Canto Two: The Issue

Music streamed down from blue of the upper sky

And the hills and the lush fields and the choir birds

Bore its eager delight in earthly moments.

In emerald peace of that wilderness

Love came seeking her through hesitant ages:

A phoenix of flame-hued wings descending

Into death awaited her fiery greatness.

A joy of beauty bejewelled all her being

And her soul was a deep celebration

Of divinity in the strides of time;

Even her body recalled its godly longing.

This mortal world claimed its truth in her birth.

RY Deshpande

12 April 2002

I: 2 The Issue

Satyavan awaits in the forest of life the arrival of Savitri. His waiting for her is, in the cosmic working, the waiting of the God of Love for her. For him she is perfection’s home and he could well live in her as in his own infinity. But behind him also follows covertly the God of Death, follows like an unseen shadow. She as human is yet unaware of it. But while she is reviewing the past a supernatural darkness surrounds her. In it her will rises to cancel that past itself. Hers is a struggle in which neither the Gods of the Sky nor the Powers of Nature can lend any help to her. But at the opportune hour the Goddess in her stands out revealed, and at once she takes charge of things and events. Savitri as a defeatless warrior falls upon Death and the bounds of Consciousness and Time break open. All this has already happened in the high transcendental realm, but now it must be worked out on earth.