If not anything else, Toru Dutt in Savitri divinizes Savitri, the eternal bride and humanizes Death, the lord of the dead:
Upon his head he wore a crown
That shimmered in the doubtful light;
His vestment scarlet reached low down,
His waist, a golden girdle dight.
His skin was dark as bronze; his face,
Irradiate, and yet severe;
His eyes had much of love and grace,
But glowed so bright, they filled with fear.40
But here he is also the Lord of Dharma; he is great upholder of Law, and not alone the Lord of the Kingdom of Shadows. Toru Dutt presents death as powerful but yet kind-hearted. Death recognizes and realizes the greatness, sobriety and chastity of Savitri and is therefore pleased. Savitri was not terrified and perplexed by the presence of Death. She eulogizes death in this manner:
By patience, kindness, mercy, love,
And not by devastating wrath,
They would not shrink in childlike fright
To see thy shadow on their path,
But hail thee as sick souls the light.41
She started feeling within Death as love and thus won the game. Toru Dutt treats Death in her own innocent and refined way, without tagging any tinge of fear or scorn.
She has also presented Death, as the genuine king with his palace, courtiers and court. With all the regality He scolds His courtiers and messengers:
Why hath the Prince not been brought here?
The hour is past; nor is appeal
Allowed against foregone decree;
There is the mandate with the seal!
How comes it ye return to me
Without him? Shame upon your zeal!42
It is noticeable that Toru maintained the gap that exists between man the mortal and Death the immortal king of the dead, through Savitri’s servitude and Death’s benevolence.
The next ballad, Lakshman, based on a sad incident that took place in the life of Lakshman, the younger brother of King Rama. It depicts the taunt and hot words of Sita for a devoted brother. This is how Toru pictures Sita rebuking and taunting Lakshman:
He perishes—well, let him die!
His wife henceforth shall be mine own1
Can that thought deep imbedded lie
Within thy heart’s most secret zone! 43
From every line of this passage anger and scorn leap up, and it is not difficult to deduce that Sita is not in her usual self. When Sita’s rebuke crossed its limit and Lakshman could not bear it any more, he decided to depart as her words pierced his heart, like poisoned swords. The Lakshman of the Ramayana cannot refrain, in response to Sita’s wild and slanderous upbraiding, from the cynical remark: ‘Women are by nature crooked, fickle, sowers of strife.’ The Lakshman of Toru’s ballads however give utterance to no such unchivalrous utterance, but remains through all the tempest of Sita’s scorn what Chaucer would have called ‘a very parfit gentil knight.’ Lakshman disappointedly says:
Have I deserved this at thine hand?
Of lifelong loyalty and truth
Is this the meed?
He further remarks patiently:
In going hence I disregard
The plainest orders of my chief,
A deed for me, —a soldier, —hard
And deeply painful…..….
Think better of me from this time.
Saying this Lakshman traced a magic circle for Sita’s protection, left the hut. At that time :
No trace of anger there was seen,
Only a sorrow dark, that seemed.44
Toru scores again through the simple sufficiency of her clear understanding of the tragedy at the heart of this old world drama.
The Royal Ascetic and the Hind is about the failure of a great king as an ascetic. It is the story of a king Bharata of Saligram, who left his ‘kingdom to dwell in the forest and changed his sceptre for a hermit’s staff,’ tried to attain Perfect dominion on his soul through religious rites and prayers.
His ascetism was broken by a small creature, whose life he has saved and ‘the fount of love sprang out a new within his blighted heart/ to greet that dumb, weak, helpless creature. Thus monarch turned Hermit’s time passed in joy and happiness ‘whenever near his little favourite’ and started to feel uneasiness and trouble, when ‘it wandered far.’ This attachment for the ascetic with the hind is not to be seen as his return to the web of Maya; on the contrary it underscores the philosophy of love and involvement. Here Toru strongly condemned the life of ascetic negation and abandonment of all pleasures and emotions of life. In fact, Toru’s view about life is quite different from what was written on the ancient books:
What! A sin to love!
A sin to pity! Rather should we deem
Whatever Brahmans wise, or monks may hold,
That he had sinned in casting off all love
By his retirement to the forest shades;
For that was to abandon duties high,
And like a recreant soldier, leave the post
Where God had placed him as a sentinel.45
Toru thinks wrongly that it is implied in the original that by yielding to this love Bharata had failed in his yoga. Toru ends this poem by pointing out her Christian belief that man can justify his existence by accepting life in its totality.
Toru’s philosophy of life based on love and kindness is thoroughly evident in this poem. She forcefully propounded:
That god is love, and not to be adored
By devotion born of stoic pride,
Or with ascetic rites, or penance hard,
But with a love, in character akin
To His unselfish, all including love.46
The next legend Dhurva marks the disappointment of that prince and his leaving the palace for the higher studies values of life. The story starts with a sad incident, taken place in the court of King Uttanpado where his stepmother in harsh words- rebuked Dhurva, the prince.
