A Wife’s Letter

Rabindranath Tagore

Translated from Bengali by Prasenjit Gupta

To Thine Auspicious Lotus-Feet:

Today we have been married fifteen years, yet not until today have I written
you a letter. I’ve always been close by your side. You’ve heard many things
from me, and so have I from you, but we haven’t had space enough to write a
letter.

Now I’m in Puri on a holy journey, and you are wrapped up in your office
work. Your relationship to Calcutta is a snail’s to its shell--the city is stuck fast
to you, body and soul. So you didn’t apply for leave. It was the Lord’s desire,
and so was His granting me my leave application.

I am Mejo-Bou, the second bride in your joint family. Today, fifteen years
later, standing at the edge of the ocean, I understand that I also have other
relationships, with the world and the World-Keeper. So I find the courage to
write this letter. This is not a letter from your family’s Mejo-Bou. Not from the
second wife.

Long ago, in my childhood days--in the days when my preordained marriage to

you was known only to the Omniscient One who writes our fates on our
foreheads--my brother and I both came down with typhoid fever. My brother
died; I survived. All the neighborhood girls said, “Mrinal’s a girl, that’s why
she lived. If she’d been a boy, she couldn’t have been saved.” Jom-Raj is wise
in his deadly robbery: he only takes things of value.

No death, then, for me. It is to explain this at length that I sit down to write this
letter.

When your uncle--a distant relative--came with your friend Nirod to view your
prospective bride, I was twelve. We lived in an inaccessible village where
jackals would call even during the day. Fourteen miles from the railway station
by ox-cart, then six more on an unpaved road by palanquin; how vexed they
were. And on top of that, our East-Bengal cookery. Even now your uncle
makes jokes about those dishes.
Your mother wanted desperately to make up for the plain appearance of the
first bride with the good looks of the second. Otherwise why would you have
taken all the time and trouble to travel to our distant village? In Bengal no one
has to search for jaundice, dysentery, or a bride; they come and cleave to you
on their own, and never want to leave.

Father’s heart began to pound. Mother started repeating Durga’s name. With
what offering could a country priest satisfy a city god? All they could rely upon
was their girl’s appearance. But the girl herself had no vanity; whoever came to
see her, whatever price they offered for her, that would be her price. So even
with the greatest beauty, the most perfect virtues, a woman’s self-doubt can
never be dispelled.

The terror of the entire household, even the entire neighborhood, settled like a
stone in my chest. It was as if the day’s sky, its suffusing light, all the powers
of the universe were bailiffs to those two examiners, seizing a twelve-year-old
village girl and holding her up to the stern scrutiny of those two pairs of eyes. I
had no place to hide.

The wedding flutes wailed, setting the skies to mourn; I came to live in your
house. At great length the women tabulated all my shortcomings but allowed
that, by and large, I might be reckoned a beauty; and when my sister-in-law,
my Didi, heard this, her face grew solemn. But I wonder what the need was for
beauty; your family didn’t love me for it. Had my beauty been molded by some
ancient sage from holy Ganga clay, then it might have been loved; but the
Creator had molded it only for His own pleasure, and so it had no value in your
pious family.

That I had beauty, it didn’t take you long to forget. But you were reminded,
every step of the way, that I also had intelligence. This intelligence must have
lain deep within me, for it lingered in spite of the many years I spent merely
keeping house for you. My mother was always very troubled by my
intelligence; for a woman it’s an affliction. If she whose life is guided by
boundaries seeks a life guided by intelligence, she’ll run into so many walls
that she’ll shatter her forehead and her future. But what could I do? The
intellect that the other wives in the house lacked, the Lord in a careless moment
had bestowed upon me; now whom could I return the excess to? Every day you
all rebuked me: precocious, impertinent girl! A bitter remark is the consolation
of the inept; I forgive all your remarks.

And I had something else, outside all the domestic duties of your household,
something that none of you knew. Secretly I wrote poems. No matter if it was
all rubbish, at least there the boundary wall of the inner compound could not
stop me. There lay my freedom, there I could be myself. Whatever it was in me
that kept your Mejo-Bou detached from your family, you didn’t like it, didn’t
even recognize it; in all these fifteen years none of you ever found out that I
was a poet.

Among the earliest memories that I have of your house, the one that comes to
mind is of your cowshed. Right next to the stairway leading up to the inner
rooms was the room where the cows were kept. The tiny courtyard in front was
all the space they had to roam. A clay trough for their fodder stood in one
corner of the courtyard. In the morning the servants had many thing to do; all
morning the starving cows would lick at the edges of the trough, bite at it, take
chunks out of it. My heart cried for them. I was a village girl: when I first
arrived at your house, those two cows and three calves struck me as being the
only friends I had in the entire city. When I was a new bride, I would give my
food to them; when I grew older, bantering acquaintances, observing the
attention I show the cows, would express their suspicions about my family and
ancestral occupation: all cowherds, they said.

My daughter was born--and died. She called to me, too, to go with her. If she
had lived, she would have brought all that was wonderful, all that was large,
into my life; from Mejo-Bou I would have become Mother. And a mother, even
confined to one narrow world, is of the universe. I had the grief of becoming a
mother, but not the freedom.

I remember the English doctor’s surprise upon entering the inner compound.
When he saw the confinement room, he grew annoyed and began to scold.
There is a small garden at the front of the house, and the outer rooms do not
lack for furniture of decoration. The inner rooms are like the reverse of an
embroidered pattern; on the inside there is no hiding the starkness, no grace, no
adornment. On the inside the lights glimmer darkly, the breeze enters like a
thief, the refuse never leaves the courtyard. The blemishes on the walls and
floors are conspicuous and inerasable. But the doctor made one mistake; he
thought this neglect would cause us sorrow. Just the opposite: neglect is like
ashes, ashes that keep the fire hidden within but do not let the warmth die out.
When self-respect ebbs, a lack of attention does not seem unjust. So it causes
no pain. And that’s why women are ashamed to experience grief. So I say: if
this be your arrangement, that women will suffer, then it is best to keep them in
neglect, as far as possible; with attention and love, suffering only grows worse.
However it was, it didn’t even occur to me to recall the existence of grief. In
the delivery room, death came and stood by my head; I felt no fear. What is our
life that we must fear death? Those whose life-bonds have been knotted tight
with love and care, they flinch before death. If Jom-Raj had caught me that day
and pulled, then, in the same way that a clump of grass can easily be pulled out
from loose earth, roots and all, I too would have come out in his hand. A
Bengali girl will wish for death on the slightest pretext, but where is the
courage in such a death? I am ashamed to die--death is too easy for us.

Like an evening star my daughter glowed bright for a moment, then set. I fell
again into my eternal routine and to my cows and calves. Life would have
passed, slipping on in that way to the end, and today there would have been no
need to write you this letter. But a tiny seed blown on the wind can lodge in a
brick terrace and put down the roots of a peepul tree; in the end that seed can
split open the heart of brick and stone. Into the set arrangements of my world a
tiny speck of life flew from who knows where, and that started the crack.
My elder sister-in-law’s sister Bindu, mistreated by the cousin she lived with
after the death of her widowed mother, came to your house to seek refuge with
her sister. That day all of you thought, Why did this misfortune have to land at
our doorstep? I have a contrary nature, so what could I do: when I saw that you
were angry at her, my heart went out to this defenceless girl and I resolved to
stand firm at her side. To have to seek shelter at another’s house against their
will-what an indignity that is. Even if we are forced to accept someone against
our will, should we push them away, ignore them?

And I watched my Didi. Out of great compassion she had brought her sister
Bindu in, but when she saw her husband’s annoyance she began to pretend that
Bindu’s presence was an unbearable imposition on her too, and she’d be
relieved to be rid of her. She couldn’t muster up the courage to express her
affection publicly for her orphaned sister. She was a very devoted wife.
Observing her dilemma, I grew even more distressed. I saw her make the rudest
arrangements for Bindu’s food and clothing--and she ensured that everyone
knew about it--and so demean her in every way, even engaging her in
household chores as she would a housemaid, that I was not only sad but also
ashamed. Didi was anxious to prove to everyone that our household had been
fortunate in obtaining Bindu’s services at bargain rates. The girl would work
tirelessly, and the cost was minimal.

