R. K. Narayan, The English Teacher, 1945:
"...I was walking down our lone street late at night, enveloped in the fragrance of the jasmine and rose garland, slung on my arm. ‘For whom am I carrying this jasmine home?’ I asked myself. Susila would treasure a garland for two whole days, cutting up and sticking masses of it in her hair morning and evening. ‘Carrying a garland to a lonely house – a dreadful job,’ I told myself.
I fumbled with the key in the dark, opened the door and switched on the light. I hung up the garland on a nail and kicked up the roll of bedding. The fragrance permeated the whole house. I sprinkled a little water on the flowers to keep them fresh, put out the light and lay down to sleep.
The garland hung by the nail right over my head. The few drops of water which I sprinkled on the flowers seemed to have quickened in them a new life. Their essences came forth into the dark night as I lay in bed, bringing a new vigour with them. The atmosphere became surcharged with strange spiritual forces. Their delicate aroma filled every particle of the air, and as I let my mind float in the ecstasy, gradually perceptions and senses deepened. Oblivion crept over me like a cloud. The past, present and the future welded into one...
...‘Susila! Susila!’ I cried. ‘You here!’ ‘Yes, I’m here, have always been here.’ I sat up leaning on my pillow. ‘Why do you disturb yourself?’ she asked.
‘I am making a place for you,’ I said, edging away a little. I looked her up and down and said: ‘How well you look!’ Her complexion had a golden glow, her eyes sparkled with a new light, her sari shimmered with blue interwoven with ‘light’ as she had termed it …‘How beautiful!’ I said looking at it. ‘Yes, I always wear this when I come to you. I know you like it very much,’ she said. I gazed on her face. There was an overwhelming fragrance of jasmine surrounding her. ‘Still jasmine-scented!’ I commented.
‘Oh wait,’ I said and got up. I picked up the garland from the nail and returned to bed. I held it to her. ‘For you as ever. I somehow feared you wouldn’t take it …’ She received it with a smile, cut off a piece of it and stuck it in a curve on the back of her head. She turned her head and asked: ‘Is this all right?’
‘Wonderful,’ I said, smelling it.
A cock crew. The first purple of the dawn came through our window, and faintly touched the walls of our room. ‘Dawn!’ she whispered and rose to her feet.
We stood at the window, gazing on a slender, red streak over the eastern rim of the earth. A cool breeze lapped our faces. The boundaries of our personalities suddenly dissolved. It was a moment of rare, immutable joy – a moment for which one feels grateful to Life and Death."
(please note in case you don't...Susila has been dead for a while)
.jpg)
'Jasmin' wallpaper by William Morris (1834 ~ 1896)
