This
month’s Newsletter moves on with Savitri’s journey. In the past few issues we
saw Savitri’s inner journey, culminating in her discovery and identification
with the Psychic Being. In this issue, we find the yearlong agony of the knowledge
of Satyavan’s fate moving towards its expression before Savitri. We may
recall here Narad’s prophesy, made exactly a year past before Savitri,
Ashwapathy and the Queen Mother:
“In one brief year when this
bright hour flies back
And perches careless on a
branch of Time,
This sovereign glory ends
heaven lent to earth,
This splendour vanishes from
the mortal’s sky:
Heaven’s greatness came, but
was too great to stay.
Twelve swift-winged months
are given to him and her;
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This day returning
Satyavan must die.”
“This day” had arrived and
knocked on Savitri’s door. In a brief 5-paged canto, ‘Death in the Forest’, Sri
Aurobindo brings us through the culmination of Savitri’s year-long ordeal.
“This day returning”, Satyavan dies. In that one brief year, Savitri herself
has progressed in her consciousness. We saw her inner greatness come up to the
surface and doing its work of transformation. She now was a changed being,
illumined by the knowledge of her innermost world, enriched largely by her
identification with the Divine portion in her, the Psychic as well as her
alignment with the higher worlds of Light above her. Even so, she suffered in
her heart the pang of Satyavan’s impending death. Sri Aurobindo paints a
graphic representation of the last earthly moments Satyavan and Savitri spend
together. It is as intense as the agony and pang suffered by her. One sees the
brave soul, Savitri, fronting it all, alone, unknown to others. What strength
must be hers! When she sought the permission of Satyavan’s mother to walk into
the forest with Satyavan for the last time before be would be slain by dire
fate,
“She
spoke but with guarded lips and tranquil face
Lest some stray word or some betraying
look
Should let pass into the mother’s
unknowing breast, Slaying all happiness and need to live,
A dire foreknowledge of the grief to
come.
Only the needed utterance passage found:
All else she pressed back into her
anguished heart
And forced upon her speech an outward
peace.”
One often faces in day to day life situations
such as these, though usually of a far lesser magnitude, where one is besieged
by the urge to be transparent opposed with the need to be opaque. However, Savitri appears clear in this ‘conflict’. She
is probably convinced of a greater good. She seemed to be buying time. So
too did she watch over Satyavan, watching over his every move with an
intensity, all concealed within her. Not once did she let loose the weight of
what she was carrying within her. Not once did Satyavan suspect what was amiss
in her heavy heart within.
Another poignant passage in this
canto was when Satyavan wielded his axe for the third time and he fell, himself
stricken by the axe of Death. The moment she dreaded comes before her, but now,
Savitri showed her true self of power:
All grief and fear were dead within her
now
And a great calm had fallen. The wish to
lessen
His suffering, the impulse that opposes
pain
Were the one mortal feeling left. It
passed:
Griefless and strong she waited like the
gods.
And we see another side of
Savitri from hence; an epitome of still, godly strength she sat. The real task
for which she came was about to begin; she was poised, and ready.