Didi’s father’s family had had nothing other than its high lineage: neither good
looks nor wealth. How they fell at your father’s feet, importuned him to take
her into your family--you know all that. Didi herself has always thought of her
marriage as a grave indignity to your family. That is why she tries in every way
to draw herself in, not to impose; she takes up very little space in this house.
But the virtuous example she set gave me a great deal of trouble. I could not
humble myself in all ways as she had done. If I find something worthy, it’s not
my inclination to disparage it just to please someone else--you’ve had proof of
this many times.

I drew Bindu into my room. Didi said, “The girl comes from a simple home,
and Mejo-Bou is going to spoil her.” She went around complaining to one and
all as if my actions were putting the family in great peril. But I am sure that
deep inside she was greatly relieved. Now the responsibility was mine. She had
me display the affection towards her sister that she could not herself show, and
her heart was lightened by it.

Didi always tried to leave a few years off Bindu’s age. She was no less than
fourteen, and it was just as well to mention this only in private. As you know,
her looks were so plain that if she were to fall and crack her head against the
floor, people would first concern themselves about the floor. In the absence of
father and mother, there was no one to arrange a marriage for her, and besides,
how many people would have the strength of their beliefs to marry someone
who looked like her.

Bindu came to me in great fear, as if I might not be able to bear her touch, as if
there were no reason for her having been born into this great universe. And so
she would always shrink away as she passed, lower her glance as she walked
by. In her father’s house, her cousin had not even given her a corner in which
an unwanted object might lie. Unwanted clutter makes its own space around the
house, and people forget it’s there; not only is an undesired person not wanted
where she is, but while she’s there she’s also not easily forgotten, so there’s no
place for her even in the trash-heap. It could not be said that Bindu’s cousins
themselves were greatly desired by the rest of the world, though they were
comfortably off.

When I brought Bindu into my room, she began to tremble. Her fear caused me
great sorrow. I explained gently that there would always be a little space for her
in my room.

But my room wasn’t mine alone. So my task wasn’t easy. And after only a few
days she suffered a red rash on her skin. Maybe it was prickly heat, or
something else; anyway, all of you decided it was smallpox.-After all, it was
Bindu. An unskilled doctor from your neighborhood came and declared, It’s
difficult to say what it is without waiting another day or two. But who had the
patience to wait another day or two? Bindu herself was half-dead from the
shame of her ailment. I said, I don’t care if it’s smallpox, I’ll stay with her in
the confinement room, no one else will have to do anything. On hearing this, all
of you gave me extremely menacing looks, even seemed poised to do me harm;
Bindu’s sister, feigning extreme displeasure, proposed sending her to the
hospital. Soon, however, Bindu’s rash faded away completely. Seeing this, you
grew even more agitated. Some of you said, It’s definitely smallpox, and it’s
settled in.-After all, it was Bindu.

There’s one thing to be said for growing up neglected and uncared for: it makes
the body ageless, immortal. Disease doesn’t want to linger, so the easy roads to
death are shut off. The illness mocked her and left; nothing at all happened. But
this much was made clear: it is most difficult to give shelter to the world’s most
wretched. Whoever needs greatest shelter also faces the greatest obstacles to
gaining it.

As Bindu’s fear of me ebbed, another problem arose. She began to love me so

much that it brought fear into my heart. I have never seen such an embodiment
of love in real life; I’ve read of it in books, of this kind of intense attachment,
and, there too, between women. Not for many years had I had occasion to
remember that I was beautiful; that long-forgotten beauty had charmed this
plain-looking girl. She’d stare at my face, and the hope and trust in her eyes
would grow. She’s say to me, “Didi, no one but me has seen this face of yours.”
She’d become upset when I tied my hair myself. She liked to play with my hair,
arranging it this way and that. Apart from the occasional invitation, there was
really no need for me to dress up. But Bindu was eager; and every day she
would ornament me one way or another. She grew besotted with me.

