Tagore’s ‘Chitra’-An Appreciation

TAGORE’S “CHITRA”–AN APPRECIATION

 

Edward Thompson says: “Chitra” is Tagore’s “Loveliest drama”, “a lyrical feast”... “It is almost perfect in unity and conception, magical in expression; a nearly flawless whole, knit together by the glowing heat of inspiration.” Tagore says in his preface to the first edition ofthe English version that this lyrical drama is based on an episode in the Mahabharata.

Chitra was the daughter of Chitravahana, king of Manipur. In the absence of a son, her father brought her up as his son. He taught her the use of the bow and all the duties of a king. She attired herself as a man. Her hands were strong to bend the bow but she never learnt cupid’s archery, the play of eyes. One day, while running on the track of a deer, she came upon a man lying on a bed of dried leaves She asked him haughtily to move aside but he paid a deaf ear to her words. Then she contemptuously pricked him with the sharp end of her bow. “He leapt up with straight, tall limbs like a sudden tongue of fire from a heap of ashes.” Her boyish appearance made him smile at her as if he was amused. Then for the first time in her life Chitra felt herself a woman and realized that a man was before her. With mixed feelings offear and wonder she asked him who he was. He said that he was Arjuna, of the great Kuru clan. He was the one great idol of her dreams. She felt that if she could exchange her youth with all its aspirations for the clod of earth under his feet, she would deem it a most precious grace. She was lost in a whirlpool of thought when he vanished through the trees.

Next morning Chitra laid aside her man’s clothing and donned bracelets, anklets, waist chain and a gown of purple silk which made her feel very uncomfortable. She met Arjuna in the forest temple of Shiva. He told her that as he was observing the vow of celibacy, he was not fit to be her husband. His words “pricked her ears like red hot needles.” Shame fell on her like a thunderbolt. She walked home with a heavy heart.

Then Chitra performed severe penances to propitiate the gods Madana and Vasanta. The Lord of Love and the youthful Lord of the Seasons appeared before her and asked her what her prayer was. She told them the story of her life and begged them to give her “the power of the weak and the weapon of the unarmed hand.” Madana promised to bring the world-conquering Arjuna as a captive before her. She said: “Had I but the time needed, I could win his (Arjuna’s) heat by slow degrees and ask no help of the gods……I am not the woman who nourishes her despair in lonely silence, feeding it with nightly tears and covering it with the daily patient smile, a widow from her birth. The flower of my desire shall never drop into the dust before it has ripened to fruit. But it is the labour of a lifetime to make one’s trill self known and honoured.” Hence she requested the gods to remove from her body the unattractive plainness and to make her, just for one brief day, enchantingly beautiful, “even as beautiful as was the sudden blooming of love” in her heart. Madana granted her prayer. Vasanta assured her: Not for the short span of a day but for one whole year the charm of spring blossoms shall nestle round thy limbs.”

Chitra was now transformed into a lass of ravishing loveliness. She presented herself before Arjuna who was now the love hungered guest at her door. She asked him about his vow of chastity for twelve long years. He told her that she had dissolved his vow “even as the moon dissolves the night’s vow of obscurity.” She asked him what he saw in her dark eyes, and milk white arms which made him false to himself. She told him bluntly: “Surely this cannot be love, this is not man’s highest homage to woman! Alas, that this frail disguise, the body should make one blind to the light of the deathless spirit!” She told him that the fame of his heroic manhood was false. He told her that to see her for a moment was to see perfect completeness once and forever. She told him not to offer his great heart to an illusion. She said to Madona, “What fearful flame is this with which thou hast enveloped me! I burn, and I burn whatever I touch!”

The southern breeze caressed Chitra to sleep. From the flowering malai bower overhead, silent kisses dropped over her body. On her hair, her breast, her feet, each flower chose a bed to die on. The moon had moved to the west, peering through the leaves” to espy this wonder of divine art wrought in a fragile human frame.” The air was heavy with perfume; the silence of the night was vocal with the chirping of crickets; the reflections of the trees hung motionless in the lake.” Arjuna, with the staff in his hand, stood tall and straight and still like a forest tree. It seemed to Chitra that she had, on opening her eyes, died to all the realities of life and undergone a dream-birth into a shadow land. Shame slipped to her feet like loosened clothes. She heard his call, “Beloved, my most beloved!” and responded sweetly, “Take me take all I am!” She stretched out her arms to him. The moon set behind the trees. One Curtain of darkness covered all. Heaven and earth, time and space, Pleasure and pain, death and life merged together in an unbearable ecstasy.” Thus likeDushyanta and Shakuntala, Arjuna and Chitra came together through the Gandharva form of marriage and enjoyed sensual pleasure.

