The Home and the World quotes

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.

But when the physical appearance evades the scrutiny of our senses and enters the sanctuary of our hearts, then it can forget itself.

I know, from my childhood’s experience, how devotion is beauty itself, in its inner aspect.

When my mother arranged the different fruits, carefully peeled by her own loving hands, on the white stone plate, and gently waved her fan to drive away the flies while my father sat down to his meals, her service would lose itself in a beauty …

My husband did not drink and was not given to dissipation. So foreign to the family was this abstinence, that to many it hardly seemed decent! Purity, they imagined, was only becoming in those on whom fortune had not smiled.

It is the moon which has room for stains, not the stars.

My husband’s parents had died long ago, and his old grandmother was mistress of the house. My husband was the apple of her eye, the jewel on her bosom. And so he never met with much difficulty in overstepping any of the ancient usages.

But my husband would not give me any opportunity for worship. That was his greatness.

They are cowards who claim absolute devotion from their wives as their right; that is a humiliation for both.

His love for me seemed to overflow my limits by its flood of wealth and service. But my necessity was more for giving than for receiving;

His love for me seemed to overflow my limits by its flood of wealth and service.

But my necessity was more for giving than for receiving; for love is a vagabond, who can make his flowers bloom in the wayside dust, better than in the crystal jars kept in the drawing-room.

My husband could not break completely with the old-time traditions which prevailed in our family. It was difficult, therefore, for us to meet at any hour of the day we pleased.

But providence does not allow a run of luck to last forever, unless its debt of honour be fully paid, day by day, through many a long day, and thus made secure.

God may grant us gifts, but the merit of being able to take and hold them must be our own.

Alas for the boons that slip through unworthy hands!

I used to feel that goodness has a limit, which, if passed, somehow seems to make men cowardly. Shall I tell the whole truth?

I have often wished that my husband had the manliness to be a little less good.

My sister-in-law, the Bara Rani, was still young and had no pretensions to saintliness. Rather, her talk and jest and laugh inclined to be forward. The young maids with whom she surrounded herself were also impudent to a degree.

But why did not my husband compel me to go with him to Calcutta? I know the reason.

He did not use his power, just because he had it.

If one had to fill in, little by little, the gap between day and night, it would take an eternity to do it. But the sun rises and the darkness is dispelled—a moment is sufficient to overcome an infinite distance.

But why did not my husband compel me to go with him to Calcutta? I know the reason. He did not use his power, just because he had it.

If one had to fill in, little by little, the gap between day and night, it would take an eternity to do it. But the sun rises and the darkness is dispelled⁠—a moment is sufficient to overcome an infinite distance.

One day there came the new era of Swadeshi in Bengal; but as to how it happened, we had no distinct vision. There was no gradual slope connecting the past with the present.

“Such excitement will give us the energy to build.”

“That is as much as to say, that you cannot light the house unless you set fire to it.”

Then there came another trouble. When Miss Gilby first came to our house there was a great flutter, which afterwards calmed down when they got used to her. Now the whole thing was stirred up afresh.

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.

He was just as emphatic in his manners as he was in his public speaking. He had no hesitation and seemed to be accustomed to occupy, unchallenged, his chosen seat.

He claimed the right to intimacy so confidently, that the blame would seem to belong to those who should dispute it.

I was in terror lest Sandip Babu should take me for a shrinking, old-fashioned bundle of inanity. But, for the life of me, I could not sparkle in repartees such as might charm or dazzle him.

What if I am unworthy? The true value of love is this, that it can ever bless the unworthy with its own prodigality.

For the worthy there are many rewards on God’s earth, but God has specially reserved love for the unworthy.

Up till now Bimala was my homemade Bimala, the product of the confined space and the daily routine of small duties.

I longed to find Bimala blossoming fully in all her truth and power.

But the thing I forgot to calculate was, that one must give up all claims based on conventional rights, if one would find a person freely revealed in truth.

Why did I fail to think of this? Was it because of the husband’s pride of possession over his wife? No. It was because I placed the fullest trust upon love.

Bimala had failed to understand me in one thing. She could not fully realize that I held as weakness all imposition of force.

Only the weak dare not be just.

