs of men and women, and that the union of
such is the only legitimate union, higher than all unions made by
law. The reason of it is, that though man wants to follow
nature, he can find no pleasure in it unless he screens himself
with some phrase--and that is why this world is so overflowing
with lies.

"Affinity!" Why should there be only one? There may be affinity
with thousands. It was never in my agreement with nature that I
should overlook all my innumerable affinities for the sake of
only one. I have discovered many in my own life up to now, yet
that has not closed the door to one more--and that one is clearly
visible to my eyes. She has also discovered her own affinity to
me.

And then?

Then, if I do not win I am a coward.

Content of Chapter Two [Rabindranath Tagore's novel: The Home and the World]

_

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Read previous: Chapter One

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