Ah, wretched woman! What a wealth of love was
twined round each one of those jewels! Oh, why
am I not dead?
Sandip had impressed it on me that hesitation is not
in the nature of woman. For her, neither right
nor left has any existence—she only moves
forward. When the women of our country wake
up, he repeatedly insisted, their voice will be unmistakably
confident in its utterance of the cry: “I
want.”
“I want!” Sandip went on one day—this
was the primal word at the root of all creation.
It had no maxim to guide it, but it became fire and
wrought itself into suns and stars. Its partiality
is terrible. Because it had a desire for man,
it ruthlessly sacrificed millions of beasts for millions
of years to achieve that desire. That terrible
word “I want” has taken flesh in woman,
and therefore men, who are cowards, try with all their
might to keep back this primeval flood With their earthen
dykes. They are afraid lest, laughing and dancing
as it goes, it should wash away all the hedges and
props of their pumpkin field. Men, in every
age, flatter themselves that they have secured this
force within the bounds of their convenience, but it
gathers and grows. Now it is calm and deep like
a lake, but gradually its pressure will increase,
the dykes will give way, and the force which has so
long been dumb will rush forward with the roar:
“I want!”
These words of Sandip echo in my heart-beats like
a war-drum. They shame into silence all my conflicts
with myself. What do I care what people may
think of me? Of what value are that orchid and
that niche in my bedroom? What power have they
to belittle me, to put me to shame? The primal
fire of creation burns in me.
I felt a strong desire to snatch down the orchid and
fling it out of the window, to denude the niche of
its picture, to lay bare and naked the unashamed spirit
of destruction that raged within me. My arm
was raised to do it, but a sudden pang passed through
my breast, tears started to my eyes. I threw
myself down and sobbed: “What is the end
of all this, what is the end?”
When I read these pages of the story of my life I
seriously question myself: Is this Sandip?
Am I made of words? Am I merely a book with
a covering of flesh and blood?
The earth is not a dead thing like the moon.
She breathes. Her rivers and oceans send up
vapours in which she is clothed. She is covered
with a mantle of her own dust which flies about the
air. The onlooker, gazing upon the earth from
the outside, can see only the light reflected from
this vapour and this dust. The tracks of the
mighty continents are not distinctly visible.
The man, who is alive as this earth is, is likewise
always enveloped in the mist of the ideas which he
is breathing out. His real land and water remain
hidden, and he appears to be made of only lights and
shadows.
