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Indra and Ahalya
97
water on the sand, and spread his krishnajin (deer-skin). As he was about to meditate, he noticed a strange phenomenon. The birds were hurrying back to their nests, the lotus closed its petals, the moon emerged gloriously from somewhere, the eastern horizon became dark and distant once again and a strange sense of staleness and stillness was creeping in all round. "What does all this mean?” he wondered. "Nature's moods are mysterious indeed. Anyway let me wait for a little while and watch her closely. Whoever disturbed my sleep shall be punished.”
He looked around and was intrigued to find the darkness deepening. Black monster clouds played hide and seek with the moon. Swarms of bees descended on a solitary flower and went on squeezing it. A gust of wind blew off the kingdom of the gods built with sand by the children of hermits, in the evening. An uprooted tree of thorns dashed mercilessly against a mallika creeper in full bloom. Boulders toppled and rolled aggressively on the delicate mountain-stream. A giant branch suddenly gave way and fell into the river along with the old monkey couple, entwined in each other's arms, who had made it their habitat. Every leaf in the forest looked like the tongue of Yama, the God of Death. It was these sights that irritated Gautama. Convinced that the dawn was still far behind, he picked up his kamandal and krishnajin and began to trek back to the ashram. Hardly had he walked a few steps when a big thorn challenged him, as it were. But he trampled it under his feet and resumed his journey, bleeding all the way. The nearer the precincts of the hermitage, the greater his solicitude for Ahalya because of what he had seen on the river-bank. He TM-7
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