Bee took up a book and began to turn over the pages.
“If you are annoyed,” I went on, “I
must make a shift to fill up the vacancy.”
Today I have filled it up. This photograph of
mine was taken in my early youth. My face was
then fresher, and so was my mind. Then I still
cherished some illusions about this world and the
next. Faith deceives men, but it has one great
merit: it imparts a radiance to the features.
My portrait now reposes next to Nikhil’s, for
are not the two of us old friends?
Nikhil’s Story
I was never self-conscious. But nowadays I often
try to take an outside view—to see myself
as Bimal sees me. What a dismally solemn picture
it makes, my habit of taking things too seriously!
Better, surely, to laugh away the world than flood
it with tears. That is, in fact, how the world
gets on. We relish our food and rest, only because
we can dismiss, as so many empty shadows, the sorrows
scattered everywhere, both in the home and in the outer
world. If we took them as true, even for a moment,
where would be our appetite, our sleep?
But I cannot dismiss myself as one of these shadows,
and so the load of my sorrow lies eternally heavy
on the heart of my world.
Why not stand out aloof in the highway of the universe,
and feel yourself to be part of the all? In
the midst of the immense, age-long concourse of humanity,
what is Bimal to you? Your wife? What is
a wife? A bubble of a name blown big with your
own breath, so carefully guarded night and day, yet
ready to burst at any pin-prick from outside.
My wife—and so, forsooth, my very own!
If she says: “No, I am myself”—am
I to reply: “How can that be? Are
you not mine?”
“My wife”—Does that amount
to an argument, much less the truth? Can one
imprison a whole personality within that name?
My wife!—Have I not cherished in this little
world all that is purest and sweetest in my life,
never for a moment letting it down from my bosom to
the dust? What incense of worship, what music
of passion, what flowers of my spring and of my autumn,
have I not offered up at its shrine? If, like
a toy paper-boat, she be swept along into the muddy
waters of the gutter—would I not also...
?
There it is again, my incorrigible solemnity!
Why “muddy”? What “gutter”
names, called in a fit of jealousy, do not change the
facts of the world. If Bimal is not mine, she
is not; and no fuming, or fretting, or arguing will
serve to prove that she is. If my heart is breaking—let
it break! That will not make the world bankrupt—nor
even me; for man is so much greater than the things
he loses in this life. The very ocean of tears
has its other shore, else none would have ever wept.
But then there is Society to be considered ... which
let Society consider! If I weep it is for myself,
not for Society. If Bimal should say she is
not mine, what care I where my Society wife may be?
