Chitra, a Play in One Act | Page 6

desire, you who are the desire of the whole world!
From the easternmost hill on whose summit the morning sun first prints
his fiery foot to the end of the sunset land have I travelled. I have seen
whatever is most precious, beautiful and great on the earth. My
knowledge shall be yours, only say for what or for whom you seek.
Chitra
He whom I seek is known to all.
Arjuna
Indeed! Who may this favourite of the gods be, whose fame has
captured your heart?
Chitra
Sprung from the highest of all royal houses, the greatest of all heroes is
he.
Arjuna
Lady, offer not such wealth of beauty as is yours on the altar of false
reputation. Spurious fame spreads from tongue to tongue like the fog of
the early dawn before the sun rises. Tell me who in the highest of
kingly lines is the supreme hero?
Chitra
Hermit, you are jealous of other men's fame. Do you not know that all
over the world the royal house of the Kurus is the most famous?
Arjuna
The house of the Kurus!
Chitra
And have you never heard of the greatest name of that far-famed
house?
Arjuna
From your own lips let me hear it.
Chitra
Arjuna, the conqueror of the world. I have culled from the mouths of
the multitude that imperishable name and hidden it with care in my
maiden heart. Hermit, why do you look perturbed? Has that name only
a deceitful glitter? Say so, and I will not hesitate to break this casket of
my heart and throw the false gem to the dust.
Arjuna
Be his name and fame, his bravery and prowess false or true, for

mercy's sake do not banish him from your heart--for he kneels at your
feet even now.
Chitra
You, Arjuna!
Arjuna
Yes, I am he, the love-hungered guest at your door.
Chitra
Then it is not true that Arjuna has taken a vow of chastity for twelve
long years?
Arjuna
But you have dissolved my vow even as the moon dissolves the night's
vow of obscurity.
Chitra
Oh, shame upon you! What have you seen in me that makes you false
to yourself? Whom do you seek in these dark eyes, in these milk-white
arms, if you are ready to pay for her the price of your probity? Not my
true self, I know. Surely this cannot be love, this is not man's highest
homage to woman! Alas, that this frail disguise, the body, should make
one blind to the light of the deathless spirit! Yes, now indeed, I know,
Arjuna, the fame of your heroic manhood is false.
Arjuna
Ah, I feel how vain is fame, the pride of prowess! Everything seems to
me a dream. You alone are perfect; you are the wealth of the world, the
end of all poverty, the goal of all efforts, the one woman! Others there
are who can be but slowly known. While to see you for a moment is to
see perfect completeness once and for ever.
Chitra
Alas, it is not I, not I, Arjuna! It is the deceit of a god. Go, go, my hero,
go. Woo not falsehood, offer not your great heart to an illusion. Go.
SCENE III
Chitra
No, impossible. To face that fervent gaze that almost grasps you like
clutching hands of the hungry spirit within; to feel his heart struggling
to break its bounds urging its passionate cry through the entire
body--and then to send him away like a beggar--no, impossible.
Enter MADANA and VASANTA.
Ah, god of love, what fearful flame is this with which thou hast

enveloped me! I burn, and I burn whatever I touch.
Madana
I desire to know what happened last night.
Chitra
At evening I lay down on a grassy bed strewn with the petals of spring
flowers, and recollected the wonderful praise of my beauty I had heard
from Arjuna;--drinking drop by drop the honey that I had stored during
the long day. The history of my past life like that of my former
existences was forgotten. I felt like a flower, which has but a few
fleeting hours to listen to all the humming flatteries and whispered
murmurs of the woodlands and then must lower its eyes from the Sky,
bend its head and at a breath give itself up to the dust without a cry,
thus ending the short story of a perfect moment that has neither past nor
future.
Vasanta
A limitless life of glory can bloom and spend itself in a morning.
Madana
Like an endless meaning in the narrow span of a song.
Chitra
The southern breeze caressed me to sleep. From the flowering Malati
bower overhead silent kisses dropped over my body. On my hair, my
breast, my feet,