United States or Burundi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He, being a poor Brahmin, could not pay for the flowers, but in place of that he used to read some of his own verses to the Malini. One day there bloomed in the Malini's tank a lily of unparalleled beauty. Plucking it, the Malini offered it to Kalidas. That poem is an ocean of wit, but every one knows that its opening lines are tasteless.
A thousand years ago Kalidas welcomed that first day of Asarh; and once in every year of my life that same day of Asarh dawns in all its glory that self-same day of the poet of old Ujjain, which has brought to countless men and women their joys of union, their pangs of separation.
Therefore I offered him a chair and gave old Kalidas the go-by. There is a kind of bond between this postmaster and me. When the post office was in a part of this estate building, I used to meet him every day. I wrote my story of "The Postmaster" one afternoon in this very room.
Ryots need a Raja and a Raja needs ryots: if he had no ryots where was he to get money for his support: and he repeated the verse of the poet Kalidas: "When the jungle is destroyed, the deer are in trouble without jungle: When the Raja is destroyed, the ryots are in trouble without their Raja: When the good wife of the house is destroyed, good fortune flees away."
Here is something more imposing, a chariot-and-four, four spanking Arabs in gold-mounted trappings, a fat and elaborate coachman, very solemn, two tall hurkarus, or avant-couriers, supporting the box, one on either side, with studied symmetry, like Siva and Vishnu upholding the throne of Brahma, four syces running at the horses' heads, each with his chowree, or fly-flapper, made from the tail of the Thibet cow, a fifth before, to clear the way, a basket of Simpkin, which is as though one should say Champagne, behind, and our own banyan, our man of contracts and ready lakhs, that shrewd broker and substantial banker, the Baboo Kalidas Ramaya Mullick, on the back seat.
29th June 1892. I wrote yesterday that I had an engagement with Kalidas, the poet, for this evening. As I lit a candle, drew my chair up to the table, and made ready, not Kalidas, but the postmaster, walked in. A live postmaster cannot but claim precedence over a dead poet, so I could not very well tell him to make way for Kalidas, who was due by appointment, he would not have understood me!
Caste is God, and Mamoul is his prophet! At the gate-lodge of the Baboo's garden-house on the Durumtollah Road, a gray and withered hag, all crippled and leprosied, sits durhna. What may that be? Be patient; you shall know. When the Baboo was as yet a youth, his uncle Rajinda, the pride of the Mullicks, died of cholera, and the administration of the estate devolved upon our free-thinking Kalidas.
So, as the Baboo passes in or out through the great gate, the solemn coachman whips up the spanking Arabs, and the syces bawl louder than ever, and Kalidas Ramaya Mullick turns away his eyes.
A wild, seamed, and scarred nature lies there in the sun, as though tamed at the touch of some soft, bright, cherubic hand. Do you know the picture which this calls up for me? In the Sakuntala of Kalidas there is a scene where Bharat, the infant son of King Dushyanta, is playing with a lion cub.
Every year one such great, time-hallowed day drops out of my life; and the time will come when this day of Kalidas, this day of the Meghaduta, this eternal first day of the Rains in Hindustan, shall come no more for me.
Word Of The Day