There’s not even a yard of free space in the inner compound of your house.
Near the north wall, next to the drain, somehow a mangosteen had taken root.
The day I saw its new leaves budding forth, bright red, I’d know that spring had
truly touched the world. And when I saw-in the middle of my routine life-this
neglected girl’s heart and soul filling up with color, I realized that there was a
spring breeze of the inner world as well, a breeze that came from some distant
heaven, not from the corner of the alley.

Part 2 of 2] Part 1

The unbearable impetus of Bindu’s love began to agitate me. Once in a while, I
admit, I used to be angry at her, but through her love I saw a side of myself that
I’d never seen before. It was my true self, my free self.

Meanwhile, my care and attention for a girl like Bindu struck you all as beyond
the limits of propriety. And so there was no end to petty scoldings and
peevishness. When one day an armlet was stolen from my room, you felt no
shame hinting that Bindu must have had something to do with the theft. When,
during the Shodeshi movement, the police began to search people’s houses, you
came very easily to the conclusion that Bindu was a police informer. There was
no other proof of that, only this: she was Bindu.

The maidservants in your house would object to doing the slightest work for
Bindu. If ever I asked one of the women to fetch Bindu something, she would
pause, frozen in reluctance. And so my expenses for Bindu went up: I engaged
a special maid for her. None of you liked that. You saw the kinds of clothes I
gave Bindu to wear, and you became incensed. You even cut off my spending
money. The very next day I began to wear coarse, unbleached, mill-made, ten-
anna dhutis. And when the maid came to take my plate away after lunch, I told
her not to. I fed the left-over rice to the calf and went to the courtyard tap to
wash the plate myself. You saw that and were not too pleased. But the idea that
not pleasing you was all right—that your family’s pleasure was of little
consequence—had not yet entered my mind.

Your anger increased. And meanwhile Bindu’s age kept increasing too. This
natural progression embarrassed all of you to an unnatural degree. One thing
surprised me: why you didn’t force Bindu to leave. I understand it now: deep
inside, you were all afraid of me. Deep inside, you could not help respect the
intelligence that God had given me.

In the end, not strong enough yourselves to make Bindu leave, you sought the
shelter of the gods of matrimony. Bindu’s wedding was arranged. Didi said,
“Saved! Ma Kali has protected the honor of our clan.”

I didn’t know who the groom was; I heard from you all that he was worthy in
every respect. Bindu came to me, and sat at my feet and cried. “Didi, why do I
have to be married?”

I tried to explain things to her. “Bindu, don’t be afraid: I’ve heard your groom
is a good man.”

Bindu said, “If he’s good, what do I have that he would like me?”

The groom’s people did not even mention coming to see Bindu. Didi was
greatly relieved.

But Bindu cried night and day; her tears didn’t want to stop. I knew how
painful it was for her. In that world I had fought many battles on her behalf, but
I didn’t have the courage to say that her wedding should be called off. And
what right did I have to say that anyway? What would become of her if I were
to die?
First of all she was a girl, and on top of that she was dark-skinned; what kind of
household she was being sent off to, what would become of her—it was best
not to think of such things. If my mind turned to such thoughts, the blood
would shudder in my heart.

Bindu said, “Didi, just five more days before the wedding, can’t I die before
then?”

I scolded her sharply; but the One Who Sees Within knows: if there was some
way she could have passed easily into death, I might have been relieved.

The day before the wedding, Bindu went to her sister and said, “Didi, I’ll just
stay in your cowshed, I’ll do whatever you tell me to, I beg you, don’t get rid of
me like this.”

For some time now, I had seen Didi wipe her eyes in quiet moments; now, too,
her tears ran. But the heart could not be everything; there were rules to live by.
She said, “You must realize, Bindi dear, a husband is a woman’s shelter, her
protector, her salvation, her everything. If suffering is written on your forehead,
no one can avert it.”

The message was clear: there was no way out. Bindu would have to marry, and
whatever happened afterwards would have to happen.

I had wanted the wedding to be conducted at our house. But all of you were
firm: it must be at the groom’s house; it was their ancestral custom.

