The Fish-eyed Goddess

THE FISH-EYED GODDESS
(Short story)
(Translated from the Telugu original by the author)

R. S. SUDARSHANAM

The South beckons to me; the temple-town of Madurai, which means “delicious”, and its goddess Meenakshi, the “fish-eyed one.” Twenty years ago, I had a classmate in Madras. He hailed from Madurai. His ambition was to converse with me in chaste Telugu. His ancestors having migrated to the Tamil country, he spoke a corrupt form of Telugu. He loved to hear me speak the language and wanted to reply like one born to the manner. We used to meet frequently, apparently on account of linguistic affinity. But I am not sure what motives really brought us together. Perhaps we just liked each other. We corresponded for a while after leaving college and then forgot each other. After the linguistic division of Indian states, we live within the bounds of our separate spheres and seldom meet. Now this call from the Tamilian South, I wonder whether it has anything to do with my college friend Gurumurti! Yea that was his name. But I don’t think so ...

People from all over India go on pilgrimage to Madurai. I am not religious enough to think of pilgrimages. I want to go, perhaps just for the sake of going: to get away from the everyday faces and their worn-out phrases, both of which I have lately come to feel as a constraint and an unmitigated burden. A bid for freedom. Going places where nobody knows me ...

With my wife dead and my three children at school, during the last two years, I’ve relished my loneliness, which perhaps has brought about in me some imperceptible change, I have not cared to identify or analyse. I keep busy round the clock. I make money. I have no time to think of my loneliness. Occasionally a certain absent-mindedness seizes upon me. Then I forget my surroundings. I am gone. Unknown to myself. After a while I come with a start and don’t remember anything in particular about the experience, if it can at all be called an experience. One evening at a Bharatanaryarecital, it happened. From nowhere it came, a mood of melancholy, and emptiness, and then forgetfulness. I was nowhere, I lost my moorings. When I got , I felt I was none the worse for it! Another time I had to get up abruptly from bridge, unable to concentrate as the mood seized upon me. Excusing myself I went into the toilet, delayed there, and returning, sat at a window looking blankly at the sky, my mind bereft of all thought. It was something I couldn’t talk about to others. There is indeed nothing to talk about. The “seizure” has been some­thing queer, but nevertheless pleasurable. I haven’t thought of avoiding it. And now this impulse to travel South, I suspect, is a seizure too. I want to go ... Should I go? ... Yea, for a few days... Somewhere into the Southern country?... No, to Madurai, the delicious city of the fish-eyed goddess!

Once I boarded the train, I told myself, the questioning would cease, the insistent questioning in the mind. But the mind doesn’t want to relinquish its responsibility. Why am I going to Madurai? What is this meaningless excursion? Would any sane person undertake a journey like this? What is happening to me? Why am I going at all?...The mind keeps on and on. Granted Madurai is delicious in meaning, in sound and in imagination too, nevertheless in actuality, it is only a city, like any other city, and what would you do there in that city? Of course, I am not at all sure. Before entraining, I had a vague idea, or the mind had it, that there would be all the time in the world to think, formulate and plan. Now that I am in the train the mind is unable to make any headway. I say to it in answer, “Well, then, I will go and have a look at the city of Madurai, visit the temple of goddess Meenakshi, go round the palace of Tirumala Naik, the Telugu king who ruled the city long ago; and after that return home with the satisfaction of being a tourist.” “You would have enjoyed it better in the company of friends” counters the mind. Friends? Ah, there is the rub! It is friends I want to avoid, it is my language I don’t want to hear, it is my life I want to forget; and forgetting enter freedom, the freedom of Being. I say this firmly to silence the mind. But there is a lurking doubt whether I am not being foolish! ... ... Be that as it may, well, why should I not search for my lost friend Gurumurti? I dig up his memory again; but the mind says laughingly, “You don’t have even his old address; where do you start your expedition?” Well, I give up...

