On returning home I asked my master to come over.
He shook his head gravely. “I see no
good in this,” said he—“this
setting aside of conscience and putting the country
in its place. All the sins of the country will
now break out, hideous and unashamed.”
“Who do you think could have ...”
“Don’t ask me. But sin is rampant.
Send them all away, right away from here.”
“I have given them one more day. They
will be leaving the day after tomorrow.”
“And another thing. Take Bimala away to
Calcutta. She is getting too narrow a view of
the outside world from here, she cannot see men and
things in their true proportions. Let her see
the world—men and their work—give
her abroad vision.”
“That is exactly what I was thinking.”
“Well, don’t make any delay about it.
I tell you, Nikhil, man’s history has to be
built by the united effort of all the races in the
world, and therefore this selling of conscience for
political reasons—this making a fetish
of one’s country, won’t do. I know
that Europe does not at heart admit this, but there
she has not the right to pose as our teacher.
Men who die for the truth become immortal: and,
if a whole people can die for the truth, it will also
achieve immortality in the history of humanity.
Here, in this land of India, amid the mocking laughter
of Satan piercing the sky, may the feeling for this
truth become real! What a terrible epidemic of
sin has been brought into our country from foreign
lands...”
The whole day passed in the turmoil of investigation.
I was tired out when I retired for the night.
I left over sending my sister-in-law’s money
to the treasury till next morning.
I woke up from my sleep at dead of night. The
room was dark. I thought I heard a moaning somewhere.
Somebody must have been crying. Sounds of sobbing
came heavy with tears like fitful gusts of wind in
the rainy night. It seemed to me that the cry
rose from the heart of my room itself. I was
alone. For some days Bimala had her bed in another
room adjoining mine. I rose up and when I went
out I found her in the balcony lying prone upon her
face on the bare floor.
This is something that cannot be written in words.
He only knows it who sits in the bosom of the world
and receives all its pangs in His own heart.
The sky is dumb, the stars are mute, the night is
still, and in the midst of it all that one sleepless
cry!
We give these sufferings names, bad or good, according
to the classifications of the books, but this agony
which is welling up from a torn heart, pouring into
the fathomless dark, has it any name? When in
that midnight, standing under the silent stars, I
looked upon that figure, my mind was struck with awe,
and I said to myself: “Who am Ito judge
her?” O life, O death, O God of the infinite
existence, I bow my head in silence to the mystery
which is in you.