The matter became clear to me. The gods of your household couldn’t bear it if
any of your money was spent on Bindu’s wedding. So I was forced to be quiet.
But there’s something none of you know. I wanted to tell Didi but I didn’t; she
might have died of fear. Secretly I gave Bindu some of my jewellery, made her
wear it before she left. I thought Didi would notice it; perhaps she pretended
not to. Do—in the name of kindness—forgive her that.

Before leaving, Bindu threw her arms around me. “So, after all, Didi, you are
abandoning me completely?”

I said, “No, Bindi, no matter what your condition may be, I’ll never abandon
you in the end.”
Three days went by. The tenants of your estate had given you a sheep to feast
on; I saved it from the fire of your hunger and kept it in one corner of the coal-
shed on the ground floor. I would go and feed it grain first thing in the morning.
I had relied on your servants for a day or two before I saw that feeding the
animal was less interesting to them than possibly feeding upon it.
Entering the coal-shed that morning, I saw Bindu sitting huddled in a corner.
As soon as she saw me she fell at my feet and began to cry.

Bindu’s husband was insane.

“Is that really true, Bindi?”

“Would I tell you such a lie, Didi? He’s insane. My father-in-law wasn’t in
favor of this marriage, but he’s mortally afraid of his wife. He went off to
Kashi before the wedding. My mother-in-law insisted on getting her son
married.”

I sat down on the heap of coal. Woman has no compassion for woman. Woman
will say, “She’s nothing more than a woman. The groom may be insane, but
he’s a man.”

Bindu’s husband did not seem deranged to look at, but once in a while he grew
so frenzied that he had to be locked up in his room. He was fine on the night of
the wedding, but the next day—perhaps as a result of the excitement, staying
up late, and so on—he became completely unbalanced. Bindu had just sat down
to lunch when her husband suddenly grabbed her brass plate and flung it, rice
and all, out into the courtyard. For some reason he was seized with the notion
that Bindu was Rani Rashmoni herself, and that the servant must have stolen
her platter of gold and given her his own lowly plate instead. Hence his
outrage. Bindu was half-dead from fear. When on the third night her mother-in-
law ordered her to sleep in her husband’s room, Bindu’s heart froze within her.
Her mother-in-law was a terrible woman; if she was angered she lost all
control of herself. She too was unbalanced, but not completely, and therefore
all the more dangerous. Bindu had to enter the room. Her husband was placid
that night. But no matter; Bindu’s body turned wooden with terror. With what
silence and craft she made her escape after her husband fell asleep, it’s not
necessary to describe at length.

I burned from contempt and anger. I said, “A marriage based on such a

deception is not a marriage at all. Bindu, stay with me the way you did before,
let’s see who dares to take you away.”
You all said, “Bindu’s lying.”

I said, “She’s never lied in her life.”

You all said, “How do you know that?”

I said, “I’m sure of it.”

You all tried to frighten me. “If Bindu’s in-laws report this to the police, you’ll
be in trouble.”

I said, “They deceived her and got her married to a madman, and when I tell the
court that, they’ll listen.”

You all said, “Then we’ll have to go to court over this? Why? Why should we
bother?”

I said, “I’ll sell my jewellery and do what I can.”

You all said, “You’re going to a lawyer then?”

I couldn’t answer that. I could complain bitterly, but I didn’t have the courage
to do any more.

And meanwhile, Bindu’s brother-in-law had arrived and was raising a racket
outside the house. He said he was going to file a report at the police station.
I didn’t know where my strength came from, but my mind would not accept the
idea that for fear of the police I would simply hand her over—hand over to the
butcher himself the calf that had come running from the cleaver, afraid for her
life, to seek shelter with me. I found the audacity to say, “Fine, let him go file a
report then.”

After saying this I decided I must take Bindu into my bedroom right away, put
a lock on the door, and stay inside with her. But when I looked for Bindu I
couldn’t find her. While I was arguing with you all, she had gone out on her
own and given herself up to her brother-in-law. She understood that by staying
in the house she was putting me in great danger.