Tired of its questioning, I ask the mind to watch the outside world for a change. The men and women and things around me. I am surprised at what I see. Being always busy with our own affairs, we look at people with labels across their faces; labels of status, relationship, etc, and within a framework of preconceived notions and ideas. Such a procedure is inevitable and necessary too to get on in the world. But when you have all the time and the freedom of being purposeless, you see people differently and a wholly new vision of human beings unfolds! Look at man, for instance, as a machine or a marionette, or a strange animal, oh, you observe a lot of fascinating things, things that make you laugh and weep ... There is a family seated on the opposite berth – husband, wife and their six-year-old daughter. The relationship is so obvious that I decide to ignore it and look at them individually as separate entities. What do I see? Each one is alone, each one is an island, desperately trying to get across; making a lot of sounds and gestures, which all the time fail to build bridges. What is communicated among them, what is supposed to be known to one another, is superficial and unreal merely creating an illusion, an endless deceit! Of course it works, the make-believe world, till something happens. Not a catastrophe, not even a quarrel, some little thing will do to show up the nature of this surface world ... The husband goes into the bathroom. His absence in a few moments brings an electric change in the wife, a change in her face, movements and gestures. She glances at me, then gives me a frank look, inquiringly, curiously and searchingly; fidgets looking for something–does she really want anything?–meddles with the newspaper, the napkin and the thermos flask; and says something in her language to her daughter, who is indifferent, lost in her own world of fancy, looking out of the window. The woman certainly tries to communicate something as a human being to me, which I shall never understand with my intellect. This is the gap of civilization. The husband returns and she lapses into her wifehood. She ignores my existence. The presence of her husband is a restraint on her being. What she is, what she wants to be, he can never know! Being a husband! No simultation on her part; and no imposition on his part; they look a normally adjusted couple. And yet there is this gulf between them. In all relationships, perhaps, this is so. One Mr. Rama Rao is a gentle person with infinite patience, as far as I am concerned. He is deep, silent, uncommunicative and hence untrustworthy in the eyes of my colleague. The truth of Rama Rao neither of us knows; nobody ever knows.

No end to this way of thinking, if this can be called thinking at all! These are questions of a different kind, for which there can be no sure answers.... I tell the mind let the questions be! Don’t try to find answers.

It is six a. m. at Madurai. I leave it to the jutkawallah to take me to a good hotel. Raya Lodge is evidently named after the Telugu King Krishna Deva Raya, whose viceroy Tirumal Naik had been at Madurai. I am pleased to fancy that I am to be the paying guest of the great Raya himself! As breakfast is served, I inquire of the bearer about the time appropriate to visit the temple. From the window I see the temple-towers of goddess Meenakshi. The morning worship concludes at 8 a. m., I am inform­ed. So I decide to visit the Naik’s palace instead. It is a little away from my lodge, at the other end of the town. I am shocked to find Government offices housed in the historical monument. I can’t go in. Desolate I climb up the stairs and walk on the terrace. A bird’s-eye-view of the city reveals nothing to me. The Mahal no doubt is sturdily built, but that is neither here nor there! No sign of the ghost of Tirumal Naik! The Government clerks and their clientele have driven him out! Is it for this you carne to Madurai? The question again comes up. Avoiding it; I hastily return to have my lunch and a midday nap.

When I get up it is 5 p. m. After a cup of nice South Indian coffee, I walk straight to the temple. At the entrance, I buy the “worship material” by way of good manners. As I walk in, the melody of Shahnaigreets my ears. There is a pleasant lake inside, beautiful and serene. The sculptures are exquisite. It is a different world An American couple is admiring the sculptured figures. A fourteen-year-old boy, their guide, talks to them rapidly in English. I proceed to the abode of the deity. There is a painted board: “Hindus only” non-Hindus are not permitted to go beyond the lake and the sculptures. Further on there is yet another limit. If I intend going into the presence of the deity, I have to remove my clothing at that point. I find many visitors have only an upper-cloth on them, which they twist round the waist as a sort of belt and proceed with naked torsos. The rule doesn’t apply to women. My shirt is my problem and I stop at the limit to gaze at the deity from that distance.

The worship proceeds with the recital of Sanskrit hymns. I fail to get a satisfactory view of the goddess. I like the atmosphere and the solemnity. In the abode I get an extraordinary sensation of frozen time. I seem to plummet deep into timelessness and get lost. It is like receding in the corridors of history to an obscure point of no return. It is awesome and yet blissful.

