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Updated: May 8, 2025
Some Indian friend of hers had composed a doleful poem in English in memory of her husband. It is needless to expatiate on its poetic merit or felicity of diction. As my ill-luck would have it, the composer had indicated that the dirge was to be chanted to the mode Behaga. So the widow one day entreated me to sing it to her thus. Like the silly innocent that I was, I weakly acceded.
There was unfortunately no one there but I who could realise the atrociously ludicrous way in which the Behaga mode combined with those absurd verses. The widow seemed intensely touched to hear the Indian's lament for her husband sung to its native melody. I thought that there the matter ended, but that was not to be.
I would then be summoned to sing to him. The moon has risen; its beams, passing though the trees, have fallen on the verandah floor; I am singing in the Behaga mode: O Companion in the darkest passage of life.... My father with bowed head and clasped hands is intently listening. I can recall this evening scene even now.
And as, beginning with the Puravi, we went on varying the mode of our music with the declining day, we saw, on reaching the Behaga, the western sky close the doors of its factory of golden toys, and the moon on the east rise over the fringe of trees. Then we would row back to the landing steps of the villa and seat ourselves on a quilt spread on the terrace facing the river.
I frequently met the widowed lady at different social gatherings, and when after dinner we joined the ladies in the drawing room, she would ask me to sing that Behaga. Everyone else would anticipate some extraordinary specimen of Indian music and would add their entreaties to hers.
I was made to stand up on the staircase landing. Pointing to a closed door the widow said: "That's where she is." And I gave voice to that Behaga dirge facing the mysterious unknown on the other side. Of what happened to the invalid as the result I have yet received no news. After my return to London I had to expiate in bed the consequences of my fatuous complaisance. Dr.
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