They shirk their responsibility of fairness and try quickly to get at results through the shortcuts of injustice. Bimala has no patience with patience. She loves to find in men the turbulent, the angry, the unjust. Her respect must have its element of fear.

They are certain that either I have a longing for some title, or else that I am afraid of the police. The police on their side suspect me of harbouring some hidden design and protesting too much in my mildness.

What I really feel is this, that those who cannot find food for their enthusiasm in a knowledge of their country as it actually is, or those who cannot love men just because they are men⁠—who needs must shout and deify their country in order to keep up their excitement⁠—these love excitement more than their country.

To try to give our infatuation a higher place than Truth is a sign of inherent slavishness. Where our minds are free we find ourselves lost.

… food for their enthusiasm in a knowledge of their country as it actually is, or those who cannot love men just because they are men—who needs must shout and deify their country in order to keep up their excitement—these love excitement more than their country.

To try to give our infatuation a higher place than Truth is a sign of inherent slavishness.

Where our minds are free we find ourselves lost. Our moribund vitality must have for its rider either some fantasy, or someone in authority, or a sanction from the pundits, in order to make it move.

Possibly this is woman’s nature. When her passion is roused she loses her sensibility for all that is outside it.

When, like the river, we women keep to our banks, we give nourishment with all that we have: when we overflow them we destroy with all that we are.

I can see that something has gone wrong. I got an inkling of it the other day.

The whole world of matter, from the speck of dust upwards, is ranged on its side. And yet men would keep it hidden away out of sight, behind a tissue of words; and with homemade sanctions and prohibitions make of it a domestic utensil.

Why, it’s as absurd as melting down the solar system to make a watch-chain for one’s son-in-law!

When, in spite of all, reality awakes at the call of what is but naked truth, what a gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts is there! But can one carry on a quarrel with a storm?

As for poor Bee, she at once took her place solemnly, like the topmost girl of the class on the front bench. All of a sudden she seemed to remember that she had to face her examination.

Some people are so like eternal pointsmen lying in wait by the line, to shunt one’s train of thought from one rail to another.

Chandranath Babu had no sooner come in than he cast about for some excuse to retire, mumbling: “I beg your pardon, I …”

Chandranath Babu smiled. “Seethe by all means,” he said, “but do not mistake it for work, or heroism.

Nations which have got on in the world have done so by action, not by ebullition.

Those who have always lain in dread of work, when with a start they awake to their sorry plight, they look to shortcuts and scamping for their deliverance.”

“Well, what do you say?”

“It is all very well for those who really care to think, but poison for those who shirk thought.”

“Those who preach ‘Equal Rights of Property’ should not be thieves. For, if they are, they would be preaching lies. When passion is in the ascendant, this kind of book is not rightly understood.”

All I want to say is, that in Europe people look at everything from the viewpoint of science. But man is neither mere physiology, nor biology, nor psychology, nor even sociology. For God’s sake don’t forget that.

Man is infinitely more than the natural science of himself.

You laugh at me, calling me the schoolmaster’s pupil, but that is what you are, not I. You want to find the truth of man from your science teachers, and not from your own inner being.”

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?

“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?

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?

I was too greedy. I created an angel of Bimala, in order to exaggerate my own enjoyment. But Bimala is what she is. It is preposterous to expect that she should assume the role of an angel for my pleasure.

The Creator is under no obligation to supply me with angels, just because I have an avidity for imaginary perfection.

I must acknowledge that I have merely been an accident in Bimala’s life. Her nature, perhaps, can only find true union with one like Sandip. At the same time, I must not, in false modesty, accept my rejection as my desert.

and so there is set up a discrepancy between my outward life and its inner design which I try my best to keep concealed even from myself; otherwise it may wreck not only my plans, but my very life.

Life is indefinite⁠—a bundle of contradictions.

We men, with our ideas, strive to give it a particular shape by melting it into a particular mould—into the definiteness of success.

Thus does the tragic in life come by its own. In the beginning it lies, a little thing, in some dark under-vault, and ends by overthrowing the whole superstructure.

The real tragedy is, that man does not know himself for what he really is.

Then again there is Nikhil. Crank though he be, laugh at him as I may, I cannot get rid of the idea that he is my friend.

The water of the distant river is shimmering with light; the leaves are glistening; the rice-fields, with their fitful shivers, break into gleams of gold; and in this symphony of Autumn, only I remain voiceless.

