Jain Journal 1985 04

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

Page 56

156
JAIN JOURNAL
Said Kosa, “When the darkness of the bamboo forest was astire with the humming of the crickets and when the light of my apartment was out I could not restrain myself. Sthulabhadra, my love, drown this eternal pain of separation by your sweet embrace.”
But Kosa could not rouse him from his meditation.
It was full-moon night. Her mind and body was as if in an ecstasy. From the evening she was sitting before Sthulabhadra lost in thoughts. She had drawn with rice-paste a thousand-petalled lotus on the ground, and had it coloured. Then she began to dance on it singing that created a rhyme and melody as resonant as the tuneful verse of a gifted poet smitten with love. All the atmosphere was vibrating with her light footfalls, wild gestures.
But Sthulabhadra remained motionless.
Kosa was in her seductive fineries. All the instruments were responding automatically. A drunkenness was everywhere on the earth, in the sky. If it were somebody else his blood would have boiled in his veins. He would have either succumbed or said, "Leave me alone I cann't stand it. Go for heaven's sake."
When all the shafts of her quiver of womanly charm were spent she thought in her mind : “Vain is this beauty! Vain is her art! What she would do with that beauty, with that art by which she could not win even her lover. But whom she could not win outwardly, she would win in her heart."
The constellation of Saptarsi (Ursa Major) was scintillating like diamonds in the blue sky. Kosa was looking at that and was thinking of eternal universe, eternal time. She knew not when her soft fingers stopped playing on the vină. But the atmosphere created by Megha Mallar had its lingering appeal. Just then came Sthulabhadra. Kosa wore no ornaments, her dress was also simple. She was looking like a lotus dried, her face bore signs of pain.
Said Sthulabhadra, “What's wrong with you, Kosa ?”
Dejected look of Kosa as if said in reply, “What more do you want from me ?”
Said Sthulabhadra, “Why are ye so restless, Kosa ?”