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Appointment with Kalidasa
Kālidāsa is not hankering after poetic beauty and allure merely in these pictures. His words and their suggestive sense drip with his own philosophy of love. The love of Prakrti and Puruşa is the law of Universe. It is the impulse and inspiration for creation of new life. The entire creation including the world of man is wrapped up in this emotion of love. Ratior love is the sthāyi bhāva or the basic stable emotion of life; and the physical union is the grace and gesture of nature; it is, in a way, a compulsive act for creation and continuity. The fruit of this loving union is "kumära-sambhava', the off-shoot of new life. That is why, Siva who had been practising penance 'for some reason' in the solitude of Kailāsa comes down to stand before Umā and declares himself to be her servant in love. Kālidāsa, thus, gives a comprehensive and deep meaning to the love of man and woman, understanding it as universal urge and impulse of new creation and the most tender tie that holds the living world together. To regard the emotion of love, nay, the passion of love, as something low and needing purification (at the hands of literary critics?) is going against the laws of nature and of universe, and is irrelevant to the purpose of art whose stuff is life.
The love of man and woman is not merely a gratification of physical craving or urge. It is an impulse which, as it leads to creation, bestows strength on the partners. There is no emotion like love which envelopes the totality of life, agitates it from the very bottom, and brings an awareness of the depth and the height of life. It is love which establishes equality between man and woman, makes her superior to man; enables her to acquire the large-heartedness and the all-enduring quality of mother Earth. It is this love which is the inspiration for the valour of the heroes. Kālidāsa illustrates this from the example of Aja. Aja is returning from the svayamvara with his bride Indumatī; the disappointed kings unite to attack him with the intention of taking Indumats away from his hands; Aja defeats them single handed and throws them into sleep by using the sammohana missile; and shows the spectacle to Indumati;72 the gesture and the words cannot conceal his just pride and her great delight; they are a witness to Aja's valour and to Indumati's confidence in and respect for her husband. It is love that has the strength to lead one from the nariow selfish interests to the larger and impersonal interests of humanity, from duality to oneness. On the walls of the temples in India are carved some beautiful sculptures which depict the conjugal love of couples, human, semi-divine and devine. The ignorant and those who reject the joy of life may put any interpretation on them, or be surprised or shocked by them. But what they mean in the context of art is plain. Love is a process of alchemy which makes a person lose himself; it ends separateness, the sense of difference or duality. What is bhakti or religious devotion after all ? The poeticians define bhakti as 'love for gods and the divine'.73 Art does not see, therefore, any opposition between rati or love and bhakti or devotion. The joy of both takes away selfconsciousness and transports one.
It appears from Kalidasa's writings that this is what he means by love; this is the high significance he bestows on love which basically may be only a biological
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