Appointment with Kalidasa

Author(s): G K Bhatt
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 66

Glimpses of Personality
ascetics, as expected, he came across the hermitage girls each carrying a water-jar suitable in size to her delicate form and young age and watering the trees in the aśrama! The sight was as unexpected as it was breath-taking; for the girls were really beautiful. Duşyanta, not a stranger to beauty in every possible form, had to admit to himself that the forest creepers had surpassed the garden creepers. He exclaimed spontaneously and with joy. 'Oh, what a sweet sight the girls present !' The song of Hamsapadikā moved Dusyanta to his depths and he tried to explain his mysterious restlessness by the theory of previous birth.30 Why Duşyanta, even Purürvas lost himself in watching a Vidyādhara girl playing with sand on a riverbeach even though the touchstone of all beauty, Urvasi, was close by his side 131 Agniinitra is just a king; but when he stood watching the beautiful line of red lac-dye being painted on Mālavikā's fair tender foot he could not help imagining the foot as the new reddish foliage sprung on the tree of Madana whom Śiva had burnt to ashes.32 There is an interesting anecdote about a professor. The professor while taking his class on a morning chanced to look out of an open window, and suddenly exclaimed, 'Gentlemen, the Spring is outside !'33 He left his class, ran out and forgot to return to his class ! Such a keen aesthetic sense, the effect of losing one's bearings by some heavenly fragrance, 34 or the ability to transport oneself into different world at the did-da ... ... did-dā melody of a sitar,35 betoken an impact of beauty different from conventional and channelled attitudes.
Such aesthetic sense is revealed, sometimes, when there is no occassion for it. A thief has bored a hole in the wall of Cārudatta's house and, securing an entry, has taken away the valuable ornaments Vasantasenā had deposited with him in trust. This is indeed a grave occasion. One would think that the first thing that must be done was to institute an immediate search for the thief. But Cārudatta stood before the wall, lost in admiration, appreciating the beautiful pattern of the hole carved in the wall !36 One can see that this aesthetic sense is of a different category. The 'gem of reunion which Pur Oravas was fortunate to get, which brought his lost Urvasi back to him, and which he was guarding with his life, has been snatched away by a vulture mistaking it for a bloody piece of meat. But before aiming an arrow at the vulture, moving in circles high above in the sky, with the gem in its beak, Puru. ravas stands gazing in wonder at the predatory bird, creating circles of red fire, comparing them to the red circles made by a moving burning torch, and fancying the red gem held in the beak and emitting lustrous rays as an ear-ornament of red Asoka blossom worn in the ear by the lady of Direction ! The black vulture and the red gem in its beak remind Purūrayas of Mars in the vicinity of a dark cloud !37
Such perception of beauty in unusual places and at unusual moments may appear lunatic; but it must be remembered that there is no inconsistency in it; the aesthetic sense follows its own logic. Purüravas is not prepared to accept that Urvasi was a creation of the sage Nārāyaṇa whose finer senses were dulled by Vedic studies and