Running away the way she had earlier, Bindi had only increased her own
unhappiness. Her mother-in-law argued that her husband hadn’t done anything
to hurt Bindu. There were plenty of terrible husbands in the world. Compared
to them her son was a jewel, a diamond.
My elder sister-in-law said, “She has an ill-fated forehead; how long can I
grieve over it? He may be crazy, may be a fool, but he’s her husband, after all!”
The image rose in your minds of the leper and his wife—oh devoted woman!—
who herself carried him to the prostitute’s house. You, with your male minds,
did not ever hesitate to preach this story, a story of the world’s vilest
cowardice; and for the same reason—even though you’d been granted the
dignity of human shape—you could be angry at Bindu without feeling the least
discomfort. My heart burst for Bindu; for you I felt boundless shame. I was
only a village girl, and on top of that I had lived so long in your house—I don’t
know through what chink in your vigilance God slipped me my brains. I just
couldn’t bear all your lofty sentiments about woman’s duty.

I knew for sure that Bindu would not return to our house even if she had to die.
But I had assured her the day before her marriage that I would not abandon her
in the end. My younger brother Shorot was a college student in Calcutta. You
all know about his different kinds of volunteer work, running off to help the
Damodor flood victims, exterminating the rats when the plague struck—he had
such enthusiasm for these projects that even failing the F.A. exams twice had
not dampened his spirit. I summoned him and said, “Shorot, you have to
arrange things so that I can have news of Bindu. She won’t have the courage to
write, and even if she does, the letter will never reach me.”

My brother might have been happier if I’d asked him to kidnap Bindu and bring
her back, or perhaps to crack her crazy husband’s skull.

While I was talking to Shorot, you came into the room and said, “Now what
mess are you getting us into?”

I said, “The same one I made right at the beginning: I came to your house.—
But that was your own doing.”

You asked, “Have you brought Bindu back and hidden her somewhere?”

I said, “If Bindu would come, I’d certainly bring her back and hide her. But
she won’t come, so you all needn’t be afraid.”

Seeing Shorot with me had kindled your suspicions. I know that you didn’t
approve at all of Shorot’s comings and goings. You were afraid that the police
were keeping tabs on him, and that some day he would get himself into some
political tangle and drag you into it too. So I didn’t usually call him to the
house; I even sent him my Bhai-phota offering through someone else.
I heard from you that Bindu had run off again, and that her brother-in-law had
come looking for her again. Hearing this, I felt something sharp pierce my
heart. I understood the luckless girl’s unbearable suffering, but I could see no
way of doing anything for her.

Shorot ran to get news of Bindu. He returned in the evening and told me,
“Bindu went back to her cousins’ house, but they were terribly angry and took
her back to her in-laws’ right away. And they haven’t forgotten the money they
had to spend on fares and other expenses for her.”

As it happened, your aunt had come to spend a few days at your house before
leaving for Srikhetro on a pilgrimage. And I told you all, I’m going too.
You were so delighted to see in me this sudden turn towards religion that you
forgot altogether to object. You also thought, no doubt, that if I stayed in
Calcutta at that time, I would certainly make trouble about Bindu. I was a
terrible nuisance.

I would leave on Wednesday; by Sunday all the preparations had been made. I
called Shorot and said to him, “No matter how difficult it is, I want you to find
some way to get Bindu on the Wednesday train to Puri.”

Shorot grinned with delight; he said, “Don’t worry, Didi, not only will I see her
into the train, I’ll go with her to Puri myself. It’ll be an opportunity to see the
Jagannath temple.”

Shorot came again that evening. I took one look at his face, and the breath
stopped in my chest. I said, “What, Shorot? You couldn’t do it?”
He said, “No.”

I asked, “You couldn’t get her to agree?”

He said, “There was no need any more. Last night she set fire to her clothes and
killed herself. I talked to her nephew—the one I was in touch with—and he
said that she’d left a letter for you. But they destroyed the letter.”

Oh. Peace at last.