The worship over, walking to the temple entrance, impulsively I look behind. I see a woman and our eyes meet for a fleeting moment. I walk on and after a few steps deliberately slow down. I expect her to pass me by. She doesn’t. She too must have slowed down; or stopped! I look. The distance is maintained. I pause at the temple entrance to return the bamboo-container of the worship material to the shopkeeper, pay him and retrieve my footwear left in his custody. I turn to look at the woman as she approaches and encounter a straight, inquisitive look from her. She is gone and keep wondering whether she smiled to greet me, or is it my imagination! In a few moments I hurry into the street and look for her. The stretch of road in both directions bears no trace of her. She is gone. I walk up and down looking into the open doors of houses in a vain attempt to find her. The feeling gains strength that she greeted me. I desire to meet her. As the urge to see her grows, I regret bitterly my delaying at the shop for the sake of a pair of shoes! What wrong priorities! I feel disgusted at my scale of values. I am miserable at having let go something precious.

The mood continues into the night. I keep visualizing her with that Mona Lisa smile of hers. Was she really interested in me? Why did she follow me and keep looking at me? Where did she vanish suddenly?

Next morning I am in the presence of the deity with a naked torso. There is good attendance of both men and women. They join the priest in chanting the hymns, not usually done at other times. I listen raptly absorbed. The worship over, people disperse rapidly. They rush to their forenoon chores. The temple itself is the place of daily worship for these families. Meenakshi is obviously a living goddess to the people here. The woman of the previous evening is not in the morning’s congregation.

Returning to the lodge, I don my business dress and walk to the shopping area. I want a new spectacles’ frame for my reading lenses. I enter an optician’s shop. The shopman is busy with a woman customer bent over some frames strewn on the table. I sit in a chair on the right side of the shopman. As she looks up, I realize that she is the same person I have been searching for! She appears most non-committal now.

I immediately gather that she is not only English-educated, but also has a job. Her choice now wavers between two frames, which she examines repeatedly. The shopman is unhelpful as he recommends both in the same breath and she is unable to decide. Impulsively I intervene and recommend one. She accepts without so much as a nod or a glance at me and asks the shopman to fix the glasses at once.

“At least two hours’ time is required. My assistant will be coming in now,” says the shopman.

“I want them in an hour please. You see, I have to attend college.”

She gets up to leave. As the shopman turns to me, I hurriedly tell him: “I’ll be in a short while. If you don’t mind, kindly select a suitable frame for these glasses.” I leave my glasses with the broken frame on the table and follow the woman out of the shop.

After we walk a short distance, she enters a shop and buys a couple of pencils. I go along and buy a packet of blades, in the same place. As we come out of the shop together, she says:

“You don’t belong here!”

“I don’t. I am from Nellore.”

“What brings you here?”

“Oh, just nothing! I mean...I came without any specific purpose. I am here all alone...really, I don’t know why...”

“Why do you follow me?”

“I saw you in the temple yesterday.”

“Does it matter?”
“I wanted to talk to you even yesterday.”
She walks on silently.

“Are you a college lecturer?”

There is no reply.

“Please, if you don’t mind, come and have a cup of coffee with me in the restaurant there. That is, if you would excuse my intrusion.” So saying I walk in the direction of the restaurant, and I am glad to find that she follows me.

We sit at a table facing each other and I order coffee. She looks straight placidly at me. No smile, no word, no expectation. I look in vain for some sign of reaction from her. Her serenity strikes me as strange, almost solemn, before which I feel humble. I am at a loss for words. Coffee arrives. “When coffee is over she will leave me” I tell myself. I should say something. I shouldn’t miss this opportunity. What shall I say?

Her eyes turn from me to the coffee cup. I realize that it is the extraordinary serenity in her face and manner that has struck me dumb. I have known women. I am forty. Till now I never felt diffident with women. After my wife’s death, I haven’t given thought to women. This woman’s presence and its impact upon me is something special.

“What do you teach in college?” I ask her.

“Philosophy.”

“I wonder whether you have a philosophy of life of your own! What do you believe in really? Materialism, Dialectical Materialism, Existentialism, Vedanta or what? Do you care for any of these you teach, really?” I ask light-heartedly.

“Advaita.”

“I too graduated in philosophy. Twenty years ago. A long time now I haven’t bothered about anything philosophical. But I came here like a philosopher. To forget my everyday interests, to be absolutely lonely. Isn’t it queer that I should remember philosophy and since you happen to teach it, perhaps it is something to talk about. I have no beliefs, and Vedanda means nothing to me.”

