35

In the middle of Jyeshtha, by scraping and scrounging, Sarbajaya somehow managed to arrange for Apu’s upanayana. The ceremony had to be conducted timidly, in a corner of the veranda of the thakur-dalan in this house that was not their own. Bamni Mashi helped fry the naarus, a couple of Brahmin cooks were invited, and among the respectable outsiders were Biru Gomasta and Dinu Khatranji.

A few days after the upanayana was over, Apu was sitting in his little room, reading the bound volume of Mukul that Lila had given him. Someone entered through the open door. Apu could scarcely believe his eyes, then he cried out—What’s this? Well, I never! When did you—

Lila stood there, her eyes full of mirth and amusement. Apu said, “Well, you’re a fine one! You said you’d be back from Calcutta on Monday, and how many Mondays have come and gone—with no sign of your return!”

Lila laughed and sat down on the floor. “How could I come back? I’ve been enrolled in school—Father had me admitted. His health is poor, so we’ll be staying at our Calcutta house now, won’t we? I’ve come with Mother now because there’s a holiday for a few days—we’re going back on Wednesday.”

The smile vanished from Apu’s face. He said, “You’re not going to live here anymore?”

Lila said, “We’ll come back once Father’s health improves.” Then, with a smile, she said, “Close your eyes for a bit, will you?”

Apu said, “Why?”

“Just do it, won’t you?”

Apu closed his eyes and at once felt the touch of something heavy in his hands. As soon as he opened them, Lila broke into peals of laughter. A cardboard box was on his lap. Opening the box, Lila showed him a matching set of a fine cotton dhuti and chador and a crimson silk panjabi. Smiling, Lila said, “Mother sent them—how do you like them? For your sacred thread ceremony.”

The dhuti and chador, and especially the panjabi, were expensive things. Let alone wearing them, Apu had never even laid eyes on such items before setting foot in this house.

Lila looked at Apu’s face and said, “Your face has changed in a month! You look older. Let me see the new Brahmin’s sacred thread! And did it hurt when they pierced your ear? My little cousin had his ceremony too, you know, and he burst into tears.”

Suddenly, Apu pointed to a copy of Mukul and said, “Have you read this story?”

Lila said, “Let’s see, what is it?”

Apu read it aloud. Somewhere on the ocean floor, a Spanish ship laden with treasure had sunk two or three hundred years ago—many had searched for it since, but no one had been able to pinpoint the location. He had just finished the story and was thrilled by it.

He said, “No one’s been able to find out how much money is there, you know? Units, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, lakhs—fifty lakh pounds of gold and silver… and one pound is thirteen rupees—do the maths, will you?”* He then quickly scribbled the calculation on a piece of paper and showed it to her, saying, “Look, this much money!” He had already done the sum once before. With a radiant face, he declared, “When I grow up, I’ll go—I’ll go and look—I’ll find it for sure, you’ll see. No one has found the spot yet.”

Lila said doubtfully, “You’ll go? How will you find out where it is?”

“Look, it’s written here: ‘in the sea-bed near Porto Plata’—I’ll search and find it…”

Reading the story, he had thought to himself how wonderful it was that no one had found it yet. If everyone found everything, what would be left for him? What would he have to discover when he grew up? He only hoped it would remain there until he could go!…

Though young, Lila was very intelligent. After some thought, she said, “Where will you get a ship like theirs? You’ll need your own ship—just like theirs.”

“That will be taken care of. I’ll buy one. You think I won’t have money when I grow up?”

This time, Lila seemed rather more convinced. She didn’t raise any further arguments on the matter.

After a little while, she asked, “Have you been to Calcutta?”

Apu shook his head. “I’ve never seen it. Is it a very big city? Bigger than this?”

Lila laughed. “Much, much bigger.”

“Bigger than Kashi?”

“I haven’t seen Kashi.”

Then she led Apu to her study. Showing him a notebook, she said, “Look at the flower bush I’ve drawn. What do you think of the drawing?”

After a moment, Apu said, “I think I’ll go lie down. My head is aching terribly.”

Lila said, “Wait, I know a charm to cure headaches. Shall I try?” Then she began pressing his forehead with the fingers of both hands in such a way that Apu burst out laughing and said, “Oof, that’s so ticklish.”

Lila laughed and said, “My elder cousin has a wrestler who teaches him to wrestle. I learned it from him. It’s quite good, isn’t it? Is it better now?”

