Ungrateful Sorrow

At dawn she took her farewell
The mind tried to console me saying,
"Everything is an illusion".
I was resentful and I replied:
"Here is the table with her sewing box on it,
those flower-pots on the balcony,
the fan on the bed bearing her name---
surely they are real."

The mind explained: "Yes, and yet try and think."
I answered back, "there is nothing to think-just see,
there is the novel that is lying with her hairpin struck in the middle of the pages,

still waiting to be finished.
If these are only illusions,

is she then to be even a greater illusion that all this?

The mind kept silent.
A friend came over and consoled me,
"What is good, is true, it never fades.

The living world preserves

it like the rare gem of a necklace on its breast."

I got furious and replied, "How do you know?
Do you mean to say that the body is no good? Why then the body must perish?"

Like a child in rage who keeps hitting his mother,
I tried to hurt every little refuge that I had in the whole world in the same manner.

And I complained," The world is treacherous."

Suddenly, I was startled.
I seemed to hear someone say," You- ungrateful ! "

Looking out through the window, 

just behind the tamarisk tree, 

I saw the moon just three days old, 

it were, as if, 

the laughter of the one who had departed, 

playing hide and seek!

A voice of censure came through the star-sprinkled dark night,

"I gave myself to you, was that treachery?

And now when I am shadowed, is it there that you place your tremendous faith?"

Found in Short story masterpieces, "5 Indian Masters - Raja Rao, Tagore, Premchand, Mulk Raj Anand, Khuswant Singh". Published by Jaico Publishing House, 2003

~~~

The last para has been translated and worded differently by Snehendu Bikash Kar - though the meaning has been the same.

I looked at the crescent moon
hidden behind the tamarisk tree outside my window.
As if the dear departed one is smiling
and playing hide-and-seek with me.

From the depth of darkness punctuated by scattered stars
came a rebuke: "when I let you grasp me you call it an deception,
and yet when I remain concealed,
why do you hold on to your faith in me with such conviction?"

~~~

Such a beautiful poem. It has been taken from Lipika,  By Rabindranath Tagore.  

Sometimes people leave to never come back. They cross the river of life to go to another world, from which there is no coming back. What refuge should the dear ones take in then? If everything around us is  an illusion, then was their presence an illusion too? Was the warmth you felt and the tears you shed, the times you bled and the moments you enjoyed an illusion too? What was illusion...what was a figment of your imagination?

And if it was all real, then is your absence real too? Do you not exist anywhere anymore? If I call out your name, would I ever get an answer?  Would you not exist even in the windmills of my mind? If you would, what would one call that then, real or illusion?