Page:Eyesore - Rabindranath Tagore.pdf/8

Rh Flooded in the joyousness of that new light the devotees of Gautama are enjoying the supreme realisation of peace and love.

With the exception of one standing figure at the top on the right, most of the figures are mutilated or otherwise damaged. But the physical mutilation has hardly affected the spirit of the picture. Injured and effaced as it now stands, the pose of the figures makes it even now a glorious representation of supreme adoration.

There are things which do not always find adequate expression in words. Few emotions have vocabular synonyms. A work like this is best understood when least interpreted. And it is in works like this that it is readily realised that it was not merely dexterity but an inspiration that produced them and made them so full of moral splendour. There are things other than visual objects. The mind's eye sees them. It was the possession of that insight that enabled the Ajanta masters to see forms, pose and grace infinitely superior to those visible in ordinary nature and prompted them to accentuate those characteristics in their art with a grand freedom and brilliant variations.

HEN Rajlakshmi set about with tireless energy to initiate the daughter-in-law into her household duties. During the day her time was divided between pantry, kitchen and household god: at night, to make up for the separation from her own people, Rajlakshml would make Asha sleep with her in her room.

Annapurna, after much thought, decided to keep aloof from her niece.

Mahendra felt very much like the small boy watching an elder, of whom he is afraid, sucking all the sweetness out of a piece of sugarcane.

He went to Annapurna and said, "I really can't bear the way mother is making the poor girl slave."

Annapurna was quite aware that Rajlakshmi was overdoing it, but she said, "Why, Mahin, it's only right that your wife should be taught her housewifely duties. Would it be good for her, like the girls one sees now-a-days, to be playing the fine lady with novels and fancy needle-work?"

"Good or bad," replied Mahendra excitedly, "the girl of to-day must be like the girl of to-day. If my wife could enjoy a novel the same as I do, I'd see nothing to be sorry for, or to laugh at either."

Hearing her son's voice in Annapurna's room, Rajlakshmi left her work and hied thither. "What's all this discussion about?" she asked in a hard ringing voice.

Mahendra replied in a tone of unabated excitement, "There's nothing to discuss, mother, but I can't allow my wife to do household drudgery like a servant-maid."

The mother, suppressing her rising temper, asked with an incisive calm, "What then is to be done with the lady?"

"I'll teach her to read and write," said Mahendra.

Rajlakshmi hurried away without another word and returned in a moment, half dragging by the hand her daughter-in-law, whom she placed before Mahendra, saying, "Here she is, teach your wife to read and write by all means!"

Then turning to Annapurna she said with a great parade of mock humility, "Forgive me, Mistress Aunt, I beg you, if I've been unable to appreciate your niece and have let her stain her delicate fingers in the kitchen. I now leave you to scrub and polish her into a fine lady and hand her