A few days later, Lila and her family left again for Calcutta.

Apu, after persuading his mother, started attending a small school. The house they lived in was on a main road; from there, a short walk away, the school was in a one-storey building down a narrow lane. Five or so teachers, broken benches, armless chairs, an oil-and-soot-stained blackboard, and a few old maps—this constituted the school’s furniture. Right in front of the school was an open drain, and from the window of Apu’s classroom, one’s gaze fell on the naked brick wall of the adjacent house, devoid of plaster or whitewash. On his way to school, he would see sweepers cleaning the drains, with piles of filth gathered at intervals. All day long, a stagnant smell hung in the school’s air; a Hindustani snack-seller next door would light his coal stove in the afternoon, and the sickly-sweet smell of raw coal smoke would drift out, making Apu’s head feel strange—a feeling that didn’t seem to leave him even after he was outside the school.

*In 1928, one pound sterling was valued at 13 Indian rupees.

He did not like it, not at all; the brick-and-cement contrivances of the city made him feel breathless, as if he were suffocating. His soul yearned for something that was missing, but he could not understand what it was.

There was very little grass on the streets, not many trees, just one or two here and there. Macadam roads, paved drains, garbage in the gaps between houses, filthy water, torn rags, paper. One day he had gone with a classmate to his house. It was a one-storey building with a tiled roof. In the cramped courtyard, each of the surrounding rooms was occupied by a different tenant family. Old jute sacks served as curtains over the doorways. The floors of the rooms were no more than a hand’s-breadth higher than the courtyard, so the dampness never left. There was no question of light or air inside the rooms. The courtyard was disgustingly dirty, all the tenants had lit their coal stoves at once, and there was that sickly-sweet smell again. The whole thing made Apu feel dreadful, his spirit seemed to shrink to a tiny speck; that day, though they had asked him to sit, he couldn’t stay for long, and only felt a measure of relief upon reaching the main road.

Returning home, the sense of confinement was still there, perhaps even more so. Here, everything was paved with brick, cement, and marble, right up to the courtyard. Apu couldn’t bear it if he couldn’t see the earth, and what little earth there was here seemed different. This was not the earth he knew. Besides, where was the freedom to move about in this house? One had to live in fear, like a thief! Someone might say something; you couldn’t speak in a loud voice, you were afraid.

Some days Apu would go to the accounts office and see the old Khatranji sitting in the dark in a cage-like room with iron bars. A large pile of cloth-bound ledgers was stacked on one side. With a small wooden cash-box in front of him, the old man would sit there all day, leaning against a grimy, flattened pillow. The room was so dark that even during the day, a small castor-oil lamp was sometimes lit. Girish Gomasta sat in the revenue office. A soiled sheet was spread over a low wooden bedstead, surrounded on all sides by bundles of documents tied in cloth. That room was not as dark as the accountant’s; it had two or three large windows, but beneath the bedstead were piles of tobacco-ash and torn paper, and on the ceiling beams were cobwebs and soot from the kerosene lamp. When Biru Muhuri would call out, “Hey, Ramdayal, look and see how much was spent under the Badyakar head in the last revenue payment!”…for some reason, a terrible revulsion would rise in Apu’s heart once again.

It was morning. Apu came to the area near the main gate and saw the boys of the house playing, pushing their new chair-cart. The cart had just arrived from the maker—an iron chair with a handle, a leather cushion on top, and large, shiny wheels. He came closer and stood watching, and Ramen said, “Hey, you, come and give us a push.”

Ever since this cart had arrived, Apu had secretly coveted it. He said happily, “I’ll push, but will you let me have a ride?”

Ramen said, “Alright, that can be arranged. Now push—and give it a good hard one.”

After they had been playing for quite a while, Ramen suddenly said, “Alright, that’s enough for this morning—that’ll do.” Seeing them all starting to leave with the cart, Apu said, “Aren’t I going to have a little ride?”

Ramen said, “Oh, off with you, no more rides this morning. If we ride it too much it’ll break. We’ll see this afternoon.”

Tears of frustration welled up in Apu’s eyes. He had been pushing all of them with all his might, in hopeful anticipation.

He said, “But—you said you’d give me a turn! I pushed everyone—that’s not fair! The other day you did the same thing and didn’t let me ride in the end.”