Dhurva repulsed silently from his father’s lap and ran to his mother’s chamber and told her about his humiliation through the hands of her stepmother Suruchee. Though his mother consoled him as she could, but Dhruva find in those words of consolation:
Nor resting place, nor echo in this heart
Broken by words severe, repulsing Love
That timidly approached to worship.
Dhruva decided to win the love of God, the king of kings. He told his mother about his decision:
There is a crown above my father’s crown,
I shall obtain it, and at any cost.
Of toil, or penance, or unceasing prayer.47
He left the palace and by his constant devotion and prayers fulfilled his resolve and became the pole star of all the devotees.
Toru has portrayed the anguish and suffering of Dhruva in a very natural and sympathetic manner. The sad incident that had taken place in the childhood of Dhruva has changed the whole course of his life.
The legend Buttoo is based on the sad incident of thumb severing of Buttoo in deference to the wishes of a renowned teacher, Dronacharjya. Buttoo made an appeal to Dronacharjya to instruct him in the art of archery. But he was rejected on account of his low birth. He was scorned and ill treated by the sage and his royal pupils. He felt heart broken and ashamed. At last he decided to gain ‘The science that man will not teach’.
He went to a secluded retreat, raised a hut, built a statue of Dronacharjya, placing bow and arrow in his hand started his practice Buttoo’s life gave us a message that:
By strained sense, by constant prayer,
By steadfastness of heart and will,
By courage to confront and dare,
All obstacles he conquered still;
A conscience clear, —a ready hand,
Joined to meek humility,
Success must everywhere command,
How could he fail who had all three!”48
Even though he lacks no reverence to Dronacharjya, who declined to teach him. Th
ere was no malice or resentment of any kind in the heart of Buttoo.
But the misfortune falls on the very day when Dronacharjya visited the forest with Pandava and Kuru princes and they come to know about Buttoo’s excellence in archery. Arjuna, the prince of the Pandavas, went to Dronacharjya and charged him of his betrayal of faith. But Dronacharjya reassured him and came to buttoo and got the information that he himself was the source of inspiration. At this point, Drona asked him to give his Guru-Dakshina. Buttoo humbly said:
All that I have, O Master mine,
All I shall conquer by my skill,
Gladly shall I to thee resign,
Let me but know thy gracious will.”49
Dronacharjya made his demand and asked for his right hand’s thumb.
Buttoo very gladly offered his right hand thumb to the master, though it meant the end of his long years of hard work and subsequent achievement. Dronacharjya blessed him eternal fame as succeeding generation will always link his name ‘With Self-help, Truth, and Modesty’.50
In truth, the self-help of which Toru speaks in the last lines of the poem is more relevant to the Christian world than to the Hindus. Toru, has, highlighted the importance of ‘self sacrifice’ through this ballad. Like Buttoo, Toru was compelled to renounce all the pleasures of life; still she was satisfied of her life.
Sindhu depicts the painful death of Shravan Kumar in the service of his old and blind parents. Sindhu was the ideal son of his old, helpless parents. He attended on them regularly. His only ambition in life was to serve his blind, sage parents. It was one day, while filling his pitcher in the stream; Sindhu was unwittingly shot by Dasarath, the great king of Oudh.
The King sprinkled cold water on his face and tried to get the sign of the nerve or life in the body. When Sindhu got back his conscious, read Dasaratha’s fear on his face. The King was afraid of a Brahmin’s curse but the Brahmin was a noble soul and assured him :
No curses, no, —I bear no grudge,
Not thou my blood hast spilt,
Lo! here before the unseen Judge,
Thee I absolve from guilt.
Because I suffer, should I give
Thee, king, a needless pain?
Ah, no! I die, but mayst thou live,
And cleansed from every stain!51
Overwhelmed by the words of Sindhu and grieved by his guilt, the monarch started to weep. But Sindhu consoled him and forbade him to weep as his death was the result of his previous sin.
And then Sindhu gave a full description of his killing of a pair of doves, who lived happily, near peepul tree’s quivering leaves. In his childish manner he took a sling and ball and killed the bird ‘And so I die—a bloody death But not for this I mourn.’
He gladly accepted his fate but did not forget to do his duty even at that crucial moment. He was worried about his blind parents. He asked King Dasaratha to carry the pitcher to his thirsty parents and ‘He pointed, —ceased, —then sudden died!’
In part 3rd of this ballad; we have again a poignant description of Sindhu’s weak and helpless parents. Their pathetic cry and anguish is well portrayed in this last part of the ballad.
Exactly at that time, the King arrived; “with haggard look and wild/ weighed down with grief, and pale with fear, /bearing the lifeless child.” Sindhu’s parents anxiously asked, mistaken him as his son. Then Dasaratha placed the dead child in their arms and briefly told his tale. Hearing the sad incident:
‘The parents their dead child embraced,
And kissed his forehead pale.”
Both the parents, could not resist the loss of their son, gave up their hopes of life and bade him to guide to their bed of moss as life had now meaningless for them. The king follow their instructions and.
