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56
JAIN JOURNAL
Vardhaman :
Your dressing room is already so well decorated that there is no space for further portraits.
Trishala :
Sunita ! You go. I want to talk to my son alone.
Sunita :
As you order, Madam !
[Exit
Vardhaman :
Why have you turned out Sunita ?
Trishala :
Servant-maids have no right to hear mother and son talk.
Vardhaman :
Mother, what is so special in that talk.
Trishala :
You shall know it presently.
Vardhaman :
You were just talking about portraits.
Trishala :
Yes, the portrait I was talking about will be more beautiful and attracting than all the paintings hanging here. Above all it will be a live portrait, to the sound of whose music this entire room will resound.
Vardhaman :
Now, I get it. But, mother, none of these paintings are everlasting. All of them are bound to decay one day. And the human form divine loses its shape and colour faster than any painting does.
Trishala :
These talks of renunciation ill-befit my dressing room. It is like a serpent come to abide in a vanity-box.
Vardhaman :
This human body is also described as tabernacle. But this receptacle is the abode of five serpents represented by our five senses.
Trishala :
Your learning has become the air of the recluse which rises up to the throat. Time will come for renunciation. But dawn will remain dawn. To think of midday sun in early morning, is a travesty of time.
Vardhaman :
Eternal truth is beyond all limitations of time.
Trishala :
I am not here to enter into any polemics with you. I speak the language of maternal love and ardent desire.
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