Jain Journal 1980 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 20

58
The slight noise of footsteps roused that woman. Adjusting her clothes she stood up and then began to look at the face of Ripupratisatru with her eyes wide as if she had been awakened from a dream. Startled she cried, 'Father!"
Not less astonished was Ripupratisatru. Being excessively surprised he also cried, 'It's you, Mriga ?'
Shyly she replied, 'It's I, father.'
'How have you come here ?' he asked.
JAIN JOURNAL
To give reply to that 'how' she felt overwhelmed. Her throat moistend. She said, 'In a dream at the fag end of the last night I had been told that I should meet on the bank of this rivulet my would-be husband. So my maids left me here and are at the moment waiting in some bower. I don't know when I fell asleep.'
Ripupratisatru was taken aback. A few moments earlier he wanted to take this woman in his lap being smitten with desire. Was it ordained by gods? The echo of it was in what Mrigavati had told. But then...
Tears began to roll down the cheeks of Ripupratisatru like pearls trickling from a snapped necklace.
Probably to catch those pearls of deep sorrow she came near him with her hands spread.
Ripupratisatru forcibly gathered her in his arms and then said in a passionate voice, 'You are my daughter, but still you are the woman whom I have desired. This never happens in the life of a restrained. Then why it has happened in my case? But it's true that it's you who can only respond to my strange passion. My life will be blessed if you agree to become my life-mate.'
Large eyes of Mrigavati moistened. She said with a tremor in her voice, 'Father!'
'Why ye are hesitant ?'
'I am not. But what the mother will say? What the world will say ?'
'But ye have been told in a dream.' 'Yes, I have been told so, father." 'Can you make it false ?'