Page:Letters from Abroad.pdf/72

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The night deopens; The house is empty; its loneliness aches with silence. Come, woman, bring thy lamp of vigil! Enter thy secret chamber of sorrow. Make the dark hours quiver with the agony of thy prayer, Till the day dawns in the Hast.

Civilisation in the West is a magnifying glass. It makes the most ordinary things hugely big. Its buildings, business, amusements, are exaggerations. The spirit of the West loves its high-heeled boots, whose heels are much bigger than itself, Since I came to this continent, my arithmetic has become absurdly bloated. It refuses to be compressed within decent limits. My ideal money bag out here can easily put to shame D—and K- Babu tied together. But I can assure you that to carry such a burden in my imagination is wearisome.

Yesterday, some Santiniketan photographs came by chance into my hands. I felt as if I was suddenly wakened up from a Brobdignagian nightmare. I say to myself, this is our Santiniketan. It is ours, because it has not been manufactured by a machine. It is truth itself—the truth which loves to be simple, because it is great. Truth is beautiful —like woman in our own country. She never strains