Part 13 (1/2)
V
I had just made the discovery that it was useless to keep up a pretence of reading in my room outside, and also that it was equally beyond me to busy myself attending to anything at all--so that all the days of my future bid fair to congeal into one solid ma.s.s and settle heavily on my breast for good--when Panchu, the tenant of a neighbouring __zamindar__, came up to me with a basketful of cocoa-nuts and greeted me with a profound obeisance.
”Well, Panchu,” said I. ”What is all this for?”
I had got to know Panchu through my master. He was extremely poor, nor was I in a position to do anything for him; so I supposed this present was intended to procure a tip to help the poor fellow to make both ends meet. I took some money from my purse and held it out towards him, but with folded hands he protested: ”I cannot take that, sir!”
”Why, what is the matter?”
”Let me make a clean breast of it, sir. Once, when I was hard pressed, I stole some cocoa-nuts from the garden here. I am getting old, and may die any day, so I have come to pay them back.”
Amiel's Journal could not have done me any good that day. But these words of Panchu lightened my heart. There are more things in life than the union or separation of man and woman. The great world stretches far beyond, and one can truly measure one's joys and sorrows when standing in its midst.
Panchu was devoted to my master. I know well enough how he manages to eke out a livelihood. He is up before dawn every day, and with a basket of __pan__ leaves, twists of tobacco, coloured cotton yarn, little combs, looking-gla.s.ses, and other trinkets beloved of the village women, he wades through the knee- deep water of the marsh and goes over to the Namasudra quarters.
There he barters his goods for rice, which fetches him a little more than their price in money. If he can get back soon enough he goes out again, after a hurried meal, to the sweetmeat seller's, where he a.s.sists in beating sugar for wafers. As soon as he comes home he sits at his sh.e.l.l-bangle making, plodding on often till midnight. All this cruel toil does not earn, for himself and his family, a bare two meals a day during much more than half the year. His method of eating is to begin with a good filling draught of water, and his staple food is the cheapest kind of seedy banana. And yet the family has to go with only one meal a day for the rest of the year.
At one time I had an idea of making him a charity allowance, ”But,” said my master, ”your gift may destroy the man, it cannot destroy the hards.h.i.+p of his lot. Mother Bengal has not only this one Panchu. If the milk in her b.r.e.a.s.t.s has run dry, that cannot be supplied from the outside.”
These are thoughts which give one pause, and I decided to devote myself to working it out. That very day I said to Bimal: ”Let us dedicate our lives to removing the root of this sorrow in our country.”
”You are my Prince Siddharta, [17] I see,” she replied with a smile. ”But do not let the torrent of your feelings end by sweeping me away also!”
”Siddharta took his vows alone. I want ours to be a joint arrangement.”
The idea pa.s.sed away in talk. The fact is, Bimala is at heart what is called a ”lady”. Though her own people are not well off, she was born a Rani. She has no doubts in her mind that there is a lower unit of measure for the trials and troubles of the ”lower cla.s.ses”. Want is, of course, a permanent feature of their lives, but does not necessarily mean ”want” to them. Their very smallness protects them, as the banks protect the pool; by widening bounds only the slime is exposed.
The real fact is that Bimala has only come into my home, not into my life. I had magnified her so, leaving her such a large place, that when I lost her, my whole way of life became narrow and confined. I had thrust aside all other objects into a corner to make room for Bimala--taken up as I was with decorating her and dressing her and educating her and moving round her day and night; forgetting how great is humanity and how n.o.bly precious is man's life. When the actualities of everyday things get the better of the man, then is Truth lost sight of and freedom missed. So painfully important did Bimala make the mere actualities, that the truth remained concealed from me. That is why I find no gap in my misery, and spread this minute point of my emptiness over all the world. And so, for hours on this Autumn morning, the refrain has been humming in my ears:
It is the month of August, and the sky breaks into a pa.s.sionate rain; Alas, my house is empty.
17. The name by which Buddha was known when a Prince, before renouncing the world.
Bimala's Story
XI
The change which had, in a moment, come over the mind of Bengal was tremendous. It was as if the Ganges had touched the ashes of the sixty thousand sons of Sagar [18] which no fire could enkindle, no other water knead again into living clay. The ashes of lifeless Bengal suddenly spoke up: ”Here am I.”
I have read somewhere that in ancient Greece a sculptor had the good fortune to impart life to the image made by his own hand.
Even in that miracle, however, there was the process of form preceding life. But where was the unity in this heap of barren ashes? Had they been hard like stone, we might have had hopes of some form emerging, even as Ahalya, though turned to stone, at last won back her humanity. But these scattered ashes must have dropped to the dust through gaps in the Creator's fingers, to be blown hither and thither by the wind. They had become heaped up, but were never before united. Yet in this day which had come to Bengal, even this collection of looseness had taken shape, and proclaimed in a thundering voice, at our very door: ”Here I am.”
How could we help thinking that it was all supernatural? This moment of our history seemed to have dropped into our hand like a jewel from the crown of some drunken G.o.d. It had no resemblance to our past; and so we were led to hope that all our wants and miseries would disappear by the spell of some magic charm, that for us there was no longer any boundary line between the possible and the impossible. Everything seemed to be saying to us: ”It is coming; it has come!”
Thus we came to cherish the belief that our history needed no steed, but that like heaven's chariot it would move with its own inherent power--At least no wages would have to be paid to the charioteer; only his wine cup would have to be filled again and again. And then in some impossible paradise the goal of our hopes would be reached.