Here was no fabric of terrestrial
make
Fit for a day's use by busy
careless Powers.
An image fluttering on the screen
of fate
Half-animated for a passing show,
Or a castaway on the
Flung to the eddies in a ruthless
sport
And tossed along the gulfs of Circumstance,
A creature born to bend beneath the
yoke,
A chattel and a plaything of Time's
lords,
Or one more pawn who comes destined
to be pushed
One slow move forward on a
measureless board
In the chess-play of the earth-soul
with Doom,—
Such is the human figure drawn by
Time.
A conscious frame was here, a
self-born Force.
The question if Savitri is going to
win or lose the godlike game for man has been kept open. But there is the
absolute certainty that she is not going to give it up. She will fight to the
last bit whatever be the opposition and whatever be the result. It was the
question of the Destiny itself, and she has her soul’s intuition and strength
to cross the Rubicon carrying the legions with her. Never shall she submit to
the command of the sinister Senate—because “to lead, to deliver was her
glorious part.”
The Gita speaks of this body which
can be cast away the manner in which the worn-out garments are discarded. That
is the kind of fabric made of terrestrial stuff and that is what we wear for a
brief day’s use. But, though Savitri has taken a mortal birth, her body is made
of the original causal ingredients which do not suffer decomposition. For the
immortal “there is no such thing as death, for it is the body that dies and the
body is not the man. That which really is, cannot go out of existence, though
it may change the forms through which it appears, just as come into being. The
soul is and cannot cease to be. This opposition of is and is not, this balance
of being and becoming which is the mind's view of existence, finds its end in
the realisation of the soul as by whom all this universe has been extended.
Finite bodies have an end, but that which possesses and uses the body, is
infinite, illimitable, eternal, indestructible. It casts away old and takes up
new bodies as raiment for new; and what is there in this to grieve at and
recoil and shrink? This is not born, nor does it die, nor is it a thing that
comes into being once and passing away will never come into being again it is
not slain with the slaying of the body. Who can slay the immortal spirit?
Weapons cannot cleave it, nor the fire burn, nor do the waters drench it, nor
the wind dry. Eternally stable, immobile, all-pervading, it is for ever and for
ever. Not manifested like the body, but greater than all manifestation, not to
be analysed by the thought, of change and modification like the life and its
organs and their objects, but beyond the changes of mind and life and body, it
is yet the Reality which all these strive to figure.” Such was she even in her
outward reality.
Savitri is not a castaway on the
Nor is Savitri’s life a shadow-play
projected in the dark of the night on the screen of dubious and shifting fate. The Passing Show may be a regular weekly
feature of an inventive and lively cartoonist, packing the Sunday page with big
or trivial local happenings or cranky news or personal anecdotes. But that is the depiction of a common human being susceptible to the thousand shocks of the day. But
Savitri is someone else whom nothing of the sort can touch.
Savitri has accepted the burden of
mortality but she is not tied in the manner of farm oxen to the yoke of life,
pulling a plough or cart or wagon. She is not some movable property annexed to
a piece of land or to a building or a mansion, that she can be traded with ease.
Savitri is not a poor helpless pawn on the chessboard, that it can be pushed without
any compunction. She is not a rag-doll to amuse a child’s heart.
This only means that Savitri is not
a vulnerable human figure operated by moods and whims and manners of Time,
operated in its own way. “A conscious frame was here, a self-born Force.” And
she was conscious of it even when she was a child, conscious that she had come to
do some great work.