The sunshine of the world strikes my heart, but is not reflected back.

When I realize the lack of expressiveness in myself, I know why I am deprived. Who could bear my company day and night without a break?

It is August, the sky breaks into a passionate rain; And empty is my house.

The house which becomes empty through the parting of lovers, still has music left in the heart of its emptiness. But the house that is empty because hearts are asunder, is awful in its silence.

Even the cry of pain is out of place there.

Amiel’s Journal could not have done me any good that day. But these words of Panchu lightened my heart.

There are more things in life than the union or separation of man and woman.

The great world stretches far beyond, and one can truly measure one’s joys and sorrows when standing in its midst.

“But for one’s country …”

“The country does not mean the soil, but the men on it,” interrupted my master again.

“Have you yet wasted so much as a glance on what was happening to them? But now you would dictate what salt they shall eat, what clothes they shall wear. Why should they put up with such tyranny, and why should we let them?”

I know that, time and again, my heart will ache, but now that I understand its pain in all its truth, I can disregard it. Now that I know it concerns only me, what after all can be its value?

The suffering which belongs to all mankind shall be my crown.

Save me, Truth! Never again let me hanker after the false paradise of Illusion. If I must walk alone, let me at least tread your path. Let the drumbeats of Truth lead me to Victory.

Now that I know it concerns only me, what after all can be its value? The suffering which belongs to all mankind shall be my crown.

Save me, Truth! Never again let me hanker after the false paradise of Illusion.

If I must walk alone, let me at least tread your path. Let the drumbeats of Truth lead me to Victory.

What a wealth of colour and movement, suggestion and deception, group themselves round this “me” and “mine” in woman. That is just where her beauty lies—she is ever so much more personal than man.

When man was being made, the Creator was a schoolmaster⁠—His bag full of commandments and principles; but when He came to woman, He resigned His headmastership and turned artist, with only His brush and paintbox.

When Bimala stood silently there, flushed and tearful in her broken pride, like a storm-cloud, laden with rain and charged with lightning, lowering over the horizon, she looked so absolutely sweet that I had to go right up to her and take her by the …

That is why divinities are set up in every country to keep up the illusions of the people, for men are only too well aware of their weakness.”

“No,” he replied. “God is necessary to clear away our illusions. The divinities which keep them alive are false gods.”

“What of that? If need be, even false gods must be invoked, rather than let the work suffer. Unfortunately for us, our illusions are alive enough, but we do not know how to make them serve our purpose. Look at the Brahmins.

During the day I forget myself in my work. As the late autumn afternoon wears on, the colours of the sky become turbid, and so do the feelings of my mind.

There are many in this world whose minds dwell in brick-built houses⁠—they can afford to ignore the thing called the outside.

But my mind lives under the trees in the open, directly receives upon itself the messages borne by the free winds, and responds from the bottom of its heart to all the musical cadences of light and darkness.

Alas, Nikhil, have you forever parted company with that self of yours who used to be set free under the starlight, to plunge into the infinite depths of the night’s darkness after the day’s work was done?

How terribly alone is he, who misses companionship in the midst of the multitudinousness of life.

The other day, when the afternoon had reached the meeting-point of day and night, I had no work, nor the mind for work, nor was my master there to keep me company.

Have I not been praying with all my strength, that if happiness may not be mine, let it go; if grief needs must be my lot, let it come; but let me not be kept in bondage.

To clutch hold of that which is untrue as though it were true, is only to throttle oneself.

May I be saved from such self-destruction.

But such words, by themselves, are so empty. It is only when we get to the point of letting the bird out of its cage that we can realize how free the bird has set us.

Whatever we cage, shackles us with desire whose bonds are stronger than those of iron chains.

I tell you, sir, this is just what the world has failed to understand. They all seek to reform something outside themselves. But reform is wanted only in one’s own desires, nowhere else, nowhere else!”

I tell you, sir, this is just what the world has failed to understand. They all seek to reform something outside themselves. But reform is wanted only in one’s own desires, nowhere else, nowhere else!”

“We think,” he said, “that we are our own masters when we get in our hands the object of our desire⁠—but we are really our own masters only when we are able to cast out our desires from our minds.”

