We are leaving this town for Copenhagen to-morrow morning. I am not an ideal traveller, and never enjoy the prospect of going to a strange country, continually stumbling upon the unexpected and being held up by the unknown. This roving life tires me. I am seeking my lost universe of an easy chair, watched over by its guardian angel, Sadhucharan.
A person like myself can never be a perfect vehicle for a mission. For I have not the motor engine of ambition in my heart to lend a steady movement onward. I have my flighty sails, fitfully puffed and pushed by erratic winds. But somehow, in haste, a motor has been joined to my boat. It is Rathi’s steadiness of purpose. With every roll of the waves, the engine knocks against the ribs of my heart—for it does not fully fit me. All the same, in spite of the looseness of the screws, the engine gets the better of the recalcitrant boat—the mission goes on; the applauses are gathered; everybody is radiantly happy. Only I myself know what the jerks mean inside the aching framework; and I am not counting the successes, but the thumping kicks that are administered by the machine.
I hope my voyage has now come to its end. Every moment, I hear the call of the beach and see the vision of the evening lamp watching behind the window for the return of the weary traveller. But there is one thought that never ceases to buzz in my mind. It is, that the weather-beaten boat, after its voyage across the sea, may be utilised at the ferry for the miscellaneous errands of daily traffic.
To-day, life is nowhere normal in this world. The atmosphere is swarming with problems. Singers are not allowed to sing; they have to shout messages. But, my friend, is my life to be one perpetual polar summer, an endless monotony of a day of lidless light, of ceaseless duties, with never a night of stars to open before my vision the gateway of the Infinite? Is the fact of death a mere fact of stoppage? Does it not speak to us of our right of entrance into a region beyond the boundaries of patriotism? When am I going to make my final adjustment of life and be ready for the invitation to the world of the Spirit?
We are taught by our western schoolmaster that there is nothing of importance that is not shown in the national school map; that only my country is my earth and heaven; that only in my country are united my life and my immortality. And when we try to reject the West, in our pride of my country we, like a ragged scamp, pick the pocket of the same West and pilfer that same spirit of rejection.
But our fathers had a clearer consciousness of a truth of freedom, which was never clipped of its wings and shut up in a geographical cage. I feel that my time has come for the realisation of that truth; and I pray that I may never die as a patriot, or a politician, but as a free spirit; not as a journalist, but a poet. *