Never before have I thought about myself. Now, quite often, I find myself observing myself from the outside. I try to see myself through Bimala’s eyes—how does she perceive me? I am deeply serious by nature—it is my habit to view everything with excessive gravity.

But truly, is it not better to laugh away life than to drown it in tears? That is how it goes on. All the sorrow scattered throughout the world, within and without the home, we so easily brush aside in our minds, like shadows, like illusions, and thus we dance and feast without care. If, for even a single moment, I could hold that sorrow as real, could look upon it as truth—would I still have an appetite for food, would sleep remain in my eyes?

Only myself—I cannot see myself among those who so easily let things drift away. It seems to me that my sorrow alone has settled upon the world’s heart as an eternal burden. That is why I am so grave—why, when I look within, my chest is flooded with tears...

O wretched one, stand once in the open court of the world and measure yourself against all others. There, across the ages...

In the vast fair, amidst the crowd of millions, Bimala—who is she to you? She is your wife! Whom do you call your wife? That very word, which you have been inflating with your own breath, tending it day and night—do you know, if a single pin pricks it from outside, in a moment all the air will escape and it will collapse entirely!

My wife—therefore she is mine! But if she wishes to say, no, I am my own self—then at once I protest, how can that be, you are my wife! Wife! Is that an argument, is that a truth? Can a living person be locked up, sealed away, from head to toe, within that single word?

Wife! Into this word I have poured all that is sweet in my life, all that is sacred, and made it human within my heart; never, not for a single day, have I cast her down into the dust. How much incense of worship, how many notes of the Sahana flute, how many bakul blossoms of spring, how many shefali flowers of autumn have I offered to that name! If today, like a paper boat, she suddenly sinks into the muddy water of the gutter, then with her—there, you see, again this gravity! Whom do you call gutter, whom do you call muddy water? Those are words of anger. Just because you are angry, the world will not change. If Bimala is not yours, then she is not yours—no matter how much you press or rage, the more you do so, the more that very truth will be proven. The heart may break—let it. But by that, the world—

It will not go bankrupt, not even you will go bankrupt. Whatever a person loses in life, he himself is