03: Notes — A task woman’s strength might do

03: Notes — A task woman’s strength might do

The marriage of Savitri with Satyavan is solemnised in the Shalwa hermitage and she is now living there, doing all the hundred woman’s household chores and duties. But the prophecy of Narad, of Satyavan’s death exactly one year after the marriage, haunts her in the joy of union with her husband. She is sawn between happiness and grief and is sombrely concerned as to how to meet the inevitable. But finally her “grief’s self” itself becomes calm. She is ready to receive the command from her higher divine Origin. But here is the human Savitri:

These she controlled, nothing was shown outside:

She was still to them the child they knew and loved;

The sorrowing woman they saw not within;

No change was in her beautiful motions seen:

A worshipped empress all once vied to serve,

She made herself the diligent serf of all,

Nor spared the labour of broom and jar and well,

Or close gentle tending or to heap the fire

Of altar and kitchen, no slight task allowed

To others that her woman’s strength might do. ||115.22||

In all her acts a strange divinity shone:

Into a simplest movement she could bring

A oneness with earth’s glowing robe of light,

A lifting up of common acts by love. ||115.23||

In all her acts a strange di+vin+i+ty shone:

Contrast this Savitri with Satyavan:

All of his speeding days that he could spare

From labour in the forest hewing wood

And hunting food in the wild sylvan glades

And service to his father’s sightless life

He gave to her and helped to increase the hours

By the nearness of his presence and his clasp,

And lavish softness of heart-seeking words

And the close beating felt of heart on heart.115.35

Satyavan in his most fatal moment cries:

Savitri, a pang

Cleaves through my head and breast as if the axe

Were piercing it and not the living branch. ||133.27||

Such agony rends me as the tree must feel

When it is sundered and must lose its life. ||133.28||

Awhile let me lay my head upon thy lap

And guard me with thy hands from evil fate:

Perhaps because thou touchest, death may pass. ||133.29||

Such was the work he was engaged in. This is poignancy in the blazing yet tranquil intensity of belief that it was Savitri who alone was going to guard Satyavan from the inevitable adverse fate. Perhaps he recognises that a woman’s strength is entirely because of her power of love, that which can overcome every danger and every misfortune, even death. It depict her as an all-conquering force with multifaceted capability in its profound impact on the world.

Talking about women of Japan we have this from the Mother: “Woman will have one special task to accomplish, that of giving birth in this world to the first specimens of the new race.”

https://incarnateword.in/cwm/02/to-the-women-of-japan

The Woman in Savitri stands for that. When the dynamic Force of the non-manifest Absolute sets into action, of manifestation, her first creation is Sachchidananda. With this birth she becomes the Mother. This has now to happen in the mortal world.

The human Savitri is near to earth’s wideness yet intimate with heaven, “a heart of silence in the hands of joy”:

A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,

Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;

Love in her was wider than the universe,

The whole world could take refuge in her single heart. ||3.37||

At once she was the stillness and the word,

A continent of self-diffusing peace,

An ocean of untrembling virgin fire:

The strength, the silence of the gods were hers. ||3.40||

That is the strength in her, she who drives her horses of speed in the quest of her lover.

The Winds of Wonder

03: Notes — A task woman’s strength might do

Leave a comment Cancel reply