“When we put all this into words, sir,” I went on, “it sounds like some bald-headed injunction, but when we realize even a little of it we find it to be amrita—which the gods have drunk and become immortal.

“When we put all this into words, sir,” I went on, “it sounds like some bald-headed injunction, but when we realize even a little of it we find it to be amrita—which the gods have drunk and become immortal.

We cannot see Beauty till we let go our hold of it.

It was Buddha who conquered the world, not Alexander—this is untrue when stated in dry prose—oh when shall we be able to sing it?

I should have been so relieved if his anger had flashed out! But I could find nothing in him which I could touch.

I felt as unreal as a dream⁠—a dream which would leave only the blackness of night when it was over.

In the old days I used to be jealous of my sister-in-law for her beauty. Then I used to feel that Providence had given me no power of my own, that my whole strength lay in the love which my husband had bestowed on me.

Instead of it there was freedom, only freedom, mere emptiness! A dried-up watercourse with all its rocks and pebbles laid bare.

No feeling, only furniture!

When I had arrived at a state of utter bewilderment, wondering whether anything true was left in my life, and whereabouts it could be, I happened to meet Sandip again. Then life struck against life, and the sparks flew in the same old way.

I know, I know, that all Power on earth waxes great under compact with Satan. But the Mother is there, alone though she be, to contemn and stand against this devil’s progress.

The Mother cares not for mere success, however great⁠—she wants to give life, to save life.

My very soul, today, stretches out its hands in yearning to save this child.

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.

I had robbed my house, I had robbed my country. For this sin my house had ceased to be mine, my country also was estranged from me. Had I died begging for my country, even unsuccessfully, that would have been worship, acceptable to the gods.

But theft is never worship⁠—how then can I offer this gold?

Ah me! I am doomed to death myself, must I desecrate my country with my impious touch?

We women shall never understand men. When they are bent on making a road for some achievement, they think nothing of breaking the heart of the world into pieces to pave it for the progress of their chariot.

When they are mad with the intoxication of creating, they rejoice in destroying the creation of the Creator.

This heartbreaking shame of mine will not attract even a glance from their eyes. They have no feeling for life itself—all their eagerness is for their object. What am I to them but a meadow flower in the path of a torrent in flood?

Do they want to tell me now that all this was false?

The psalm of my praise which was sung so devotedly, did it bring me down from my heaven, not to make heaven of earth, but only to level heaven itself with the dust?

“The money, Queen?” said Sandip with his keen glance full on my face.

“We men can at best give of our power,” continued Sandip. “

But women give themselves. Out of their own life they give birth, out of their own life they give sustenance.

Such gifts are the only true gifts.” Then turning to me, “Queen!” said he, “if what you have given us had been only money I would not have touched it. But you have given that which is more to you than life itself!”

The flower-vase of his mind filled once more with offerings for the worship of Sandip and me. His simple faith shone out of his eyes with the pure light of the morning star at dawn.

After I had offered worship and received worship my sin became radiant.

And as Amulya looked on my face he raised his folded hands in salutation and cried Bande Mataram! I cannot expect to have this adoration surrounding me forever; and yet this has come to be the only means of keeping alive my self-respect.

There is just this one little altar of worship which has kept its head above the all-pervading depths of my dishonour, and so I want to cleave to it night and day; for on whichever side I step away from it, there is only emptiness.

Praise, praise, I want unceasing praise. I cannot live if my wine-cup be left empty for a single moment.

So, as the very price of my life, I want Sandip of all the world, today.

“What harm if you did have a wholesome fear of me?

Does anybody know anybody else in this world?

”

“Be it so,” Sandip went on. “Finish your special talk with Amulya. But then you must give me a special talk all to myself too, or it will mean a defeat for me.

I can stand everything, but not defeat.

My share must always be the lion’s share. This has been my constant quarrel with Providence. I will defeat the Dispenser of my fate, but not take defeat at his hands.” With a crushing look at Amulya, Sandip walked out of the room.

Let those who are snake-charmers play with snakes; if harm comes to them, they are prepared for it. But these boys are so innocent, all the world is ready with its blessing to protect them.

They play with a snake not knowing its nature, and when we see them smilingly, trustfully, putting their hands within reach of its fangs, then we understand how terribly dangerous the snake is.

