Forest, Dark Night and Sarasvatichandra Aarthdas, who was moved purely by self-interest, was incapable of comprehending Sarasvatichandra’s selfless generosity. He disappeared with the ring that Sarasvatichandra offered him without once looking back. The night was upon them. The sky seemed to be in the throes of labour, uneasy and on the verge of losing consciousness. Sensing the liminality of the twilight hour as if by instinct, birds small and big flew back to earth and disappeared into the branches of trees that sheltered them. The play of light and dark, the moving shadows and the shroud-like silence of the forest were capable of unnerving a lonely, forlorn heart. A distant feeble moon rose uncertainly in the sky. The moon seemed frightened by the world and wished to hide with the sun and the constellations in the dark caves of the mythical Astachal which lay in the west. It was at that twilight hour that Sarasvatichandra regained consciousness. As he lay on his back, his open eyes took in the sky, the forest and the shrieking night. The last vestige of human presence, Aarthdas, was nowhere to be seen. Sarasvatichandra sat up and looked around, his eyes searching the swiftly falling dark for the path that Aarthdas would have taken. He realised that he searched in vain. He looked up at the night sky. All around him, the forest breathed and rustled in the wind as if it were alive. Sounds of wild animals coming from deep within the forest startled and frightened him. He stood up at once, his heart pounding. His agility suggested that he was neither hungry, nor feeble, nor even melancholic. The faint moon had disappeared as if in fright. Darkness, impenetrable, soft and heavy, descended as suddenly as a tiger jumps on its prey and it enveloped Sarasvatichandra. Face to face with that all-encompassing dark, his heart stopped beating for moments. He cupped his hands over his ears to stop the blood rushing in his ears. Suddenly, his eyes began to glow with an intense delight. He cried out aloud: Oh, at last!—the vision of the Great Night that I have long sought! Oh, Kumud, at this moment I erase you from memory. You belong to the world of day, and I to the world of night. This vision allows me to imagine the dark night of death. Chandrakant, you had wanted to save me from this vision, to redeem me! Gumanba, all this was possible because of you. Pitaji, you stopped loving me and freed me from the bondage of love. Today I stand freed of all bonds—of illusion, society, family, love and wealth. Free at last, I can experience this ultimate sublime state. I am surrounded by this dark, dense forest bereft of any human presence except myself. Here I am amidst the beasts of the night. God is my only succour. I have attained the condition that one attains at the end of one’s life. I have moved from being a millionaire in