“Thanks,” Barbara said, as Tapati poured her a cup of coffee.
Asit looked at her somewhat quizzically. “Well? Did you sleep well, sister?”
Barbara met his eyes. “Why such a question, Dada?”
“Shall I tell you or will you tell me?”
Barbara coloured up. “You do me an injustice again Dada. For I have not disbelieved the miracle. Hasn’t Jesus Himself said that with God everything is possible?”
Asit shook his head. “Not in this century. He talked in the days when science hadn’t explained everything. A learned professor wrote to me once a few years ago, that miracles could never happen in any age, past or present.”

The story of Sati is the fourth story in this series: ‘Miracles Still Happen’. Three such stories e. g. the story of Amal, of Shyam Thakur and of Mandira appeared in the previous issues of this journal. It will be followed by another story, the story of Anauda Giri.

“But I am not so learned, Dada,” Barbara laughed. “Nor have I called at this early hour to cross-examine you about the miracle. I came because a question gave me no rest.”

Asit nodded, sipping his coffee, and looked at her expectantly. “You are welcome, sister. As it happens, I am in a mood to talk this morning. So go ahead. Let us have a morning session for a change, why not?”

Tapati handed Barbara a second cup, then said, “Now out with it, sister!”

Barbara smiled at her and said, “Thanks, Didi, well perhaps I may as well ask your opinion first? What I am curious to know is, suppose a modern girl who has heard the Call, not a girl like Mandira, mind you, who lived a sheltered life, but a girl who has seen something of the world — supposing such a girl, a realist who is fully equipped for the life we generally lead today, decides to leave her worldly life and seek refuge with a Guru to be guided home, can she find one? Or, to be more precise, would a real Guru accept such a woman-disciple and let her make her home with him permanently?”

“What a question!” Tapati protested. “You speak as if you never clapped eyes on such a thing as your Didi! Or perhaps, you think that I am not modern enough?”

Barbara pulled a long face. “But this is unfair, Didi! I you know fully well how elusive you are. I know hardly anything about your inner history, and aren’t you dead opposed to Dada telling it to me? So how can I help being in the dark when you simply won’t lead the light?”

Asit laughed approvingly. “It's a good rejoinder — that.” Then holding Tapati’s eyes, “After this, you have no option but to let me tell her all about the light you have been hiding under the bushel of your elusiveness.”

Tapati coloured up and gave an embarrassed smile. “But the light so far has been little more than a spark. Tell her later about Sati and her burning aspiration which will be more apposite and convincing.”

Asit gave a smile of resignation. “Since you won’t come out into the open, I have no option but to comply.” Then turning to Barbara, “Lend me your ears then, insistent damsel! Only, I warn you that it’s a long story and a breath-taking drama — yes, Tapati, I too can do with a second cup, thank you.” Asit composed himself on his sofa, sitting crossed-legged, and sipped his coffee slowly. Then he began, “Her father wanted to give her a modern name: Anima. But her mother, a pious lady, was horrified at his choice and called her ‘Sati’, a name not only holy but surcharged with meaning. Unfortunately, this word is untranslatable. But if you insist on knowing its full import, I would ask you to roll three English attributes into one: chastity, faithfulness and, above all, purity.

“Yes, the name described her to perfection. I have often thought that it was not a name really, but an epithet, a title she could claim in her own rights. For she was so spotlessly pure that most people misunderstood her and insinuated, especially our womenfolk, that it was just a pose.” He smiled. “It’s the old feud between the exceptional and the mediocre who have always been at odds — since the dawn of time. That reminds me…” Asit gave a reminiscent smile, “Once, years ago, I hung a cage with a koel in it on one of the trees in our garden at Gaya, the holy city, where the Buddha attained illumination. But then a strange thing happened which gave me mine.” He laughed to himself and went on, “Every time my poor koels called, — ‘koo, koo, koo’, the parliament of crows around her met her ecstatic trill with a raucous protest — ‘ka, ka, ka’ — scandalized to the core that one who looked like a croaker dare behave like a warbler!”

Barbara laughed. “Gracious Heavens, Dada! I didn’t know you were an expert in crow-psychology as well!”

Tapati cut in with a laughter, “The more you will come to know him, the more you will agree with me, O sister mine, that your Dada too, has to be seen to be believed.”

They laughed in chorus.

Asit lit a cigar and resumed, “In all climes and ages, the wise and their critics have agreed on one point, at least, that God and Mammon never hit it off well together. Your Lord has likened the rich man striving to enter the Kingdom of Heaven to the proverbial camel struggling to enter the needle’s eye. Our Lord preferred to sigh — as He did, in the Bhagawad:

A pauper, I, am loved on earth
By paupers alone and so
You'll seldom catch the affluent
Wooing me here below.