Ramen said, “Why did you push, then? You could have just not pushed. Go on—who told you you’d get a ride? You think carts don’t cost money?”

He said, “But you said so yourself, and so did Santu—my arms are aching from pushing—and I don’t even get one little—that’s not fair of you!”

Ramen grew heated. “I did not say that! Get lost!”

Santu jeered, “Ph-r-r-r—look at the fool!”

Suddenly, for no reason at all, the master’s eldest son, Tebu, came up, put a hand on his neck, and started shoving him, saying, “Go on, get out of here! We won’t give you a ride if we don’t want to. Go back to your own quarters. Why do you come here to play?”

Perhaps because Tebu was younger than him, and the humiliation he inflicted was greater for it, or perhaps because of everyone’s taunts and mockery—something snapped in Apu’s head. He wrenched his neck free with a jerk and gave Tebu a shove. Tebu spun around and fell against the wall. His forehead hit the wall, and the moment a cut opened up and began to bleed, Tebu let out a piercing shriek and burst into tears.

Maids and servants came running; the butler and the gatekeeper came running; upstairs in the sitting-room, the master of the house had been holding his morning court, and he came down with his entire retinue. Ten jugs of water from ten directions… fanning… cold compresses, a tremendous uproar!

When the commotion subsided a little, the master said, “Right, who hit him? Let me see.” Ramnihora Singh, the gatekeeper, pushed Apu from behind and made him stand before the master.

The master said, “Who is this? Is this the son of that Brahmin woman from Kashi?”

Girish Sarkar stepped forward and said, “A thoroughly bad sort, this boy. And if you heard his cheek, Babu! That day of the theatre, he sat himself right in front of everyone, in the Babus’ section. I told him to move, and what an argument he put up! And just the other day I saw him on the street at the corner by the Seths’ house, wearing a red panjabi and smoking a Bird’s Eye cigarette—getting a fine start at this age!”

The master said to Ramen, “Did your tutor not come this morning? Did you not have lessons? Here, someone bring me my cane! Who told you all to mix with him and play?”

On the verge of tears, Ramen said, “He’s the one who comes when we’re playing. Why would we go to him? You can ask Santu. He wants to look at the pictures in your English magazines with all the illustrations. And he goes into the big drawing-room and fiddles with this and that.”

Girish Sarkar said, “Just look at him, look at the high-and-mighty airs!”

Now it was Apu’s turn. The master said, “Step forward. Why did you hit Tebu?”

Apu’s heart had already flown out of him with fear. He had pushed in a fit of anger, but he had not been prepared for all this. With a tongue that felt stuck to the roof of his mouth, he managed to stammer, “Tebu was—to me—he—”

The master cut him off. “Do you know how old Tebu is and how old you are?”

If he had known how to articulate it, Apu could have said in his own defence that though Tebu might be younger in years, in his actions he was more accomplished than Apu’s own grand-uncle, Nilmoni Ray. He could have said that Tebu and all the boys of this house taunted him without reason, calling him a bumpkin from East Bengal, jeering at him, pecking him on the head from behind—that his only crime was trying to play with them a little. But before the curious gazes of the courtyard full of people, and especially trying to speak to the master of the house, his tongue felt glued to his palate. He only managed to say, “Tebu also—for no reason—he came up to me—”

The master roared, “Stupid, insolent brat! Who told you to come here and mix with them? Here, give me that cane! Come forward! Come!”

As the first sharp blow landed squarely on his back with a crack, he looked with a kind of wonder at the master and at the cane raised once more. He had never been beaten before in his life, not even by his father. His bewildered mind could not at first even process the reality of being struck. Then, almost unconsciously, he raised his hands to ward off the cane. But this time, he had no reason to complain that he had been cheated of his turn. The repeated crack of the cane made even Tebu forget the pain in his forehead and look on. The master gave the cook’s son a thorough lesson, so that his insolence might not flare up again. Any other cane would have broken; this one was probably very expensive.

Panting, the master rested and said, “You overgrown lout of a boy! I’m warning you today, if I hear of you mixing with any of the boys of this house again—I’ll have you thrown out by the ear immediately.” Then, turning to someone, he said, “Just look at this, Dhiren-babu. A widow, her mother. Satish-babu the manager brought them from Kashi. I thought, let her stay, she’s one of our own kind—and look what happens. The mother cooks rice while her son struts about in a silk panjabi, smoking cigarettes.”

