Letter 4

My beloved Bal and sweet Shanta,
Please accept my and my brother’s heartiest congratulations upon your entering the second stage of life –the life of wedded love. Nobly hast thou, dear Bal! fulfilled the first stage of your life –the stage of self-culture and self-sacrifice. Thou possessest the golden keys to the treasured wealth of knowledge both ancient and modern, in the acquaintance with Sanskrit and English languages. The final examination that you have passed in Medicine is bound to stand you in good stead, in any part of the world and in spite of any laws passed by a narrow misguided legislature; while your pen has already made its influence felt in Maharashtra in both the fields of prose and poetry. On the other hand the responsibilities and duties of that stage could not have been better discharged and fulfilled. When the storm began to gather over our Mother it found you unmoved and firm at your post – it burst and left you undaunted and true, and among the many faithless yet faithful! The enthusiasm, to awaken which amongst their youth Europe has been holding before their eyes the glories of iron crosses and Victoria crosses and unrolling rolls of honour –that enthusiasm and Faith had been displayed by you who discarded even the reward of public acclamation nobly therefore hast thou completed the first stage of your life now enter ye-, dear Bal and beloved Shanta ! –on the happiest and most exalted stage of life, the life of wedded love. May the path, dear Bal, be strewn with roses and may thy youth, dear Shanta, blossom forth in Amaranthuses and gold ! Domestic happiness- ‘the only bliss of Paradise that has survived its fall’ may bless your nuptial shed! मधुनक्तमुतोषसि मधुमत् पाथिवं रजः (The dawn, the evening sweet and grateful be the Earth)!!

You perhaps remember that in one of my letter I had just dropped a suggestion to the effect that it would not have surprised me if some one amongst the clever Bengalis had stolen your heart! After all the expected had very nearly happened. For though I long to see the day, when inter –provincial marriages amongst the Hindus would throw down the artificial and harmful barriers of castes and creeds and the Great River of life – our Hindu Life would, having freed itself of all bogs and sands, flow in an ever fresh and mighty current- uninterrupted and uninterruptible –still the first and foremost thing to be effected. In that direction is to restore to love her sole privilege and right of presiding over the wedding rights. Indeed, we can no longer be blind to the fact that we care more for the good breeding of cattle and fowls than for the Eugenics of man. Centuries of child marriages and marriages by proxies! Centuries of love banished from its legitimate sphere of influence to attract and develop elements that tend to the betterment of body and mind and soul; and the inevitable result is a race puny, debilitated, all vigour and manhood sapped out of it. Thousand things have wrought this-and the marriage customs that prevail in us are one of the few important factors contributing to it. Authorities should come in to sanctify but not to silence love altogether. And glad was I therefore that, the age, the education, the part that mutual attraction and esteem played in welding your hearts together and above all the sanction of all those who feel drawn towards us should have enabled you to have realized that in which I thought our family should not lag behind. Or in short when dear Bhau has sanctified it with his blessings it goes without saying that it must have been just after my heart.

And now Doctor Saheb, where are you going to settle? Only yesterday I was told to write this second letter as the first had been lost in the Post office by accident. Although it must have cost you a lot of anxiety yet to me it enabled to know your present address. From that I see you are in Bombay, at present. Would you settle in that unhealthy and cramped in city! Would not the rising free Baroda suit better where the enlightened prince Sayaji rules? But all that as you choose and not I –for you are on the spot and know how to judge best. One thing only I would insist upon and that is you must not in any case risk your Health and freedom- personal freedom. This is depend upon me- perfectly not only permissible but positively commendable in your case and the case of those who stand as you do. In other cases too much attention to personal considerations is undoubtedly demoralizing; but you cannot pay too much attention to it. Be anywhere in the world – in the forests of Africa- in the Republic of America-the medical knowledge that you possess is sure to serve a passport and a safe guard to you. For indeed wherever death is Doctors also can be- (Ugh! Seen very angry? Of course I mention this with all due respect to the Majesty of Medicines- in fact in order to exalt it.) Therefore do nothing that would do injury to your Health and also, nay more so, health of Shanta. She should of course be encouraged to read more and to write even if she chooses; but the first and foremost consideration of a young lady should be her health. It is a trust she holds for others, a debt she owes to generations not yet born. Every atom of health that a young lady dissipates is so much that is taken away from the Strength of souls that are yet to rise. She is a golden link that joins the Yesterday to the Morrow; a Promise that holds in it the possibilities of her race. Therefore the first care of a wife should be her health that would harmonise the beauties of her body and mind and soul. So neither study nor pleasure should entice her away so as to tax her energy too much, but both should be indulged in only so far as to render that Health perfect and that Beauty transperantly pure.

Now something about me; and yet I wonder what that something is! For there am I as you left me after you finished the last letter you got from me. Change is a word that is not found in prisoner’s dictionary-especially in its Port Blair Edition. The great war that you say has shaken your hemisphere has left totally untouched me and my Port Blair. This our little kingdom here is about the only state that can with a justifiable touch of egoism claim in its yearly speech from the Throne of having maintained its interests in tact in this World –Earth Quake. Our imports and exports are unchanged. We keep our lights all night up. While our international communications are as peaceful as they had been ever since this little kingdom rose out of its Oceanic Night! Mr. Asquith has every reason to be jealous of us. Our citizens have not been forced to subsist only on a reduced scale of meal and Potatoes as the Germans are said to die for the simple reason that we never ate any! Whatever we eat we grow- grass and such other edibles while these solid and aspiring walls of my jail have reduced the very walls of China to a mere heap of debris. Those walls could, and that too not very effectively stop the outsiders from rushing in but these walls while doing that can also effectively prevent any one inside from going out. No! on pain of death’ no! Thus we, like a little world organized to serve as a prototype and a foretaste of the hope of the Humanitarians, when the war shall have been banished from the realms of man, live-I beg your pardon – exist- as peacefully and quietly as to put to shame the very realm of Death.

