A dark foreknowledge separated her

From all of whom she was the star and stay;

Too great to impart the peril and the pain,

In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.

As one who watching over men left blind

Takes up the load of an unwitting race,

Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed,

Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced,

Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.

The long-foreknown and fatal morn was here

Bringing a noon that seemed like every noon.

For Nature walks upon her mighty way

Unheeding when she breaks a soul, a life;

Leaving her slain behind she travels on:

Man only marks and God's all-seeing eyes.

Even in this moment of her soul's despair,

In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,

No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;

She told the secret of her woe to none:

Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.

Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;

Even her humanity was half divine:

Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,

Her nature felt all Nature as its own.

Apart, living within, all lives she bore;

Aloof, she carried in herself the world:

Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread,

Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights;

The universal Mother's love was hers.

(Savitri, p. 8)

This is how the story line continues. Savitri is the only one who knows in the forest hermitage about the death of Satyavan on the foretold day and hour; neither he nor her parents-in-law nor the great accomplished rishis has any idea about it. But she has understood the meaning and purpose of it and, such was her greatness that, she keeps it hid from everybody. Why does she do that? By sharing this knowledge, could it not be that they would have worked out another approach to deal with the situation? But deep is Savitri’s understanding of human nature and the chances were that she would have been more cursed that assisted. Deeper yet is the occult aspect of this knowledge. By making it public she would have actually played into the hands of Death himself. All kinds of forces would have entered into operation and these would have caused great damage to her work. The significant fact is also that, death is to occur not in the hermitage but in the lonely forest when Satyavan and Savitri are alone, none else being present anywhere around, not even a passer-by happening to go that way. Savitri has taken the load of the human kind on herself and she knows that she is not going to get any help from anybody if she were to disclose it; on the contrary, it was bound to complicate the matter, frustrate the entire attempt, frustrate by dissipating the yogic power she had gathered in her soul. Therefore, as far as human Savitri is concerned, that whole situation makes her condition psychologically extremely difficult. On the one hand she cannot disclose what was impending, and on the other, she has to bear the reality, the time-born harshness of the moment all alone, absolutely all alone. The poet is handling with great deftness this emotional condition of Savitri, her plight also, she yet standing far above the emotionalism of the ordinary. She is in it yet she remains calm and composed, her spirit towering above all this mundane or even cosmic, it in oneness with her transcendental spirit.

After the discovery of love Savitri must discover death. One fine summer morning, and on unexpected road, she has met Satyavan in the distant Shalwa Woods and, at once, they have decided to be together. It is as if the God of unseen Destiny planned it that way and did not leave anything to chance. It was love at first sight, and all was settled in that significant moment. It was in fact a multiply significant moment, not only for Satyavan and Savitri, but for the entire evolutionary creation itslef. It was love at first sight no doubt, eye met eye and all was settled. But our lovers did not fall in love, rather they rose in love; they rose to another splendour, godheads greater by the fall; it is we who in love fall, in love we fall. Their united life began again in human forms, says the poet, their coming together marking the arrival of “a greater age”.

Young and beautiful, and blushingly reddened with a young bride’s joy, dreamy Savitri returns to the palace to disclose to her eager parents the discovery she has just made in the far-away secluded forest land, away from human habitation. But on return to her parents’ place, she already finds in the palace-hall Narad the heavenly sage in their company, he singing the song of creation to them. (Savitri, p. 417)

He sang to them of the lotus-heart of love

With all its thousand luminous buds of truth,

Which quivering sleeps veiled by apparent things.

It trembles at each touch, it strives to wake

And one day it shall hear a blissful voice

And in the garden of the Spouse shall bloom

When she is seized by her discovered lord.

But soon Narad is going to announce something apparently ominous, the foreboding deep-rooted evil indeed. However, he announces it perhaps with a grave serious concern. Savitri has come to know love; it is necessary that she must also know death. Eventually, Narad discloses that Satyavan, whom Savitri has chosen for a lover and a husband, is doomed to die exactly one year after the marriage, samvatsaréņa kşīņāyurdéhanyāsam karişyati, or as we have in Savitri:

Twelve swift-winged months are given to him and to her;

This day returning Satyavan must die.

Savitri yet remains firm in her resolve and starts living in her new home, the small little cottage with thatched roof. She adapts herself to the life of the hermitage and looks after the physical needs of her parents-in-law, speaking always to them with a sense of humility and reverence. She also performs, with noble composure and grace, the various household routines, of attending to the kitchen-fire and using broom and jar. In a like manner, and always remaining calm and contented, employing soft and sweet language, mindful of her husband’s wants and desires, in their community life and in their privacy, she keeps Satyavan happy. This way, and absorbed in tapasya, a lot of time goes by, almost a year. But about the prophecy of Satyavan’s death no one knows, neither Satyavan, nor his parents, nor the ministers in the court of her father’s kingdom, not even the rishis in the hermitages though in the depths of their spiritual-occult cognizance they might have felt something of the sort; it remains a secret of the palace, known only to her and her parents. “A dark foreknowledge separated her from all of whom she was the star and stay; too great to impart the peril and the pain, in her torn depths she kept the grief to come.” The secret was meant to remain the palace secret only. Just imagine if Satyavan had come to know about it! But, then, it also reveals the tremendous power of the woman who in her heart could keep such a calamitous possibility secret from her intimate ones, including her husband. That itself is the yogic preparation of Savitri and a great deal of her success rests on it. The human instrument did not fail in the hour of reckoning. That also speaks greatly about the parents of Savitri, the yogic strength they possessed to hold such a knowledge entirely to themselves. No ordinary mortals they were, indeed.

But, within, the virtuous woman suffered also, suffered greatly. With each rising sun, or while sleeping in the night, at every passing moment, she remembered Narad’s words and felt the cruel day approaching closer, and yet closer. When she counted that only four days were left, and Satyavan would be living no more afterwards, she resolved to perform the three-night vow, trīrātra vŗta, of fasting and standing at one single place through the entire period. Another Shakti living beyond the domains of the three nights,—of the physical, the vital, and the mental,—entered into her soul and she was now ready to confront the firm and uncompromising God of Death, Yama. The mystic truth is that the balance between Fate and Freewill can be reversed by the greater spirits. By doing yoga, Savitri must rise to the greatness of her own spirit. That certainly is the merit, the valid purpose, of Narad’s disclosing the death of Satyavan, particularly to her. The imponderables in the episode are occultly loaded.