Dhiren-babu said, “That’s how these types always turn out. Next he’ll be taking cocaine—breaking into his mother’s trunk. It’s the way of things. And on top of that, a boy from Kashi…”

Not every word reached the inner quarters of the house, but Sarbajaya heard that Apu had been beaten.

She heard it quite clearly, in fact. The mistress of the house said, “If he’s that kind of hooligan boy, then, my dear…” and so on. Coming from the bread-making room, she saw that Apu had gone to school. He hadn’t said a word to his mother; he never told her such things. Sarbajaya’s body trembled with rage, sorrow, and indignation; it felt as if heat was radiating from her entire being. Unable to stay in her room, she went and stood on the narrow outer veranda.

A hand laid on her Apu! The same Apu who still said to her, “Mother, one night when you’re coming from the kitchen house through the dark staircase room, I’m going to give you such a scare!”… Did he have any sense? How much had it hurt? Who had understood him there, who had heard his cries?

Sarbajaya’s heart was breaking, and tears came flooding forth…

It was a dark night… a few stars twinkled in the sky. The wind rustled in the branches of the amlaki tree above the stables. As she sat by the leaking iron cistern in the corner of the courtyard, thinking about it all, her whole body began to shake with sobs.

“Thakur, Thakur, he is my dearest treasure, you know that I cannot be at peace if he is out of my sight for even a moment. Whatever punishment there is, let it fall on me, Thakur, but don’t say a word to him, my heart breaks, Thakur, I cannot bear it—”

Apu’s school let out early. The boys in his class insisted that he be the referee for their football match. Apu was overjoyed. He had never seen a football match before coming to this city; he couldn’t play very well either, but still, the boys in his class liked him best of all, and he was often called upon to be the referee.

He said, “Let me go home and get that big whistle, brother, it’s lying in my box. I’ll be on the field at four o’clock sharp.”

On his way, Apu’s thoughts returned to the morning’s events. He had been thinking about it all day. It was true that he had run into Girish Sarkar while smoking a Bird’s Eye cigarette, but did he smoke them every day? That day, on his way back from school wearing the crimson panjabi the junior mistress had given him, he had suddenly felt a whim. This is how the babus smoked Bird’s Eyes, wearing panjabis like this; he too would try it just once. So he had used his snack money to buy a Bird’s Eye and was smoking it, but just as it hadn’t tasted good that one time he had tried it in secret back in Nischindipur, it didn’t taste good this time either. He had thought to himself, “What a waste! I should have bought a paisa’s worth of roasted chickpeas instead! Why do people even buy and smoke this?” But why had Girish Sarkar said all those things about him, without knowing the facts?

Thank goodness Lila wasn’t here. It would have been so embarrassing if she had seen. Mother probably hadn’t found out either. It was precisely so that his mother wouldn’t find out that he had hurried off to school that afternoon!

It had been so long since Lila had come! She had left last year and never returned. And even if she came now, would they let her speak to him anymore?

As he neared home, just by the main gate, he heard a gramophone playing in the upstairs drawing-room. The moment the sound reached his ears, he stopped on the street below the second-floor window and looked up, his eyes full of happy curiosity. From the street, not all the words of the song were clear, but the melody was exquisite. As he listened—school, the match, his refereeing duties, the beating that afternoon—everything was wiped clean from his mind.

The song’s melody carried his mind away, on its own accord—back to those days in Nischindipur when he would wander by the river and so often see, on the far bank, in the fields of ulukhor grass, small silk-cotton saplings covered in little red flowers. Behind them, so far away, was the backdrop of the blue sky. The field of grass seemed like a painting, the red-flowered sapling seemed like a painting, the bird sitting on a dry branch all seemed like a painting. And behind them all was that other land, that far, far-away land—which land it was, he did not know, it revealed itself only in the joy of his heart.

Someone seemed to call, a familiar, jubilant voice calling from a great distance: “Apu-u-u-u-u—”

His heart, filled with joy, answered: “I’m co-o-o-ming!”

When he returned to their small room, his mother asked, “You’re back early?”

He said, “The boys in the upper class won a football match, so it’s a half-day.”

His mother said, “Come, sit here.” After a moment, stroking his back, she asked with some hesitation, “Did they call you today for something and scold you?”

“No, Tebu got a little cut, so the master just called me to ask what happened, that’s all.”

“He didn’t scold you or anything, did he?”

“No.”

His mother was quiet for a moment, then said, “I’ve been thinking… should we leave this place?”

He looked at his mother’s face, startled. Then, his own face suddenly lighting up with joy, he exclaimed, “Where, Ma? To Nischindipur? Oh, that would be wonderful! Let’s go! I can do the thakur-pujo there now—I’ve had my paité ceremony, after all. Our own village… it’ll be perfect. Let’s not stay here another minute—”

“That’s something I’ve been thinking about for two years now,” Sarbajaya said. “You say you want to go there, but tell me, what’s left for us? Just the house, and that’s been taking the monsoon rains for three years. Do you think there’s anything left of it by now? It was an ancient, tumbledown place to begin with. There was that little patch of paddy land, but that’s gone too… We don’t even have a roof to put over our heads. It would just be going there for our enemies to laugh at us.” She fell silent for a moment, then said, “There is one thing we could do… Let’s go instead… What about Kashi? Would you go to Kashi?”

Nothing was settled. His mother had not yet eaten. After her bath, she went back to the kitchen house. A thought occurred to Apu. He had a good singing voice—his sister used to say so, and his friend from the jatra troupe had said so too, that time. If he were to join a jatra troupe, surely they would take him? His mother was suffering so much here. He would take her away from this place!

Uff, the heat! Smoke was coiling up from the kitchen-house chimney pipe; sunlight blazed against the cornice… Inside the room, it was already growing dark… From the stables, Matabiya the sahis was muttering something in Hindi… the clatter-clatter of hooves on the stone-paved floor… That smell from the drain… His head was throbbing as if it would split open. I’ll lie down for a little while, he thought. Afterwards, I’ll get up and go to the playing field—it’s only three o’clock—the sun’s too fierce right now.

Lying on the bed, a single thought returned to him again and again. He had never looked at things this way before. It was as if, in some corner of his mind, the idea had always been vividly present that at the end of everything, their village was waiting for them—for them! Although he knew there had been no talk of returning when they left, that sweet illusion had never been entirely broken.

But today, after all that had happened—especially after his mother’s words, and the baro-babu’s—the reality of their homelessness, their lack of any true shelter, became starkly clear to him. Would he never be able to return to his village again? Never? Ever?

This exile, this Girish Sarkar, this life of a thief—or else, a life spent wandering the roads forever, mother and son hand in hand, rootless—had these things come to be their permanent reality?

A quarrel had broken out between two sahises in the stable; on the roof of the kitchen house, a flock of crows was gathering for scraps of rice. A moment later it seemed to him he had been thinking the same thought for a very long time, the very same thought. The clatter of hooves from the stable had not stopped… He felt as though he were sinking somewhere into the earth… deep, deep into the earth… Someone was pulling him downwards… It felt good… so comfortable… His headache was gone, it felt so very good…

Uff—the sun is blazing! What is Didi thinking—a choruibhati in this heat! He is saying, “Didi, come lie down, a choruibhati in this sun?”

Ranu-di is sitting by his ear, telling him things, so many things. Ranu-di’s large, tear-brimming eyes are full of hurt. What can he do? They can’t manage in Nischindipur, can they? Is it Ranu-di or Leela?

Haran-kaka has brought bamboo flutes to sell and is playing one… he plays beautifully! He said to his father, “I want to buy a one-paisa bamboo flute, Baba, will you give me a paisa?”…

His father, affectionately tucking his long hair behind his ears, is saying, “Your story has turned out very well. When it’s printed, you’ll let me see it, won’t you, Khoka?”

He is saying, “What is cocaine, Baba? Girish Sarkar said I would take cocaine—” Around his father’s neck is a garland of lotus seeds. Like the one the kathak-thakur wore.

Their Majherpara station. The big wooden sign reads, MA-JHER-PA-RA. He is in front, with the heavy bundle on his back, his mother following behind. He is wearing his red panjabi. There is shade all along the path. The evening star has risen in the sky. The air is filled with the scent of ripe banyan fruit.

The road to Nischindipur seems endless… He is walking… and walking… and walking… he and his mother… He has never come this way alone, he doesn’t recognize the path… O Kaka with the sickle, listen, can you tell us the way to Nischindipur? Jasra-Nischindipur, across the Betrabati river?

