Page 265 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

Unit 19: Chitra by Rabindranath Tagore: Detailed Study

Madana and Vasanta made their appearance again. Madana desired to know what had happened Notes
the previous night. Chitra related that the previous evening she lay down on a grassy bed covered
with the petals of spring flowers. She started recollecting the wonderful praise of her beauty as she
had heard from Arjuna. drinking drop by drop the honey that she had stored during the long day.
She forgot the history of her past life like that of her previous births. She felt “like a flower which had
but a few fleeting hours to listen to all the humming flatteries and whispered murmurs of the
woodlands and then must lower its eyes from the sky, bend its head and at a breath give itself up to
the dust without a cry thus ending the short story of a perfect moment that has neither past nor
future. On listening to this, Vasanta made a comment that a limitless life of glory could bloom and
spend itself in a morning. Madana continued the comparison by stating that it was like an endless
meaning in the narrowspan of a song.
Chitra proceeded with the narration of the events that took place subsequently. The “Southern breeze
cajoled her to sleep. Silent kisses dropped over her body from the flowering malati bower overhead.
Each flower chose her hair, her breast, her feet as a bed to lie on. She slept and during the course of
her sleep, she felt as if some deep and curious look, like tapering fingers of flame touched her
slumbering body. She was startled to see a Hermit standing before her. The moon Goddess felt shy
and moved on to the western side, gazing at ‘This wonder of divine art wrought in a fragile human
frame”.
The air was filled with sweet-scented perfume. The silence of the night was vocal with the chirping of
the crickets (small singing creatures). The reflections of the trees hung motionless in the lake. Arjuna,
with his stick in the hand, stood tall and straight and silent like a forest tree. She felt as though she
was away from the realities of life, and underwent a dream birth into a shadow land. Shame slipped
to her feet like loosened clothes”. She heard him call her “‘his most beloved”. She felt as if all her
forgotten lives united as one and responded to it. She extended her arms to him and offered herself to
him appealing to him to take her, to take all that she was.
Soon the moon set behind the trees and one curtain of darkness covered everything. Heaven and
earth, time and space, pleasure and pain, death and life combined themselves in an immeasurable
ecstasy. She woke up with the first ray of light, the first chirping of birds, and sat leaning on her left
arm. She found him (Arjuna) still asleep with an unclear smile about his lips like the crescent moon
in the morning. The rosy red spark of the dawn fell upon his noble forehead. She sighed and stood
up. She looked about her and found the same old earth. She began to recollect her past and started
running like a deer, that was afraid of her own shadow, through the forest-path scattered with sheppali
flowers. She came across a lonely corner and sitting down, covered her face with both hands. She
tried to weep and cry. but no tears came rolling down her eyes.
Madana addressed Chitra as the daughter of mortals and impressed upon her that he had stolen the
fragrant wine of heaven from the divine store-house, filled with it one earthly night to the brim, and
placed it in her hand to drink. But still there was cry of anguish (misery) in her. Chitra bitterly
answered that she was no doubt offered the first union of love, but that was taken away from her
grasp. She became conscious that her borrowed beauty, the falsehood in which she was entwined,
would soon vanish, like the petals from an over-blown flower, leaving her ashamed of her naked
poverty and making her weep day and night. Chitra further stated that she was pursued by this
cursed appearance like a demon robbing her of all the prizes of love and all the kisses lor which her
heart was thirsty. Then Madana showered sympathy on her by remarking that her single night had
gone in vain. The barque (ship or boat) of joy came in sight, but the waves would not permit it to
touch the shore.
Chitra felt that Heaven came so close to her hand that she forgot for a moment that it had not reached
her. But when she woke up in the morning from her dream, she found that her body had become her
own rival. It was her hateful task to decorate her body every day, to send to her beloved and enable
her to be caressed by him. So she appealed to the Gods to take back their boon.
Madana then asks Chitra how she could stand before her lover if the boon were withdrawn from her.
Moreover it would be cruel to take away by force, the cup from his lips when he had not even
enjoyed the first draught of pleasure. She would be treated with any amount of resentful anger in
such a situation.

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