Sandip is right when he suspects that though I, for myself, may be ready to die at his hands, this boy I shall wean from him and save.

The moment I had stolen my husband’s money and paid it to Sandip, the music that was in our relations stopped. Not only did I destroy all my own value by making myself cheap, but Sandip’s powers, too, lost scope for their full play.

You cannot employ your marksmanship against a thing which is right in your grasp.

So Sandip has lost his aspect of the hero; a tone of low quarrelsomeness has come into his words.

However, I shall not give a helping hand to establish a liquor distillery in my country. The young men, who are ready to offer their services for their country’s cause, must not fall into this habit of getting intoxicated.

The people who want to exact work by drugging methods set more value on the excitement than on the minds they intoxicate.

I had to tell Sandip, in Bimala’s presence, that he must go. Perhaps both will impute to me the wrong motive. But I must free myself also from all fear of being misunderstood. Let even Bimala misunderstand me …

“I will put in my money when I see that it is industry which prompts you.

But, because you have lighted a fire, it does not follow that you have the food to cook over it.

”

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.

”

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 …”

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.

Once I thought I should turn back. But I could not. I sat down on the ground near Bimala and placed my hand on her head.

My little brother, such a sister have I been to you that Death must have smiled on that Brothers’ Day when I gave you my blessing—I, who wander distracted with the burden of my own evildoing.

I feel today that man is at times attacked with evil as with the plague. Some germ finds its way in from somewhere, and then in the space of one night Death stalks in.

Why cannot the stricken one be kept far away from the rest of the world? I, at least, have realized how terrible is the contagion—like a fiery torch which burns that it may set the world on fire.

Oh, the joy of witnessing his weakness! The harsher he became in his rudeness, the more did this joy well up within me. His snaky coils, with which he used to snare me, are exhausted—I am free. I am saved, saved.

Be rude to me, insult me, for that shows you in your truth; but spare me your songs of praise, which were false.

My husband came in at this juncture. Sandip had not the elasticity to recover himself in a moment, as he used to do before. My husband looked at him for a while in surprise. Had this happened some days ago I should have felt ashamed.

“Yes,” he continued. “The mother’s day is past. O love, my love, you have made as naught for me the truth and right and heaven itself.

All duties have become as shadows: all rules and restraints have snapped their bonds.

O love, my love, I could set fire to all the world outside this land on which you have set your dainty feet, and dance in mad revel over the ashes … These are mild men. These are good men.

I cannot but feel, again and again, that there are two persons in me. One recoils from Sandip in his terrible aspect of Chaos—the other feels that very vision to be sweetly alluring.

The sinking ship drags down all who are swimming round it.

Sandip is just such a force of destruction.

It is well. The work of your nearness has been done. By lingering longer it would only become undone again, little by little. All is lost, if in our greed we try to cheapen that which is the greatest thing on earth.

That which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time.

We were about to spoil our infinite moment, when it was your uplifted thunderbolt which came to the rescue. You intervened to save the purity of your own worship—and in so doing you also saved your worshipper.

If once it is out that this trust has been secretly betrayed, their place in their world is lost. They have then to stand upon the fragments of the thing they have broken, and its jagged edges keep on wounding them at every turn.

To sin is easy enough, but to make up for it is above all difficult for a woman.

For some time past all easy approaches for communion with my husband have been closed to me. How then could I burst on him with this stupendous news? He was very late in coming for his meal today—nearly two o’clock.

Was there no one who could keep on postponing the flight of these hours, from day to day, and so make them long enough for me to set things right, so far as lay in my power?

The time during which the seed lies underground is long⁠—so long indeed that one forgets that there is any danger of its sprouting. But once its shoot shows up above the surface, it grows and grows so fast, there is no time to cover it up, neither with skirt, nor body, nor even life itself.

I will try to think of it no more, but sit quiet—passive and callous—let the crash come when it may. By the day after tomorrow all will be over—publicity, laughter, bewailing, questions, explanations—everything.

I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. So, of all things, a gramophone needs must come on the scene at such a time, repeating at every winding the nasal twang of its theatrical songs!

What a fearsome thing results when a machine apes a man.

The shades of evening began to fall. I knew that Amulya would not delay to announce himself—yet I could not wait. I summoned a servant and said: “Go and tell Amulya Babu to come straight in here.”

