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Mashi and Other Stories

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<h2> THE RIVER STAIRS</h2> If you wish to hear of days gone by, sit on this step of mine, and lend your ears to the murmur of the rippling water. The month of Ashwin (September) was about to begin. The river was in full flood. Only four of my steps peeped above the surface. The water had crept up to the low-lying parts of the bank, where the kachu plant grew dense beneath the branches of the mango grove. At that bend of the river, three old brick-heaps towered above the water around them. The fishing-boats, moored to the trunks of the bābla trees on the bank, rocked on the heaving flow-tide at dawn. The path of tall grasses on the sandbank had caught the newly risen sun; they had just begun to flower, and were not yet in full bloom. The little boats puffed out their tiny sails on the sunlit river. The Brahmin priest had come to bathe with his ritual vessels. The women arrived in twos and threes to draw water. I knew this was the time of Kusum's coming to the bathing-stairs. But that morning I missed her. Bhuban and Swarno mourned at the ghāt.[41] They said that their friend had been led away to her husband's house, which was a place far away from the river, with strange people, strange houses, and strange roads. In time she almost faded out of my mind. A year passed. The women at the ghāt now rarely talked of Kusum. But one evening I was startled by the touch of the long familiar feet. Ah, yes, but those feet were now without anklets, they had lost their old music. Kusum had become a widow. They said that her husband had worked in some far-off place, and that she had met him only once or twice. A letter brought her the news of his death. A widow at eight years old, she had rubbed out the wife's red mark from her forehead, stripped off her bangles, and come back to her old home by the Ganges. But she found few of her old playmates there. Of them, Bhuban, Swarno, and Amala were married, and gone away; only Sarat remained, and she too, they said, would be wed in December next. As the Ganges rapidly grows to fulness with the coming of the rains, even so did Kusum day by day grow to the fulness of beauty and youth. But her dull-coloured robe, her pensive face, and quiet manners drew a veil over her youth, and hid it from men's eyes as in a mist. Ten years slipped away, and none seemed to have noticed that Kusum had grown up. One morning such as this, at the end of a far-off September, a tall, young, fair-skinned Sanyasi, coming I know not whence, took shelter in the Shiva temple, in front of me. His arrival was noised abroad in the village. The women left their pitchers behind, and crowded into the temple to bow to the holy man. The crowd increased day by day. The Sanyasi's fame rapidly spread among the womenkind. One day he would recite the Bhágbat, another day he would expound the Gita, or hold forth upon a holy book in the temple. Some sought him for counsel, some for spells, some for medicines. So months passed away. In April, at the time of the solar eclipse, vast crowds came here to bathe in the Ganges. A fair was held under the bābla tree. Many of the pilgrims went to visit the Sanyasi, and among them were a party of women from the village where Kusum had been married. It was morning. The Sanyasi was counting his beads on my steps, when all of a sudden one of the women pilgrims nudged another, and said: ‘Why! He is our Kusum's husband!’ Another parted her veil a little in the middle with two fingers and cried out: ‘Oh dear me! So it is! He is the younger son of the Chattergu family of our village!’ Said a third, who made little parade of her veil: ‘Ah! he has got exactly the same brow, nose, and eyes!’ Yet another woman, without turning to the Sanyasi, stirred the water with her pitcher, and sighed: ‘Alas! That young man is no more; he will not come back. Bad luck to Kusum!’ But, objected one, ‘He had not such a big beard’; and another, ‘He was not so thin’; or ‘He was most probably not so tall.’ That settled the question for the time, and the matter spread no further. One evening, as the full moon arose, Kusum came and sat upon my last step above the water, and cast her shadow upon me. There was no other at the ghāt just then. The crickets were chirping about me. The din of brass gongs and bells had ceased in the temple—the last wave of sound grew fainter and fainter, until it merged like the shade of a sound in the dim groves of the farther bank. On the dark water of the Ganges lay a line of glistening moonlight. On the bank above, in bush and hedge, under the porch of the temple, in the base of ruined houses, by the side of the tank, in the palm grove, gathered shadows of fantastic shape. The bats swung from the chhatim boughs. Near the houses the loud clamour of the jackals rose and sank into silence. Slowly the Sanyasi came out of the temple. Descending a few steps of the ghāt he saw a woman sitting alone, and was about to go back, when suddenly Kusum raised her head, and looked behind her. The veil slipped away from her. The moonlight fell upon her face, as she looked up. The owl flew away hooting over their heads. Starting at the sound, Kusum came to herself and put the veil back on her head. Then she bowed low at the Sanyasi's feet. He gave her blessing and asked: ‘Who are you?’ She replied: ‘I am called Kusum.’ No other word was spoken that night. Kusum went slowly back to her house which was hard by. But the Sanyasi remained sitting on my steps for long hours that night. At last when the moon passed from the east to the west, and the Sanyasi's shadow, shifting from behind, fell in front of him, he rose up and entered the temple. Henceforth I saw Kusum come daily to bow at his feet. When he expounded the holy books, she stood in a corner listening to him. After finishing his morning service, he used to call her to himself and speak on religion. She could not have understood it all; but, listening attentively in silence, she tried to understand it. As he directed her, so she acted implicitly. She daily served at the temple—ever alert in the god's worship—gathering flowers for the puja, and drawing water from the Ganges to wash the temple floor. The winter was drawing to its close. We had cold winds. But now and then in the evening the warm spring breeze would blow unexpectedly from the south; the sky would lose its chilly aspect; pipes would sound, and music be heard in the village after a long silence. The boatmen would set their boats drifting down the current, stop rowing, and begin to sing the songs of Krishna. This was the season. Just then I began to miss Kusum. For some time she had given up visiting the temple, the ghāt, or the Sanyasi. What happened next I do not know, but after a while the two met together on my steps one evening. With downcast looks, Kusum asked: ‘Master, did you send for me?’ ‘Yes, why do I not see you? Why have you grown neglectful of late in serving the gods?’ She kept silent. ‘Tell me your thoughts without reserve.’ Half averting her face, she replied: ‘I am a sinner, Master, and hence I have failed in the worship.’ The Sanyasi said: ‘Kusum, I know there is unrest in your heart.’ She gave a slight start, and, drawing the end of her sári over her face, she sat down on the step at the Sanyasi's feet, and wept. He moved a little away, and said: ‘Tell me what you have in your heart, and I shall show you the way to peace.’ She replied in a tone of unshaken faith, stopping now and then for words: ‘If you bid me, I must speak out. But, then, I cannot explain it clearly. You, Master, must have guessed it all. I adored one as a god, I worshipped him, and the bliss of that devotion filled my heart to fulness. But one night I dreamt that the lord of my heart was sitting in a garden somewhere, clasping my right hand in his left, and whispering to me of love. The whole scene did not appear to me at all strange. The dream vanished, but its hold on me remained. Next day when I beheld him he appeared in another light than before. That dream-picture continued to haunt my mind. I fled far from him in fear, and the picture clung to me. Thenceforth my heart has known no peace,—all has grown dark within me!’ While she was wiping her tears and telling this tale, I felt that the Sanyasi was firmly pressing my stone surface with his right foot. Her speech done, the Sanyasi said: ‘You must tell me whom you saw in your dream.’ With folded hands, she entreated: ‘I cannot.’ He insisted: ‘You must tell me who he was.’ Wringing her hands she asked: ‘Must I tell it?’ He replied: ‘Yes, you must.’ Then crying, ‘You are he, Master!’ she fell on her face on my stony bosom, and sobbed. When she came to herself, and sat up, the Sanyasi said slowly: ‘I am leaving this place to-night that you may not see me again. Know that I am a Sanyasi, not belonging to this world. You must forget me.’ Kusum replied in a low voice: ‘It will be so, Master.’ The Sanyasi said: ‘I take my leave.’ Without a word more Kusum bowed to him, and placed the dust of his feet on her head. He left the place. The moon set; the night grew dark. I heard a splash in the water. The wind raved in the darkness, as if it wanted to blow out all the stars of the sky. <div class="story-title"> THE CASTAWAY</div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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