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Appointment with Kalidasa
in those days was governed by ideas of high and low order; the political life was ruled by monarchial form of government; but in the life of true love, Kālidāsa seems to suggest, there will always be real democracy, where each individual, man or woman, possesses a status of equality and human dignity.
Another facet of the love of husband and wife is seen in Kālidāsa's theme of the re-union of separated lovers. For some reason the husband and the wife are separated; the terrible anguish of separation they bear with patience and fortitude; and then the day of reunion dawns, and the temporarily broken lives are bound together in an assurance of abiding mutual love. The Yakşa and his wife, Purāravas and Urvasi, Duşyanta and Sakuntalā are such pairs of lovers separated and re-united in love. The reunion of Yaksa with his wife is withheld for touching artistic effect; but the suggestion is too obvious to be missed. Duşyanta and Purūravas enjoy this moment of great happiness, and Kālidāsa's art rises to the skill of making it unforgettable.
Kālidāsa's treatment of love has the associated advantage of revealing the nature of man and woman with equal variety and charm. There is a grandeur about the Raghu kings. Duşyanta too is a grand figuro; but the picture of his mind softens him and brings him nearer to us. Duşyanta is grave but prone to the influence of beauty and emotion by nature, Purüravas is inclined to love with terrible intensity and mad. ness; his emotions are strong and gushing. Yaksa in the Meghadata and Daśartaha in the Raghuvamsa are other examples of passionate lovers. Aja is in the same category; but he is a man of few words; his suicide cannot be explained without assuming the intensity of his love. Agnimitra is a picture of common longing and yearning for love.
The heroines of Kālidāsa present a similar variety of portraits. Mālavikā is a fresh, innocent girl; she only knows to love, and love with all her mind and heart. Sakuntalā has the disarming innocence of a girl brought up in the environment of nature; but nature has been her worthy preceptor also. She has acquired the 'untaught cleverness' necessary for woman, a fearlessness, and a tremendous capacity to endure the shocks and sorrows of life. Sītā is the daughter of mother Earth, from whom she has inherited the generosity of heart and the capacity of endurance. Indumati's unerring grasp of life is revealed in her choice of Aja as her husband and life-partner. Umā reveais in her life the uncommon courage and strength that love can lend to it. Urvasi is an image of intense, clinging and rebellious love; her unchecked and impetuous passion draws her, of her own accord, towards Purūravas, and in the process she loses herself so completely as to forget the laws of heaven and the prohibition of god Kārtikeya, as she forgets the rules of dramaturgy in playiog her role. It is probable that Rati shared such intoxicating love; how else could she have been ready to throw herself on the burning pyre of Madada ?
The over-all picture of love that Kālidāsa presents in his writing contains rivalries and jealousies of a royal harem, its frettings and fumings, charges and counter-char
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