Under Oriental Skies

August 21, 1875

It has been more than a week now since James left for Delhi. Oftentimes in the early hours of the morning I throw out my left hand to my side, only to find a vacant coldness there. As the first light of the rising sun streams in through the eastern window, I look out and see the blossoming colours of the falling Autumn.

David came in today after almost a week. I had thought he had left Simla for the winter to the lower Himalayas to meet the fakirs he keeps on talking about so passionately. But I was mistaken. It seems that he has taken Mr. Bose's rebuff to his heart and is now learning Bengali to read some of the books in that tongue. He struggled throughout the day with no thought for breakfast or lunch reading a grammar written by the Serampore missionary William Carey and struggling with the recent issues of the Bangadarshan which David now thinks is even better than our Spectator back at home. Once he looked up from his books, looked towards the silver mirror on the wall, then closed his eyes and read aloud something to himself, as if with a cry of deep anguish : 'Kothay khuje pabo, O' amar moner Manush.'

Though I did not understand those words, there was a strange rhythm in them that reminded me of the summer of '78 when we had been to the Swiss Alps with Grandfather (God bless his dear soul!).

Aunt Fanny came in towards tea with dear Olivia. David immediately closed his books, gathered them together and with a furtive glance in my direction rushed out from the room. Olivia too, quick as ever to notice these minute details, looked towards me and gave me a thin smile with her delicately carved lips. Aunt Fanny did not seem to have even noticed the flurry of movement her entry had caused.

After tea, we sat down in the garden under the tree burdened with yellow leaves. Olivia had suddenly disappeared. I was wondering where she could have gone to when Aunt Fanny broke the uneasy silence.

'Is everything all right between you and James?'

'But of course, Aunt Fanny!'

'You know, if there ever is anything that you want to tell me, I am always there for you.'

'Yes, Aunt Fanny.'

'When I left England last winter your dear mother drew me to her side and said to me, 'Fanny, I hope that you shall watch over my little darling out there.' You will tell me, won't you, if there is anything that is amiss between the two of you?'

'Yes, Aunt Fanny, I shall. Where could Olivia have gone to?'

I walked into the living room and saw her in a green chair half-bent over a thick brown volume. When she saw me enter, she beckoned to me to come closer and we both began to turn through its pages. It was a copy of St. Augustine's Confessions which Olivia had picked up from the shelves. She had started reading at Book 9 where St Augustine writes about his struggles to find his beloved God in the midst of the temptations and the afflictions of the flesh, and when we arrived at the Twenty-seventh chapter of Book Ten, she began to read aloud, softly to herself, but words that echoed in the distant depths of my own heart.

Too late have I loved You, O Beauty so ancient and so new, too late have I loved You.

For see, You were within me and I was without, and I sought You there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things You have made. You were with me, but I was not with You. You called and cried aloud to me, and forced open my deafness. You did gleam and shine, and You did chase away my blindness. You did breathe fragrant odours and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for You. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. You did touch me, and now I burn for Your peace.
When I come to be united to You with all my being, then there will be no more pain and toil for me, and my life shall be a real life, being wholly filled by You.

David entered the room with another one of his grammar books just as Olivia was reading out these last words. Almost instinctively he uttered to himself, 'Ah, St. Augustine. Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! That is just what the Bauls of Bengal keep on singing about, 'Kothay khuje pabo, O' amar moner Manush!'

Then he stepped out into the garden, but seeing Aunt Fanny seated there started for the opposite direction just in time.

'Say, that did sound Greek to me!', exclaimed Olivia, shaken out of her book.

'Well, it is just as well that he did not hear you. He might literally have started talking to you in Greek.'

It is now late in the evening, and the darts of the early moon streak in and fall on my pale hands. Oh, how pale indeed do they seem in this light! I sometimes feel that You, my diary, is perhaps the Beloved that St. Augustine was searching for. And yet who are You, my diary? For the more that I ask You this question, the more intensely I fall back on myself and ask, Who am I?

I do feel at such times that You have picked up a life of Your own, that You are not anymore a mere extension of me, that You are writing Yourself through me. And yet I do hope that someday I shall know You as deeply as I know myself.

Perhaps that day I shall finally return to myself, and become one with You at that very moment of home-coming.