![]() Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass. But Trejago spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzle them out.Ī broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over because, when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists. No Englishman should be able to translate object-letters. Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. That packet was a letter-not a clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent, unintelligible lover's epistle. In the packet was the half of a broken glass bangle, one flower of the blood red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. Next morning, as he was driving to the office, an old woman threw a packet into his dog-cart. The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir Nath's Gully, wondering who in the world could have capped "The Love Song of Har Dyal" so neatly. There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart. There came the faint tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind the grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:Īlas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains? They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses to the North. It was a pretty little laugh, and Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that verse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:Ĭan a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved? If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame, being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty? Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh from behind the grated window. One day the man-Trejago his name was-came into Amir Nath's Gully on an aimless wandering and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over a big heap of cattle food. She was a widow, about fifteen years old, and she prayed the Gods, day and night, to send her a lover for she did not approve of living alone. Her room looked out through the grated window into the narrow dark Gully where the sun never came and where the buffaloes wallowed in the blue slime. If Durga Charan had been of their opinion, he would have been a happier man to-day, and little Biessa would have been able to knead her own bread. Neither Suchet Singh nor Gaur Chand approved of their women-folk looking into the world. At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the walls on either side of the Gully are without windows. He took too deep an interest in native life but he will never do so again.ĭeep away in the heart of the City, behind Jitha Megji's bustee, lies Amir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one grated window. He knew too much in the first instance and he saw too much in the second. This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond the safe limits of decent every-day society, and paid for it heavily. Then, whatever trouble falls is in the ordinary course of things- neither sudden, alien, nor unexpected. Let the White go to the White and the Black to the Black. I went in search of love and lost myself."Ī man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed. "Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |