A Single Night

It was Monday, I remember. The sky had been cloudy since dawn. At ten, rain began to patter down gently. Seeing the look of the sky, the headmaster closed the school early. Large chunks of black cloud rolled across the sky all the day, as if grandly preparing for something. The next day torrential rain started in the afternoon, and a storm blew up. It rained harder and harder through the night and the wind blew more and more fiercely. At first it had blown from the east, but it gradually swung round to the north and north-east.

It was pointless trying to sleep that night. I remembered that Surabala was alone in her house. The schoolhouse was much sturdier than hers. I several times thought of fetching her over to the school-I could spend the night on the raised bank of the pond. But I could not bring myself to do this.

At about one or one thirty in the morning the roar of flood waters became audible- a tidal wave was approaching from the sea. I left my room and went outside. I made my way to Surabala's house. The bank of the pond was on my way- I managed to wade as far as that, up to my knees in water. I scrambled up on to the bank, but a second wave dashed against it. Part of the bank was about six or seven feet high. As I climbed up on it, someone else was climbing from the other side. I knew with every fiber of being who that person was; and I had no doubt that she knew who I was.

We stood alone in an island nine feet long, everything around us submerged in water. It was like the end of the world- no stars in the sky, all earthly lamps extinguished. There would have been no harm in saying something, but no word was spoken. I didn't even ask if she was all right, nor did she ask me. We just stood, staring into the darkness. At our feet, deep, black, deadly waters roared and surged.

Surabala had abandoned the world to be with me now. She had no one but me. The Surabala of my childhood had floated into my life from some previous existence, from some ancient mysterious darkness; she had entered the sunlight and moonlight of this crowded world to join me at my side. Now, years later, she had left the light and the crowds to be with me alone in this terrifying, deserted, apocalyptic darkness. As a young budding flower, she had been thrown near me on to the stream of life; now as a full bloomed flower, she had again thrown near me, on the stream of death. If but one more wave had come, we would have been shed from our slender, separate stems of existence and become one. But better that the wave did not come. Better that Surabala should live in happiness with her husband, home and children. Enough that I stood for a single night on the shore of the apocalypse, and tasted eternal joy.

The night was nearly over. The wind died down; the waters receded. Surabala, without saying a word, returned home, and I also went silently to my room. I reflected; I did not become a Collector's chief clerk; I did not become Court Clerk; I did not become Garibaldi; I became an assistant master in a run-down school. In my entire life, only once- for a brief single night - did I touch eternity?

Only on that one night, out of all days and nights, was my trivial existence fulfilled.

~ 'A Single Night' : Tagore ~