Raicharan was twelve years old when he came as a servant to his master’s house. He belonged to the same caste as his master and was given his master’s little son to nurse. As time went on the boy left Raicharan’s arms to go to school. From school he went on to college, and after college he entered the judicial service. Always, until he married, Raicharan was his sole attendant.
58 One morning in the flower garden a blind girl came to offer me a flower chain in the cover of a lotus leaf. I put it round my neck, and tears came to my eyes. I kissed her and said, “You are blind even as the flowers are. You yourself know not how beautiful is your gift.
Now nearly every small Bengali maiden had heard long ago about her father-in-law’s house; but we were a little new-fangled, and had kept these things from our child, so that Mini at this question must have been a trifle bewildered. But she would not show it, and with ready tact replied: ‘Are you going there?
Amongst men of the Cabuliwallah’s class, however, it is well known that the words father-in-law’s house have a double meaning. It is a euphemism for jail, the place where we are well cared for, at no expense to ourselves. In this sense would the sturdy pedlar take my daughter’s question. ‘Oh,’ he would say, shaking his fist at an invisible policeman, ‘I will thrash my father-in-law!
The attitude of the God-conscious man of the Upanishad towards the universe is one of a deep feeling of adoration. His object of worship is present everywhere. It is the one living truth that makes all realities true. This truth is not only of knowledge but of devotion.
Even he whose near ones have all died, one by one, is not alone-companionship comes for him from behind the screen of death.
At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it, and at the sight of a foreigner in the streets, I would fall to weaving a network of dreams, – the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home, with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of far-away wilds.
They knew that mere appearance and disappearance are on the surface like waves on the sea, but life which is permanent knows no decay or diminution.
Misery knocks at thy door, and her message is that thy lord is wakeful, and he calls thee to the love-tryst through the darkness of night. The sky is overcast with clouds and the rain is ceaseless. I know not what this is that stirs in me, – I know not its meaning. A moment’s flash of lightning drags down a deeper gloom on my sight, and my heart gropes for the path to where the music of the night calls me. Light, oh, where is the light?
It was chilly weather. Through the window the rays of the sun touched my feet, and the slight warmth was very welcome. It was almost eight o’clock, and the early pedestrians were returning home with their heads covered.
I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark? I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not. He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.
In love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is the ultimate truth.
Oh! what lies we women have to tell! When we are mothers, we tell lies to pacify our children; and when we are wives, we tell lies to pacify the fathers of our children. We are never free from this necessity.
Wherever our heart touches the One, in the small or the big, it finds the touch of the infinite.
Haralal explained why the money came to his house at night, like birds to their nest, to be scattered next morning.
The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end. My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said, “Here art thou!” The question and the cry, “Oh, where?” melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance, “I am!” XIII.
While Ratan was awaiting her call, the postmaster was awaiting a reply to his application.
The cramped atmosphere of neglect oppressed Phatik so much that he felt that he could hardly breathe.
Therefore the whole apparatus of piety, Hindu and Moslem alike – the temple and mosque, idol and holy water, scriptures and priests – were denounced by this inconveniently clear-sighted poet as mere substitutes for reality; dead things intervening between the soul and its love –.
He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow. I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being. XXX.