There is no reply. She has finished her coffee, while I talked. She takes a look at her watch. I empty my cup with a sense of utter defeat. I [ay the bill and we come out.

“Thanks” she says and gets into a rickshaw.

“May not I know your name?” I ask desperately.

“Meenakshi.” She is gone.

Is that a joke, or is it her real name? I don’t give up. I must meet her again. I walk to the optician’s shop.

Indicating my choice of a frame, I tell the shopman that would wait there till he gets the spectacles ready, as I have nothing better to do that morning. My thoughts centre round Meenakshi. She will come, won’t she, to pick up the spectacles she ordered!

In less than an hour my spectacles are ready. The time is eleven o’clock. And there is no sign of Meenakshi.

“What about the lecturer’s glasses? Are they ready?” I inquire of the shopman.

“Of course, half-an-hour ago, they were ready. She said it was urgent and I gave priority. You see, Sir, she hasn’t turned up. It is just like women...”

I drag myself to the lodge totally depressed.

In the evening I am drawn to the temple. I stand with folded hands in the deity’s presence. The goddess is exquisitely beautiful. She stands with a graceful bend in her lithesome figure, a benevolent smile, and a parrot perched on her left forehead. Such captivating grace of femininity is rare in temple idols, though there may be found other qualities. Madurai Meenakshi is femininity idolized. As people press to come in, I am forced out of the presence. I choose the lake to contemplate upon for the rest of the evening.

As I gaze at the shadows in the placid waters, I become aware of someone coming and sitting a little distance away to my right. I turn to look, and, lo and behold! It is Meenakshi wearing her new pair of spectacles! Serene and contemplative, she doesn’t appear to notice my presence at all. Excited at my extraordinary good luck, I approach her and quietly sit by her side. She glances at me and now she gives me a smile of welcome. I am overjoyed.

“What do you think of the temple?” She takes the initiative and asks.

“Excellent and marvellous. This lake too. It is wonderfully clean and beautiful..”

“The lake is important to the temple as the heart to a human being.”

“Do you consider the heart more important than the intellect? Feeling more important than reason?”

I long to make some conversation with the beautiful woman and overcome the barrier between us.

“Yes, of course; otherwise why should one come here at all?” she says.

Her seriousness sets me thinking. In the morning she said she is an Advaitin. She is not only formally educated, but discriminatingly intellectual. She has poise and dignity. She gladdens my heart as never before any human being did in my entire life. To meet a woman like this, is a rare chance!

“In Advaita, logic appears to be more prominent than feeling. At least that is my impression. Jnana or knowledge takes priority over devotion and surrender. Am I right?” I plunge into the discussion.

She replies: “No it is not so ...What do youthink of Meenakshi?”

“Which Meenakshi?” I venture to say jocularly trying to cross the barrier of seriousness in our discussion.

“Doesn’t matter. You know both are one.”

The implication of it, and the perfectly serious manner in which she says it, shocks me, and yet delights me. From the Advaitic point of view, of course, her reply is perfect.

“Are you surprised?” she asks me. “Form and concept go together, and the name too. What the name and the form convey to you, their impact upon youis what really matters, and therefore Meenakshi is one and not two.”

“I don’t see it clearly. That is an idol and here is a living person. Even granting the impact of beauty is similar in art and life, I do prefer a living person to a mere idol.”

“What causes such preference is the essence of illusion, Maya. The two are not two but one. When yousee two and prefer one to the other, it is ignorance. To be without such preferences, and to see the truth steadily as one is Advaita. It doesn’t mean one cannot or should not distinguish between what is beautiful and what is not, but at least, in beauty itself one must be able to see oneness so that the apparent many in creation is known to be an illusion.”

“Creation is illusion, they say; and then emotions and sentiments and other reactions caused by the sentient world must necessarily be illusion too. If the attempt to go beyond such things is called self-realization or Advaita, is it not in effect a rejection of the world as we know it?”

“Names and forms and their impact on oneself, the emotions and sentiments, as you call them–these do not exist as so many entities. They are all one and that oneness is the truth. The multiplicity and separateness is illusion. The statement, “the world is illusion” does not mean that the world does not exist. Creation which is called Nature or Prakriti has neither a beginning nor an end. It is infinite and eternal, and yet every single thing in Nature has a beginning and an end; is subject to birth and death. Nature itself has no beginning and no end. Creation is flux but Creation is not unreal. To go beyond the flux is to attain to oneness. That is Advaita and not renunciation of the world.”

“Then what about renunciation? Isn’t that a prerequisite for Advaitic experience?

“No. Renunciation truly means, as I have said, to have no preferences. Renunciation is sama drishti.”

“Then I have no sama drishti, for I happen to prefer the beautiful lady to the beautiful idol,” I assert and add the comment: “Isn’t it better to have dams and projects than to build temples like these? We are modern. Nehru says our irrigation projects are our temples. I agree with him.”

“I see no difference even then. In the old days, the idol and man were one. Today man and the machine are one. Just a change in the concept of man. Even today the old habit of idoliz­ing is not dead. Why do they erect statues to Gandhi and Nehru? Why not spend that money on projects? And why do you come to Madurai?”

I don’t answer. I admire the directness of her thought and wish I could see her point. I am wholly charmed by her presence.

Yes, why have I come to Madurai? The question comes up again and there is no rational explanation.

“I come to Madurai to meet you!” I say this with a dash, but in all earnestness.

“May be so!” comes her reply!

The solemnity of it, because there is no accompanying smile, no breaking of barriers, as I expected, baffles me for a moment. She is certainly extraordinary and plays it cool!

A woman of sixty comes along, Meenakshi gets up, joins her and starts walking away. Just like that! Her sudden departure without so much as a gesture of farewell hurts me to the quick. Swallowing my pride, I too get up and walk behind the two ladies. My idea is to locate her residence. Realizing that at the entrance I might again be delayed retrieving my footwear, I decide to go ahead of them and wait there.

As she steps into the street in the company of the old lady, Meenakshi gives me, what seems to me a smile of approval, and a slight nod presumably an invitation to go with her. I follow.

We walk into the next street and stop before a small house. The old lady takes out a bunch of keys and opens the front door. After the verandah enclosed with iron railings, there is on the right side a flight of steps leading to the first floor. While the old lady walks to the door of the ground floor, Meenakshi and I climb up the steps. Meenakshi opens the apartment with her key.

There is a bookshelf, a table, a few chairs and a sofa. As I recline on the sofa, she sits in a chair nearby.

“You didn’t introduce your companion to me,” I say this a little pricked at her manners.

“Jnanamba. I am her tenant. I call her auntie.”

“You live here like a parrot in her cage? O God, how many locks!”

“Like the soul in the body! Only three locks you know. She opened two and I opened the one upstairs. In Vedanta, triputimeans the right, the seer and the act of seeing. And finally they are one.”

“I no longer relish this dry discussion on Vedanta. Having arrived here, all that seems to me utterly irrelevant. Something profound, passionate and powerful has caught me. I am in a wonderful dream. It is your presence.”

She smiles.

I pause and ask: “Is there no one else?”

“Each one to oneself. To think there is someone else is nothing but illusion.”

And she goes inside, leaving me alone!

Moments pass. I feel uneasy. I don’t know what to do with myself. I look at the objects around, scrutinizing them one after another. A small photo of Sri Ramana Maharshi in a corner of the table attracts my attention. I go near and peer close at Ramana’s face. I encounter his affectionate look. I continue to look into his eyes and feel reassured. I feel at home.

She has brought me coffee. She has changed into a white sari. There are jasmines in her coiffure. She is a goddess, magnificently beautiful.

The coffee is like amrita. There is none to beat the Southerners in preparing delicious coffee.

“What made you come to Madurai?” she asks, sitting beside me on the settee.

I talk about myself in an introspective mood. I tell her finally that a certain longing for freedom and peace has drawn me here and I know no specific reason whatsoever.

“Your wife?” she asks.

“She died two years ago.”

“As a person she may be dead; but what she represents in you is not dead?”

“I can’t say. I am not sure. I haven’t had any desire for woman these two years. Something has changed in me. I haven’t ever mourned her death. Just feel tired of life, which is but a repetition of one day after another. Nothing interests me. You alone are different. You are a dream come true. I worship you. That’s why I followed you. You are beautiful.”

“What is beauty?”

“It is just a liking, I suppose. Supreme liking.”  

“And what is ‘liking’; if you can go further?”

I do indeed search for the source of liking and come with: “Well, it is ME! The liking and me are identical.”

In triputi, the seer alone remains finally. Your conclusion is that you came to Madurai for your own sake! Is that right?

“No, not for me. For Meenakshi.” I tell her pointedly.

“Is there any difference?”

“No. Really no!”

“Is that the final truth?”

I simply nod assent.

She invites me inside.

Whatever happened to me after that, I can’t say in words, for words there are none; and I didn’t know whether I, my ego, existed or not. I was lost in something which may be called bliss.

When I hear a knock on the door and come to myself, I realize I am lying in my own bed in the lodge. I cannot recall when and how I came . I open the door and the bearer inquires:

“May I get you your dinner, Sir?” 

“What is the time?” I ask.

“You have a watch, Sir,” he says.

Surprised at my own absent-mindedness, I look at my watch and find that it is just nearing nine p. m. I tell the bearer I have no appetite.

I sink into a profound sleep.

The next morning too there is an inner satiation and a profound peace that envelopes my being, which makes me absolutely inactive. I bestir myself to have a bath and drink a cup of coffee. I look at the newspaper vaguely and lay it aside.

Then slowly the questioning starts and the mind is asking: Who is she? Is it possible that sex could ever be so deep and blissful? Who is she? I have very little information about her.

She is a college lecturer. Alone and perhaps unmarried too. The wonder is I never asked her. Do I love her? Ordinary passion did not enter this relationship. Ethics and society, the past and the future did not figure. It was a coming together. She bestowed upon me bliss I had never before known in my life. Who is she? What sort of woman? Remembering the previous night brings tears to my eyes; a profound richness of feeling suffuses my heart.

As the day wears on, thoughts and plans take shape; thoughts of marriage, of living with her, sharing the rest of my life with her, and making her my own for ever and ever....

I decide to settle the entire matter that evening itself.

After a light lunch, I get into bed and daydream. After a while I am in a different state of consciousness...

I am dead, my body lies motionless with several people crowding round it. I hover above and witness the whole scene. My little daughter seven-year-old Girija is weeping and I try to persuade her that I am not really dead. It has no effect on her, for she cannot see me, nor hear me. She persists in looking at my body and not the real me beside her. There is an unbridgeable gap. What shall I do now? I move from her much worried and then wake up...

At 5-30 p. m. I search for Meenakshi in the temple. Then I walk directly to her house. The door of the front verandah is open. The apartment upstairs is locked. Is she not from college? Has she gone somewhere else? I climb down and stand at the open door of the ground floor apartment. A boy comes up.

“Jnanamba.” I ask for the lady of the house.

He goes in and fetches her. The lady is mournful and deeply engrossed in some recent loss. She looks at me inquir­ingly.

“I have come for lecturer Meenakshi.”

She simply waves her hand despairingly and cannot find words as tears roll down her cheeks.

“Gone ... she is gone ...” says Jnanamba in a choking voice and covers her face with the end of her sari.

I stand uncomprehending.

The boy explains to me in broken English.

The previous night at about nine p. m., Meenakshi lit the stove for boiling milk and the loose end of her sari caught fire. She had widespread burns on her body and died in the hospital round about midnight ...

“No ... No ... No ...”

The boy proceeds unable to hear my protests ...

Her lifeless body was taken away by her brother and mother who arrived in the morning from her native town...

Now the old lady’s curiosity prevails and she asks me who I am. I mutter something about my daughter being Meenakshi’s student. I inquire: “What about her husband and children?”

“The husband went to the States four years ago. She has no children. She didn’t join her husband in the States.”

The next day I go round all the colleges in the town. Finally I succeed in locating her place of work and obtain from the department a group photo in which she, the philosophy lecturer, sits third from the right in the company of her colleagues and students. I go to a photographer and ask him to enlarge for me the little image of Meenakshi in that photo into a portrait. The result is not satisfactory. The portrait bears no connection to the living person I knew.

While I can recollect her important words about Advaita, how can I ever recall the presence and the bliss! How can I ever account for it all with the details I have gathered!

What she gave me was absolute fulfilment, with Beauty, Bliss and Me fused into an eternal moment.

The tragedy has seared me as much as the fire did her body.

Day after day, I stand before Goddess Meenakshi in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. The parrot poised on her left hand may wing its way into the beyond at any moment. Meanwhile, She the symbol of Beauty, Grace and Bliss, smiles at me gently, compassionately.