The Home and the World

Mother, today there comes back to mind the vermilion mark at the parting of your hair, the sari which you used to wear, with its wide red border, and those wonderful eyes of yours, full of depth and peace. They came at the start of my life’s journey, like the first streak of dawn, giving me golden provision to carry me on my way.

The sky which gives light is blue, and my mother’s face was dark, but she had the radiance of holiness, and her beauty would put to shame all the vanity of the beautiful.

Everyone says that I resemble my mother. In my childhood I used to resent this. It made me angry with my mirror. I thought that it was God’s unfairness which was wrapped round my limbs⁠—that my dark features were not my due, but had come to me by some misunderstanding. All that remained for me to ask of my God in reparation was, that I might grow up to be a model of what woman should be, as one reads it in some epic poem.

When the proposal came for my marriage, an astrologer was sent, who consulted my palm and said, “This girl has good signs. She will become an ideal wife.”

And all the women who heard it said: “No wonder, for she resembles her mother.”

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 riverbed 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.

He was familiar with my husband’s views on the cult of Bande Mataram, and began in a provoking way: “So you do not allow that there is room for an appeal to the imagination in patriotic work?”

“It has its place, Sandip, I admit, but I do not believe in giving it the whole place. I would know my country in its frank reality, and for this I am both afraid and ashamed to make use of hypnotic texts of patriotism.”

“What you call hypnotic texts I call truth. I truly believe my country to be my God. I worship Humanity. God manifests Himself both in man and in his country.”

“If that is what you really believe, there should be no difference for you between man and man, and so between country and country.”

“Quite true. But my powers are limited, so my worship of Humanity is continued in the worship of my country.”

“I have nothing against your worship as such, but how is it you propose to conduct your worship of God by hating other countries in which He is equally manifest?”

“Hate is also an adjunct of worship. Arjuna won Mahadeva’s favour by wrestling with him. God will be with us in the end, if we are prepared to give Him battle.”

“If that be so, then those who are serving and those who are harming the country are both His devotees. Why, then, trouble to preach patriotism?”

“In the case of one’s own country, it is different. There the heart clearly demands worship.”

“If you push the same argument further you can say that since God is manifested in us, our self has to be worshipped before all else; because our natural instinct claims it.”

A few days later, my master brought Panchu round to me. His zamindar, it appeared, had fined him a hundred rupees, and was threatening him with ejectment.

“For what fault?” I enquired.

“Because,” I was told, “he has been found selling foreign cloths. He begged and prayed Harish Kundu, his zamindar, to let him sell off his stock, bought with borrowed money, promising faithfully never to do it again; but the zamindar would not hear of it, and insisted on his burning the foreign stuff there and then, if he wanted to be let off. Panchu in his desperation blurted out defiantly: ‘I can’t afford it! You are rich; why not buy it up and burn it?’ This only made Harish Kundu red in the face as he shouted: ‘The scoundrel must be taught manners, give him a shoe-beating!’ So poor Panchu got insulted as well as fined.”

“What happened to the cloth?”

“The whole bale was burnt.”

“Who else was there?”

“Any number of people, who all kept shouting Bande Mataram. Sandip was also there. He took up some of the ashes, crying: ‘Brothers! This is the first funeral pyre lighted by your village in celebration of the last rites of foreign commerce. These are sacred ashes. Smear yourselves with them in token of your Swadeshi vow.’ ”

“Panchu,” said I, turning to him, “you must lodge a complaint.”

“No one will bear me witness,” he replied.

“None bear witness?⁠—Sandip! Sandip!”

Sandip came out of his room at my call. “What is the matter?” he asked.

“Won’t you bear witness to the burning of this man’s cloth?”

Sandip smiled. “Of course I shall be a witness in the case,” he said. “But I shall be on the opposite side.”

My husband’s custom was to let his keys remain in his pockets when he took off his clothes for the night, leaving them in the dressing-room. I picked out the key of the safe and opened it. The slight sound it made seemed to wake the whole world! A sudden chill turned my hands and feet icy cold, and I shivered all over.

There was a drawer inside the safe. On opening this I found the money, not in currency notes, but in gold rolled up in paper. I had no time to count out what I wanted. There were twenty rolls, all of which I took and tied up in a corner of my sari.

What a weight it was. The burden of the theft crushed my heart to the dust. Perhaps notes would have made it seem less like thieving, but this was all gold.

After I had stolen into my room like a thief, it felt like my own room no longer. All the most precious rights which I had over it vanished at the touch of my theft. I began to mutter to myself, as though telling mantras: Bande Mataram, Bande Mataram, my Country, my golden Country, all this gold is for you, for none else!

But in the night the mind is weak. I came back into the bedroom where my husband was asleep, closing my eyes as I passed through, and went off to the open terrace beyond, on which I lay prone, clasping to my breast the end of the sari tied over the gold.