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.