People heard about it and were enraged. They said, It’s become a kind of
fashion for women to set fire to their clothes and kill themselves.
You all said, Such dramatics! Maybe. But shouldn’t we ask why the dramatics
take place only with Bengali women’s sarees and not with the so-brave Bengali
men’s dhutis?

Truly Bindi’s forehead was seared by fate. As long as she lived she was never
known for her looks or talent; even in her last hours it didn’t enter her head to
find some new way to die, some novel exit that would please the nation’s men
and move them to applaud her! Even in dying she only angered everyone.
Didi hid in her room and cried. But there was some solace in her tears.
However it was, at least now the girl was beyond suffering. She had only died;
who knew what might have happened if she’d lived?

I have come here on my holy journey. Bindu didn’t need to come any more, but
I did.

In your world I didn’t suffer what people would normally call grief. In your
house there was no lack of food or clothing; no matter what your brother’s
character, in your own character there was nothing that I could complain of to
the Lord, nothing I could call terrible. If your habits had been like those of your
brother’s, perhaps my days would have passed without upheaval; perhaps, like
my sister-in-law, so perfectly devoted to her husband, I too might have blamed
not you but the Lord of the World. So I don’t want to raise my head in
complaint about you—this letter is not for that.

But I will not go back to your Number Twenty-Seven Makhon Boral Lane. I’ve
seen Bindu. I’ve seen the worth of a woman in this world. I don’t need any
more.

And I’ve seen also that even though she was a girl, God didn’t abandon her. No
matter how much power you might have had over her, there was an end to that
power. There’s something larger than this wretched human life. You thought
that, by your turn of whim and your custom graved in stone, you could keep her
life crushed under your feet forever, but your feet weren’t powerful enough.
Death was stronger. In her death Bindu has become great; she’s not a mere
Bengali girl anymore, no more just a female cousin of her father’s nephews, no
longer only a lunatic stranger’s deceived wife. Now she is without limits,
without end.

The day that death’s flute wailed through this girl’s soul and I heard those notes
float across the river, I could feel its touch within my chest. I asked the Lord,
Why is it that whatever is the most insignificant obstacle in this world is also
the hardest to surmount? Why was this tiny, most ordinary bubble of
cheerlessness contained within four ramparts in this humdrum alley such a
formidable barrier? No matter how pleadingly Your world called out to me, its
nectar-cup made of the six elements borne aloft in its hands, I could not emerge
even for an instant, could not cross the threshold of that inner compound. These
skies of Yours, this life of mine: why must I—in the shadow of this most banal
brick and woodwork—die one grain at a time? How trivial this daily life’s
journey; how trivial all its fixed rules, its fixed ways, its fixed phrases of rote,
all its fixed defeats. In the end, must the victory go to this wretched world, to
its snakes of habit that bind and coil and squeeze? Must the joyous universe,
the world that You created Yourself, lose?

But the flute of death begins to play—and then where is the mason’s solid-
brick wall, where is your barbed-wire fence of dreadful law? A sorrow, an
insult, can imprison; but the proud standard of life flies from the hand of death!
Oh Mejo-Bou, you have nothing to fear! It doesn’t take a moment to slough off
a Mejo-Bou’s shell.

I am not scared of your street any longer. In front of me today is the blue ocean,
over my head a mass of monsoon cumulus.

The dark veil of your custom had cloaked me completely, but for an instant
Bindu came and touched me through a gap in the veil; and by her own death
she tore that awful veil to shreds. Today I see there is no longer any need to
maintain your family’s dignity or self-pride. He who smiles at this unloved face
of mine is in front of me today, looking at me with the sublime expanse of His
sky. Now Mejo-Bou dies.

You think I’m going to kill myself—don’t be afraid, I wouldn’t play such an
old joke on you all. Meera-Bai, too, was a woman, like me; her chains, too,
were no less heavy; and she didn’t have to die to be saved. Meera-Bai said, in
her song, “No matter if my father leaves, my mother too, let them all go; but
Meera will persevere, Lord, whatever may come to pass.”

And to persevere, after all, is to be saved.

I too will be saved. I am saved.

Removed from the Shelter of Your Feet,

Mrinal
[1914]

Published in Parabaas 29th January, 2002