The Winds of Wonder

Aswapati introducing Savitri to Narad

Behold this image cast by light and love,

A stanza of the ardour of the gods

Perfectly rhymed, a pillared ripple of gold! ||106.48||

Her body like a brimmed pitcher of delight

Shaped in a splendour of gold-coloured bronze

As if to seize earth’s truth of hidden bliss. ||106.49||

Dream-made illumined mirrors are her eyes

Draped subtly in a slumberous fringe of jet,

Retaining heaven’s reflections in their depths. ||106.50||

Even as her body, such is she within,

Heaven’s lustrous mornings gloriously recur,

Like drops of fire upon a silver page,

In her young spirit yet untouched with tears. ||106.51||

All beautiful things eternal seem and new

To virgin wonder in her crystal soul. ||106.52||

The unchanging blue reveals its spacious thought;

Marvellous the moon floats on through wondering skies;

Earth’s flowers spring up and laugh at time and death;

The charmed mutations of the enchanter life

Race like bright children past the smiling hours. ||106.53||

If but this joy of life could last, nor pain

Throw its bronze note into her rhythmed days! ||106.54||

Behold her, singer with the prescient gaze,

And let thy blessing chant that this fair child

Shall pour the nectar of a sorrowless life

Around her from her lucid heart of love,

Heal with her bliss the tired breast of earth

And cast like a happy snare felicity. ||106.55||

The moment of Truth’s revelation has arrived and Narad the heavenly sage from Paradise makes a special purposeful visit to him, to his palace at Madra on the banks of Alacananda in the lower Himalayas. By the difficult alchemy of the occult-spiritual body becoming material he comes while chanting the Name of Vishnu. The chant is of the transfiguration and the ecstasy. His visit is perfectly times, that he is in the palace one hour before the return of Savitri from the Shalwa Woods. There she met Satyavan and they together pledged to be united. Savitri is carrying that glorious renowned dream in her soul and soon she is going to disclose to her parents in the presence of the divine guest.

Narad flings his vast immortal look on her; it is certainly to pay his reverences to the incarnate Goddess, an exceptional privilege, that he comes here, also with a mission to make known what is stored for her in the approaching future. Without any formality he cries to her “Who is this that comes, the bride?”  She is flame-born, from the altar of the Yogi-Tapasvin. But it is Aswapati who is going to respond. For him she is the image of light and love and expects nothing ominous to happen to her, even as he has an intuition of the portentous. She is going to heal with her bliss the tired breast of earth. But for that she must bear the Divine Agony. The father’s solicitation is for her triumph in the hour of the destiny of the earth.

It will be made known to her, the human Savitri, that her chosen husband, young Satyavan the Veda-knower, is going to die exactly one year after their marriage. In the sequel two things happen. Narad has initiated Savitri into Yoga, he made firm that the inevitable does occur. There is the Divine inevitability and Time’s process must proceed in that pace. Aswapati may not be the one who could bring in such an imperative. He has intuition but not that detail.

The featured image is a painting by Huta, Savitri VI:1 # 5