Behind it the crescent moon was setting. All of a sudden I had the feeling that the very stars in the sky were afraid of me—that the whole of the night world was looking askance at me. Why? Because I was alone.

There is nothing so strange in creation as the man who is alone.

Even he whose near ones have all died, one by one, is not alone—companionship comes for him from behind the screen of death.

There is nothing so strange in creation as the man who is alone. Even he whose near ones have all died, one by one, is not alone—companionship comes for him from behind the screen of death.

But he, whose kin are there, yet no longer near, who has dropped out of all the varied companionship of a full home⁠—the starry universe itself seems to bristle to look on him in his darkness.

Where I am, I am not. I am far away from those who are around me. I live and move upon a worldwide chasm of separation, unstable as the dewdrop upon the lotus leaf.

Where I am, I am not. I am far away from those who are around me.

I live and move upon a worldwide chasm of separation, unstable as the dewdrop upon the lotus leaf.

Why do not men change wholly when they change? When I look into my heart, I find everything that was there, still there—only they are topsy-turvy. Things that were well-ordered have become jumbled up.

Why do not men change wholly when they change? When I look into my heart, I find everything that was there, still there—only they are topsy-turvy. Things that were well-ordered have become jumbled up.

The gems that were strung into a necklace are now rolling in the dust.

And so my heart is breaking.

I feel I want to die. Yet in my heart everything still lives—nor even in death can I see the end of it all: rather, in death there seems to be ever so much more of repining.

What is to be ended must be ended in this life⁠—there is no other way out.

Oh forgive me just once, only this time, Lord! All that you gave into my hands as the wealth of my life, I have made into my burden. I can neither bear it longer, nor give it up.

I can neither bear it longer, nor give it up. O Lord, sound once again those flute strains which you played for me, long ago, standing at the rosy edge of my morning sky—and let all my complexities become simple and easy.

Nothing save the music of your flute can make whole that which has been broken, and pure that which has been sullied.

Create my home anew with your music. No other way can I see.

How many years, how many ages, aeons, must pass before I can find my way back to that day of nine years ago?

God can create new things, but has even He the power to create afresh that which has been destroyed?

Today we are going to Calcutta.

Our joys and sorrows lie heavy on us if we merely go on accumulating them.

Keeping them and accumulating them alike are false. As master of the house I am in an artificial position—in reality I am a wayfarer on the path of life.

I said to her:

“The freedom to which we pass through sorrow is greater than the sorrow.”

“That may be so for you men. Freedom is for you. But we women would keep others bound. We would rather be put into bondage ourselves. No, no, brother, you will never get free from our toils.

The Bara Rani’s room must have been drawing me again. It had become an absolute necessity for me, that day, to feel that this life of mine had been able to strike some real, some responsive chord in some other harp of life.

One cannot realize one’s own existence by remaining within oneself⁠—it has to be sought outside.

As I passed in front of my sister-in-law’s room, she came out saying: “I was afraid you would be late again this afternoon. However. I ordered your dinner as soon as I heard you coming. It will be served in a minute.”

I could divine that there was some connection between the taking out of this six thousand and the robbing of the other. But I have no curiosity to learn the nature of it. I shall never ask.

Providence leaves our life moulded in the rough⁠—its object being that we ourselves should put the finishing touches, shaping it into its final form to our taste.

There has always been the hankering within me to express some great idea in the process of giving shape to my life on the lines suggested by the Creator. In this endeavour I have spent all my days.

In this endeavour I have spent all my days. How severely I have curbed my desires, repressed myself at every step, only the Searcher of the Heart knows.

But the difficulty is, that one’s life is not solely one’s own.

He who would create it must do so with the help of his surroundings, or he will fail. So it was my constant dream to draw Bimal to join me in this work of creating myself. I loved her with all my soul;

I have begun to suspect that there has all along been a vein of tyranny in me. There was a despotism in my desire to mould my relations with Bimala in a hard, clear-cut, perfect form.

But man’s life was not meant to be cast in a mould. And if we try to shape the good, as so much mere material, it takes a terrible revenge by losing its life.

I did not realize all this while that it must have been this unconscious tyranny of mine which made us gradually drift apart.