Gahakoso Part 2

Author(s): Madhav Vasudev Patvardhan, Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: B L Institute of Indology

Page 35

started), she has not adorned herself, in order to prop up (bolster up) the drooping spirits of her indigent neighbour whose husband is still away from home (on a journey).
41. She loves herself only bacause of you :
Her heart is highly esteemed by her because you are enshrined in it. Her eyes are dear to her because you were seen by them. She loves her limbs too because they have become emaciated in your absence.
42. Bilateral and unilatenal love : That one should feel attached to a loving person who is full of genuine tenderness is (certainly) proper. But if the heart is given to one who is devoid of love, people laugh at that.
43. No success without initiative and endeavour :
A man who undertakes something (difficult to achieve) certainly gets success or meets death. Death is certain even if he does not undertake (the difficult task), but success is never attainablc (if he does not undertake the difficult task).
44. Mental estrangement is worse than physical separation :
(It is said correctly that) the consuming sorrow ef separation from one's beloved person becomes bearable because of the bond of hope (of eventual reunion). But, oh friend, when the beloved one lives in the self-same village but is mentally estranged, that surpasses death itself (i. e. is more agonising than death itself).
45. In his absence eyerything is desolate :
Just today he has departed and just today (i. e. immediately) the faces (i.e. surfaces) of streets, city-squares, temples and our hearts too have become empty (i. e. desolate, bleak, blank).
46. Memories of the earlier beloved persist :
The dear one (1. e. the beloved) glides (or creeps) into a man's heart while he is making love with another woman, whether he observes or does not observe similar qualities in the latter.
47. Gather the flowers while you can:
Since youthful age ebbs away (i. e. is unsteady) like the flood of a river, since the days are continuously fleeting and since the nights too are evanescent (and never return), what is the good, my dear girl, of this (your) accursed haughtiness (stiffness, sulkiness) (against your consort)?
48. Ingenuous prayer to the night :
Tomorrow morning my hard-hearted dear consort will depart on a journey, that is what they say. Oh venerable night do you please lengthen yourself out so much that there will be no tomorrow morning at all for him (and he will permanently stay with me.)