Jain Journal 1985 04

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

Page 53

APRIL, 1985
Kosa was just arising from her seat after knotting her disheveled hair into an improvised coif when seeing the monk coming she remained where she was. Strange! How he had known the way to her apartment? Then she faintly remembered she had seen this man somewhere though she could not exactly remember where. How could she? The eyes which were once wild with love had now acquired the distant sublimity of stars. So she failed to recognise him.
Said Sthulabhadra, "Kosa, I have come here to fulfil the vow of this cāturmasya by living in your house."
"Kosa!" On hearing her name uttered in that familiar voice after years, her forgotten feelings of love and tears like strings of a vinā all played at once. The man whom she had loved; he who called her by this name day and night, how could she forget him?
She said, "Are ye Sthulabhadra?"
"Yes,
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I am. Have you forgotten me, Kosa ?"
The earth began to slip from under her feet. A mass of darkness decended before her eyes. Could she forget Sthulabhadra? How many days and nights she had passed without a wink in waiting for him! And for this day what she had not thought. Her colourful imagination were almost wild. Then suddenly tears rolled down her cheeks. Then she fell on the earth and fainted.
When she recovered she began to think, probably all these were in a dream. She had created this mirage out of incessant love of him.
Said Sthulabhadra, "Permit me Kosa, then..."
Kosa turned her face to look at the sky. Clouds of many a shape and size were drifting and constantly changing. She was looking but her mind was somewhere else. Today he had returned but though near, he was far away. The biting of that pain had almost eaten her up.
"Kosa !"
Kosa looked at him and said, "Look, don't bother me. When you have come to live here will you live in the dancing hall ?"