His mother came into the room and said, “Hey, get up! Opu, the day is almost gone! You said you were going to play—get up, get up!”

At his mother’s call, he sat up on the bed with a start and looked around—Uff, the day was gone!… The sun had climbed away somewhere… His mother said, “You said you were going to play, but where did you go? What a sleep you had, at this odd hour of the day. Should I get out that whistle for you?”

His mother took the whistle out of the trunk and placed it on a corner of the bed, but he showed no enthusiasm for going to referee. It was already dark inside the room! He got up, went to the window, and stood there, staring absently outside. The daylight was completely gone. The air was unbearably close. The smell from the stables’ drain seemed to have grown stronger. From the main gate, the clock was probably striking six, clang-clang.

The sky above the stables—far beyond it, to the east, lay their Nischindipur.

How long had it been since he had seen Nischindipur—th-ree years! An eternity.

He knew that Nischindipur called to him, day and night, all the time. Shankharipukur pond called, the bamboo grove called, Sonadanga field called, the Saheb’s Ghat by the kadam tree called, the goddess Bishalakshi called to him.

When would he again wander through the shadows of the sajne tree, amid the sweet scent of lime blossoms from the ruined homestead? When again the call of birds from the shirish and sondali grove near their house?

By now, the monsoon floods must have come to their Ichamati river. The water would have risen to the shimul tree on the path to the bathing ghat. The thickets would be full of nata-kanta thorns and blooming bankalmi flowers. The blue blossoms of the wild aparajita would be blanketing the forest canopy.

At their village ghat, by the thicket of kunch berries, Raju-kaka was probably, at this very moment, bathing at his usual odd hour; in the bend of the river at Chaltepota, near the new reed beds, Akrur the boatman would be setting his doari fish traps; today was market-day there, and behind the great banyan tree at Thakurjhi Pond, the sun would be setting like the foam of a crimson fire on the horizon, while along the cotton-white country path, the village boys—Potu, Nilu, Tinu, Bhola—would all be returning from market.

By now, deep shadows would be falling across the courtyard of their forest-hemmed house, birds would be chirping, kich-kich; that sweet, silent, peaceful afternoon—that yellow bird, does it still come and sit on the bamboo branch atop the wall, just as it used to? The lime sapling his mother planted—perhaps by now it is bearing limes…

A little later, evening’s darkness would fall upon their homestead, but in that evening, no one would light the lamp, no one would offer a flame, no one would tell a fairy tale. In the courtyard of the deserted homestead, overgrown with a jungle of kalmegh weed, crickets would chirp; deep in the night, from the dense forest behind, the hoot of the eagle-owl would be heard from the jagdumur tree… No one would ever set foot there again, no one would ever know of his mother’s lime tree, buried in the deep jungle; the orh-kalmi flowers would bloom and fall unseen, the kul and nona fruits would ripen in vain, the yellow-winged tero bird would cry and fly away.

By the forest’s edge, those enchanting, magical evenings would descend for nothing, forever.

That afternoon, being beaten without trial in front of a courtyard full of people, not a single tear had escaped his eye; but now, standing alone at the window of the deserted room, he suddenly broke down and wept, inconsolable. As the gushing tears streamed down his beautiful cheeks, he raised a hand to wipe them and, in an anguished whisper, said in his heart, “Let us return to Nischindipur—O God—please make it so, make it so we can go back to Nischindipur—or I won’t be able to live—I fall at your feet—”

The God of the Road smiles serenely and says, “Foolish boy, my path did not end in your village’s bamboo grove, or under the banyan tree of Biru Ray the footpad, or at the boundary of the Dhalchite ferry landing. Leaving behind your Sonadanga field, crossing the Ichamati, skirting the lotus-filled Madhukhali marsh, and making the crossing at the Betrabati ferry, my path travels onward, onward, ever onward… from the homeland toward the foreign land, from sunrise toward sunset, leaving the circle of the known for the sake of the unknown…

It journeys on, past day and night, past birth and death, past months, years, ages, and aeons… Your mortal dreams of life become overgrown with moss and mould, but my path does not end even then… it goes on… and on… and on… ever moving forward…

Its undying music is heard only by endless time and the endless sky…

It was by placing the invisible tilak of that path’s wondrous, joyful journey upon your brow that I lured you from your home!…

Let us go forward.