In the month of Bhadra, the floodwaters ripple all around—the tender sheen of the young paddy fields is like the fresh beauty of a child’s body. The water has reached right up to the bottom of our garden. The morning sunlight burns upon this earth, utterly insufficient, like the love of the blue sky.

Why is it that I cannot sing? The water in the canal shimmers, the leaves on the trees glisten, the paddy fields shudder and flash again and again—in this morning symphony of autumn, I alone am mute. The melody is trapped within me, all the brilliance of the world gets caught inside me, unable to find its way out. When I see this unexpressed, lusterless self of mine, I understand why I am deprived in this world. Who could bear my company, day and night?

Bimala is filled to the brim with the surge of life. That is why, in these nine years, not for a single moment has she grown old to me. But if there is anything within me, it is only a mute depth, not a resonant current. I can only receive, but I cannot give forth.

My company is like a fast for human beings—only now, seeing Bimala today, do I realize what a famine she has endured all these days. Whom shall I blame?

Alas, the monsoon is full, the month of Bhadra, Yet my temple is empty!

My temple was built to remain empty—its doors are closed. The deity I thought resided within has always sat outside the temple; all this time, I did not understand. I believed he had accepted my offerings, that he had bestowed his blessings—but my temple is empty, my temple is empty!

Every year, in the month of Bhadra, when the earth is in the fullness of her youth, the two of us would go boating on the lake at Shyamladaha during the waxing phase of the moon. On Krishna Panchami, when the evening moonlight faded away and sank utterly into darkness, we would return home. I would say to Bimala, “A song must again and again return to its refrain;—in life too, the refrain of the song of union is here, here in this open nature; here, upon the shimmering water where ‘the east wind blows,’ where the green earth, drawing a veil of shadow over her head, listens in silent moonlight along the banks, eavesdropping all night long—here, not within walls, was the first meeting of man and woman, the first union of four eyes;—so here we, too, once more enact that primal union of the earliest age.”

I return amidst the smoke, to that union which is like the union of Shiva and Parvati, in the lotus groves by the waters of Lake Manasarovar on Mount Kailash. After my marriage, two years passed in Calcutta amidst the turmoil of examinations—then, for these seven years since, every full moon of the month of Bhadra has come to our watery bridal chamber, beside the