Upon the moss he laid them down,
And watched beside the bed:
Death gently came and placed a crown
Upon each reverend head. 52
The last legend Sita stands apart. It begins as a nature description, but presently strikes the pure elegiac note:
But who is this fair lady? Not in vain
She weeps, —for lo! At every tear she sheds
Tears from three pairs of young eyes fall amain
And bowed, in sorrow are the three young heads.53
Valmiki’s hermitage stands vivid before our eyes but even more vivid and haunting is Sita in her sorrow, and the three children - Abju, Aru, Toru herself– weeping because Sita is weeping. This almost perfect poem is a tribute to Toru’s mother’s genius for story –telling, and the last two lines are a poignant elegy on the early death of Abju and Aru. 54
Rajaji comments on Sita of the Uttara Ramayana: ‘the tenderness and purity and the untold suffering of women took shape as the Uttara Ramayana. Like an unflickering lamp, it throws light on the quality of their hearts.” Toru’s little poem also is an “unflickering lamp,” and throws light on the quality of her heart. 55
Among her miscellaneous poems The Tree of Life is also based on the thought of death. With reference to the poem, Mr. Govin wrote to Mary Martin—it is dated as far back as April 16, 1877— “Yester evening when the candles were lighted. Toru told me, in very low whispers and with some agitation, a dream or vision ….. ; she was not asleep at all, but quite awake. I know now why she asked me the evening before where the text was, “And I will give a crown of life’ …...”56
Obviously, the Angel that appeared before Toru’s eyes should have been the vision of the Holy Spirit. The vision confirms the reality of death, for which Toru should be fully prepared without any fear, for the Bible, says: “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation.” 57 In fact, the very title of the poem is taken from the Bible, and one may read the following in this context: And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden.” 58
Prominent critic Padmini Sen Gupta remarks: “This poem, verging on the mystic is in my mind the best of Toru’s verse and the vision she sees is like Blake’s peep into the world of Divine love.”59
In Our Casuarina Tree, Toru laments the loss of her brother and sister. Death has snatched away all her dear once and only Casuarina tree stands remain as it is. That is the reason Toru loved the tree so much:
Tree, beloved of those
Who now in blessed sleep for aye repose,
Dearer than life to me, alas! Were they!
Mayst thou be numbered when my days are done
With deathless trees—like those in Borrowdale,
Under whose awful branches lingered pale.60
The pathetic awareness of the reality of death, not only of the beloved ones but also even of herself, heightens the need of the bliss of immortality for the tree. Here in this poem she gave voice to the pangs of separation and suffering, alienation and exile and loss and premature death with deep feeling.”61
Fear, trembling Hope, and Death, the skeleton,
And Time the shadow;” and though weak the verse
That would thy beauty fain, oh fain rehearse,
May Love defend thee from Oblivion’s curse.62
Fear, Death and Time are personified as trembling hope, the skeleton and the shadow respectively. Here the poetess is seeking answers at a metaphysical level. The basis of human life is hope and death is but inevitable. Death however need not to be the end for while the skeleton is merely a physical embodiment of death, it is the soul that is immortal. Time is the thread that holds life and death together - it is mere shadow of no substance, one moment creeping slowly, the next speeding by in the blink of an eye. We can infer that perhaps the poetess is living in time’s shadow. Perhaps she is speaking of her fragile hopes that the tree remains free of oblivion’s curse; or then again she is giving voice to her fears that when she dies, her precious memories will be lost to the world. The tree continues to be
a symbol of her cherished hopes.
On reading Toru’s verses and even her French novel it is evident that she often passed into an otherworldly state. As she grew frailer and more serene, especially after the great sorrow of losing her sister, and as she surrendered herself more and more to God’s will, she realized more deeply her unity with God. Thus, her ballads are far stronger and more powerful in her spontaneous outbursts of song, when she came into close touch with a mystic contact with the unknown. Again and again we find this cohesion between the human and divine, and with this unearthly strength, her poems became far elegant and mature.
In her ballads, she delves deep into the understanding of Hindu links between the sons and daughter of the world and the gods. Savitri follows Yama, the god of Death, and claims her husband’s soul back; she is not afraid of the awful presence of the Lord of the Dead but cries:
The power of goodness is so great
We pray to feel its influence
For ever on us.
Even death is goodness and there is no fear:
No weariness O Death, I feel.63
Thus also the Royal Ascetic ‘Endeavoured to attain Perfect dominion on his soul.’ In fact Toru’s ballads are abounding with Mystic sentiments. The poem Jogadhya Uma describes Uma the goddess, in her womanly form:
A fair young woman with large eyes,
And dark hair falling to her zone,
She heard the pedlar’s cry arise,
And eager seemed his ware to own.” 64
A young and beautiful woman, yet a goddess too. Toru here humanizes the supernatural elements and this again shows her affinity with a world beyond this mortal world and experienced by very few.
The theme of death evokes a sensitive response from Toru Dutt because of her personal experience of two untimely deaths in the family as well as the premonition of her own death. For instance, Savitri defines Satyavan’s desire to go to the forest in terms of destiny:
With unseen hands Fate draws us on
Unto the place appointed us;
We are her playthings; with her breath
She blows us where she lists in space.65
The lines become unusually meaningful in the autobiographical context. The same feeling of surrender to God’s will is evident in Sindhu also:
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