“But to thank Him for small mercies, He — unlike your Messiah — has left a tiny loop-hole, presumably for some freaks among the affluent, like our Sati. For why else should she, an heiress, and an aristocrat at that, have turned so early to our Pauper Lord? But to debouch from the Prologue into the First Act of her life’s incredible drama.”

Asit blew out a ring of blue smoke.

“The name of her father was Ramapada Bagchi, a Brahmin by caste. ‘He was born under exceptionally lucky stars, his devout wife was wont to say with some pride. His admirers called him a ‘born aristocrat’. But from the Brahmin’s point of view, he was a ‘renegade’, for he returned from England, a pucca sahib who, preferring wealth to wisdom, grew rich trading in Assam tea. And the more he prospered, the less he liked our Indian lack of initiative till, in the end, he made people gasp by building a resplendent ultra-modern mansion with air-conditioned rooms, a Japanese garden, plus a swimming pool. His one naive boast used to be that he was a free-thinker-cum-iconoclast who believed in vim, good living and progress and as such could have no truck with orthodoxy, medievalism or astrology. “So, he declined to be grateful to his ‘stars’ for his health, wealth, good looks, a beautiful wife, an inexhaustible fund of vitality and a large number of friends and admirers. But though he frowned on the old-world ideas of his sweet wife, Mahamaya, he both loved her for her beauty and respected her for her character. That is why he built a lovely temple for her and installed therein, with due ceremony, a beautiful image of the Lord in white marble. How could he do otherwise? Did he not boast that he was an ardent liberal who believed in laissez-faire?

“When Sati was born, there was great rejoicing. Mahamaya Devi fed 10,000 beggars in Gauhati and Rampada Babu sent a donation of Rs. 30,000 to a ‘chic’ girls’ school in Calcutta. They differed in many things, but concurred in this that Sati was a Godsend and as such must be hailed with due éclat.

“The little new-comer amazed all early enough; for not only was she endowed with a breathtaking beauty and precocious mind but quickly developed into a veritable prodigy. She mastered our whole Bengali alphabet in a couple of days, when she was barely five, and by seven had memorized nearly all the long and high-sounding Sanskrit hymns which their temple-priest used to intone day after day before the Lord’s Image. But the most amazing thing about her was that she never fidgeted while her mother prayed in the temple, morning and evening, for full two hours and often joined in herself, in a strange absorption! And last, though by no means the least, she insisted, at eight, on learning Sanskrit, saying that she did not care for English.”

“How did her father react to all this?” Barbara interposed.

“He was at his wit’s end. He had condoned her childish interest in the temple thinking that she would outgrow that nonsense with age, but how could he sit by, smiling, now that his only daughter and heiress seemed to be going off the rails, scouting English in favour of an ancient language which did nobody any good? They would put the clock back, would they? Nay, not while he was living! Sati must not grow into a replica of her mother — a disconcerting anachronism — and spell ruin to his hopes that she shall flower into a modern woman par excellence — a true ‘phantom of delight’ — educated, accomplished and refined to her finger-tips. ‘The little lunatic must be sent at once to an ultra-modern school to be exorcised!’ he thundered at his wife.”

“But unfortunately, Gauhati did not boast of an ultra-modern school. So he decided to send her to Calcutta where the school after his heart — the one he had endowed when Sati was born — was transforming the raw material of Indian womanhood into finished, resplendent, modern products approved by ‘the enlightened’. His brother, Kalipada, a rising barrister of the Calcutta High Court, lived in a large and lovely house in Chowringhee, the Fifth Avenue of Calcutta. Sati was henceforth to stay with him and be purged of her dross by the most efficient cultural goldsmiths of Bengal.” Asit blew another smoke-ring and smiled ironically.

“I happened to be Kalipada’s next-door neighbour and he happened to be not only fond of music but a connoisseur as well. I used to be a frequent guest of theirs, singing mostly to a fashionable elite in their beautiful, ultra-modern drawing-room. I grew to like more and more both him and his charming, if a trifle garrulous — wife, Mohini. I used to call her Boudi, that is sister-in-law, as we in Bengal, often do when she is not a relation. And she, good lady, reciprocated my affection with all her native effusiveness, so much so that within a few months I came to be treated almost as a member of their family. And thanks to her garrulity, I had been put wise to almost everything about Sati’s antecedents — long before her arrival.”

“She had just turned eight when she came to Calcutta to be hammered and chiselled out of recognition. But here our Lord played a trick as He so often does, and sent her almost as a protégée to me. What I mean by this, you will see presently.”

(To be Continued)