Chapter 51

Back at Yajnyawalkya’s home and hermitage, time was erased from Maitreyi’s calendar. Every day passed without any news of Yajnyawalkya and every night without solace. Katyayani watched Maitreyi’s relentless battle with the memory of Yajnyawalkya. She cursed herself for her own misplaced pride which had failed her in her self-appointed mission of bringing Yajnyawalkya back home. Why did she fail to think of Maitreyi when she fought with Yajnyawalkya at Videha and chose to come back without him? During the entire course of time she thought only of the life she and Yajnyawalkya had spent together in the early days of their marriage. She had found satisfaction in the fact that Gargi could no longer hold Yajnyawalkya in her power; that he belonged to her and to no one else. Why, even for a moment, did she not think of Maitreyi? How could she forget that her proud refusal to yield to Yajnayawalkya, spelt irredeemable deprivation for Maitreyi?

Every time she looked at Maitreyi, her conscience cursed her. She followed Maitreyi everywhere to extract a response. But Maitreyi refused to look at anyone.

Katyayani realized that in her eagerness to hurt Yajnyawalkya, she had wounded Maitreyi. Katyayani could have prevented this. But she, somehow, did not. Katyayani would sit in a corner, away from everyone, and stare in the direction of Videha, hoping against hope that somehow, Yajnayawalkya would hear and understand Maitreyi’s anguish and come back. Causing a rift between two souls was the work of human error, but uniting them was God’s prerogative. If Katyayani could not rectify her error, she could pray to God to intervene.

And Katyayani simply watched and prayed. Maitreyi was neither angry nor hurt. She simply had no life left in her. Often, Katyayani would find her looking at some object with heedless concentration. Sometimes a slightest sound of the door-gate would startle her like a volcanic eruption and sometimes she would be found sitting unperturbed in the midst of the loud cacophony of their young pupils. Katyayani’s heart ached to reach out to Maitreyi, but Maitreyi had closed all doors. It was going to be a long war, without forgiveness and without victory in the end.

Katyayani could see that Maitreyi was gradually inviting death. Love and hatred appeared synonymous. Sometimes, looking at Maitreyi’s placid countenance, Katyayani would wonder if that was what the yogis called the state of Samadhi---a state where sorrow, despair, joy are just names that you leave far behind and enter into a world that is beyond all contradictions. Katyayani was angry with the way men interpreted and appropriated this world. The kind of soulless life which Maitreyi was living was not the bliss promised by Samadhi. She remembered how the sages described the ‘Brahma’ as ‘not this’, ‘not this’. Looking at Maitreyi, her soul would cry, “Not this, not this, Maitreyi, not this for you! You must come out of this trance. Your soul deserves a far better vision of that blessed ‘Brahma,’ if it can be said to exist at all!”

A day was when Katyayani accosted Maitreyi, face to face, and almost shouted, “Maitreyi, speak! Say that you hate Yajnyawalkya; yes, hate him! Say that, and set yourself free! But donot carry that hatred with you! It is tainting your pure soul. Don’t let that happen! It is no sin if you are able to say it. If you can’t say it to me, say it to yourself.”

Maiyreyi’s eyes flashed. It was as if a female cobra, coiled up in the dark, was suddenly awakened by the touch of a tongue of fire. Katyayani was taken aback. She had never seen that lightening flame in Maitreyi’s eyes before. It was as though a lamp had suddenly refused to glow dimly and realized that it was not a lamp, but fire.

Maitreyi turned viciously to Katyayani and demanded, “Say it to myself? Should I say it to myself because he refuses to hear it from me? I want to say it to him! I want him to know that I hate him! Do you hear me? I hate him!”

Katyayani was not prepared for such a terrifying remonstrance. She stepped back involuntarily. But in that very moment she realized that stepping away thus from Maitreyi was a token of untimely withdrawal from that grieving woman. Maitreyi appeared to be totally insensitive to the presence of Katyayani. Left entirely to herself, without a support, she collapsed like a sapling hit by a storm.

Chapter 50

Yajnyawalkya was still undecided about the mode of his departure from Videha. He knew well that he was free to decide his options. Janaka’s magnanimity would not permit him to hold Yajnyawalkya back.