As to the interview –I think it is best to wait till this war be over. For to a certain extent we can understand the hesitation of the Government in granting it now. And even after the war the letters that you may write to them for the interview should be only on the ground that every other prisoner is allowed a visit, so should I after 5 years and not on the ground of any anxiety of our hearts to meet. For in that case even if they do not grant it we shall at least have the manly satisfaction of not having displayed the most sacred and the most human of all wounds-the wounds of separation-to an alien and unsympathetic eye. Again whatever you wish to write in amelioration here should be written directly to Delhi. For almost nothing lies in the hands of authorities here as for as change, especially for the better, is concerned in my case and whatever they can do they are doing and I would request them to do if possible, when it be left undone. I know that some of you though sure and certain that I Shall not break down under this imprisonment are still grieved to think that I should have been suffering all this and should have been forced to desist from all work social or political or even literary. But brother just think- is suffering no work? Who worked more for Christianity –they who suffered in silence and unknown or they who worked? Surely both; but I suspect that those who work for a good cause outside, work much-but they who suffer for it in prisons and fields work more. At bottom work, if true, is suffering and suffering, if true is work. Suffering is the motor, the power that moves, and goads and propels a people. Unless the best amongst them suffer the rest can not work. Both are grand, both are indispensable, and if both be indispensable, then what grief if we be chosen and ordered to guard this post rather than that? I bless myself that this fell to my lot! Do not grieve, brother, that I sit in darkness and simply waiting while every one else is lighting his or her lamp to shed light on the path of man.

Do you not remember that ‘Her State is queenly:thousands at her bidding post; - they also serve who only stand and wait!’
And how much more then do they who not only wait but suffer and yet stand!! The worker is great for he puts stone upon stone and chisels and moulds; but then the cement of the Church? – is the sufferer! The martyr that bleeds!!

And indeed, Bal! you can hardly believe how happy I feel from moment to moment – strange breezes of bliss pass and repass kissing all the inevitable physical worry and weakness into ever fresh ever blossoming joy of the soul at rest . I feel just as I used to feel in the college days after some final examination had been satisfactorily gone through and went to stay home quietly but confident by expecting the welcome news of passing. This Great Trial, This Test, to achieve the deliverance of the Mother!-and so satisfactorily gone through as far as I was concerned! And now I have come Home here and am confidently expecting the Great News that must come! Oh! How I sleep soundly –how sweet the things; for I worked so strenuously in the Day and while I was required at Her head- quarters that as soon as this night came sleep fell as gently on my eyelids as dew. There are moments when ugly dreams trouble-desire to shine and see light-but at the first touch of analysis the self stands revealed and the dreams melt away, are swept away- and calm once more set in. Oh, when some times after such a sleep I wake in my cell and hear the waves idly breaking on the beach just outside my little, high placed and barred window I remember the lines of Kalidas प्रासादवातायनदृश्यवीचिः। प्रबोधयत्यर्णव एव सुप्तम्। and fancying myself like that king I laugh and play and joke – all with myself! Such thoughts are suggested by that consciousness of a rest that is at the same time the intensity of work – and they in their turn guiling away the mind from the too real heidousness of a prison strengthen that consciousness of that rest. And thus it is a fact that On the whole I am and so is our brother happy, satisfied and willing to live as long as that must be in the atmosphere of frowns and frettings and harshness, of constant clash and constant discipline every step in which reminds you that you belong to a race of slaves.

The account of your marriage ceremony was very graphically written. As to the writer- he is indeed a very gifted man but with him self –diffidence is a great drawback. I think he should first try to write small popular stories and short novels and get them published in some of the magazines for that would give him confidence in himself. Take for example the question of caste system. Let him by suggestive stories paint the harm it is now doing, how it is retarding us from the Great Goal to which all mankind is moving. Then let him write bigger works and so on. To him and to the Sahodar Yamaraj and to all of them give my most affectionate remembrances – my companion of Childhood and chums of the College days and comrades in the field, all they whomever I called mine and to whom I pledge my word I remember them all with fresh affection and esteem. I was glad to know the whereabouts of my dear Rishi! Is he still in the ‘Service’; holds the same office? And my new friends! I remember him so much ; for he had been so considerate and kind under- even under these circumstances, even when he himself had been undergoing the same trial! And then he is so intelligent and active. I have missed the name of our Professor in the account of your marriage ceremony? All my best wishes for him, and my dear and very esteemed Madam Cama! She must have suffered a lot of worry owing to the war! Give her my best and freshest love and tell her that those whom I saw in Paris while I was with her then are ever foremost in my memory- especially the Sannyasin! The photos that you sent have been a constant source of happiness to us. My dear Yesu Vahini looks so calm and ever bearing and ever true ‘like a Devata’,as one of the officers had said to me when she came to see me in the Bombay jail! My deepest love to her and my Tai and my Shanta. I am proud of them all! Next time do not forget to forward the translation of my beloved Yamane’s letter – Noble girl! – poor girl! A thousand pities! And yet a thousand glories for her silent and yet intense fixity of purpose. Do not press her to come to Bombay if her parents object. Their judgment and love must be respected. How are all her brothers ? My most humble प्रणाम to my mother and aunt मावशी.