Chitra began to feel that her borrowed beauty, her cursed appearance was robbing her of all the prizes of love, like a demon. When she woke in the morning from her dream, she found that her body had become her own rival. It was her hateful task to deck her body everyday and send it to be caressed by Arjuna. She wanted Madana to withdraw the boon granted to her. He said it would make Arjuna angry with her. But Chitra, who was conscience-stricken, was prepared to bear Arjuna’s resentment and rejection in silence after she revealed her true self to him. Now Vasanta reminded her of a Simple Law of Nature and asked her to go to her “mad festival.” He told her: “When with the advent of autumn, the flowering season is over, then comes the triumph of fruitage. A time will come of itself when the heat-cloyed bloom of the body will droop and Arjuna will gladly accept the abiding fruitful truth in thee.”

Arjuna, Watching Chitra weaving a garland with exquisite skill and grace, asked her if she was weaving his days of exile into an immortal wreath, to crown him when be returned home. The word “home” startled her. She told him, “this love is not for a home.” Shewanted him to take with him what was abiding and strong and “leave the little wild flower where it was born.” Shetried to convince him: “that which was meant for idle days should never outlive them”. Now Arjuna drew her attention tothe sound of prayer bells from a distant village temple. It reminded him of his duties as a Kshatriya. Be began to feel restless. He wanted to go for hunting. He asked Chitra to give him something to clasp, something that could last longer than pleasure, that could endure men through suffering. Chitra came to knowfrom Vasanta that the loveliness of her body would return the next day to the in-exhaustible stores of the spring. She requested the Gods to see that, on the last night, in its last hour, her beauty flashed its brightest like the final flicker of a dying flame. Her prayer was once again granted.

Arjuna heard from the villagers all sorts of reports praising their warrior-princess Chitra. They told him that she was a man in valour and a woman in tenderness. He expressed a strong desire meet that Chitra. Now the other Chitra told him that Princess Chitra had no Physical charm or beauty. But when Arjuna, no longer interested in the game of love, persisted in his desire to meet the plain Chitra, she asked him, “Would it Please your heroic soul if the playmate of the night aspired to be the helpmeet of the day, if the left arm learnt to share the burden of the proud right arm?” Arjuna confessed to her that he never seemed to know her aright. She seemed to him like “a goddess hidden within a golden image.” He told her: “Illusion is the first appearance of Truth. She advances towards her lover in disguise. But a time comes when she throws off her ornaments and veils and stands clothed in naked dignity. I grope fur that ultimate you, that bare simplicity of truth.”

Chitra presented herself before Arjuna in her true form and figure. She told him all about her and concluded: “I am Chitra. No Goddess to be worshipped, nor yet the object of common pity to be brushed aside like a moth with indifference. If you deign to keep me by your side in the path of danger and daring, if you allow me to share the great duties of your life, then you will know my true self.” She told him that she was nourishing, in her womb, his babe. She added that if a boy was born to her, she would bring him up as a second Arjuna and send him to his father at the appropriate time. Arjunalistened to her words with the heart and mind of a true lover and husband, and expressed his heartfelt joy in the words: “Beloved, my life is full.”

As Dr. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar rightly points out, “Chitra” is a succinct Tagorean version of Kalidasa’s “Shakuntala”. As the love of Dushyanta and Shakuntala rises from the sphere of physical beauty to the sphere of moral beauty, so also the love of Arjuna and Chitra passes in a natural and graceful manner from the physical and sensual level to the spiritual level. Tagore does not agree with the extreme viewpoints advocated by the ascetic and the sensualist respectively. He does not believe in ignoring the claims of the body and mortifying it. He does not also deny the place of spirit in human life. In his view, as in Browning’s, the body and the soul are complementary to each other:

“All good things/Are ours, nor Soul helps flesh more, now, then flesh helps Soul.” (Rabbi Ben Ezra)

If we study “Chitra” from Tagore’s comprehensive outlook on life, we will soon discover the hollowness of the criticism that the play is “the glorification of sexual abandonment”. Tagore seems to advocate through his play that man must not be earthy nor should he be a Sanyasi of the extremist kind denying the world and the flesh, but should maintain a balance between the flesh and the spirit like Wordsworth’s Skylark which is a “Type of the wise who soar but never roam: true to the kindred points of heaven and home”. This balanced attitude alone will lead man to “the joy of attaining the Infinite within the finite.”