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Although Savitri’s nature was akin to eternity from which she came, she, like all other Saviours, has to share with humanity, its two most
characteristic aspects: grief and death:
To live with grief, to confront death on her road, –
The mortal’s lot became the immortal’s share.
Thus trapped by the net of earthly destinies, Savitri awaits ’her ordeal’s hour’ - the hour when Satyavan must die. This dark foreknowledge of ’the
hour’ keeps her separate from all the people around her, because to divulge ’the peril and the pain’ of Satyavan’s death would be quite calamitous.
In fact, Canto I of Book VII, which is titled Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart’s Grief tells
vividly of Savitri’s ’torn depths’ and the ’dark foreknowledge’.
When Savitri leaves her parents at Madra and comes to live with Satyavan in the ’rough – hewn homestead’ she experiences the joy of union. But it was
all too short.
Dreadful to her were the footsteps of the hours;
Grief came, a passionate stranger to her gate;...
Vainly she fled into abysms of bliss
From her pursuing foresight of the end...
Thus swaying in strong gusts of
And swimming in foreboding’s sombre waves,...
Her eyes stared blind into the future’s night...
She in her dreadful knowledge was alone.
Normally, for ordinary human beings, foreknowledge of tragic events in one’s life, is much too burdensome. Man is not pure enough to bear the burden of
the future. But in Savitri’s case it is different; she is –
Even her humanity was half divine:
So,
Even in this moment of her soul’s despair,
In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,
No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;
She told the secret of her woe to none;
Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.
To suffer calmly and quietly is the sign of great souls. They seek to unburden their sorrow not on the shoulders of their fellow-beings but at the feet
of the Godhead within. And Savitri was not just a great soul – hers is a soul that ’confronts Time and Fate’. All her suffering is only at the level of ’her outward self, for, within.
Her spirit opened to the spirit in all,
Her nature felt all Nature as its own.
Apart, living within, all she bore;
Aloof, she carried in herself the world;
Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread,
Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights;
The universal Mother’s love was hers.
This is the truth of Savitri - she is the Universal Mother. So the doom of Satyavan, as foretold by Narad, is only a private sign:
The death of Satyavan is the death in earth and by changing Satyavan's fate, she will change earth’s course of destiny itself. So her
anguish was not for the personal calamity or loss of Satyavan, it was for earth, for ’she carried in herself the world’ and her personal ’dread’ was the ’cosmic dread’.
Savitri is among men who are ’blind’ - she is here to lead the blind humanity. She works for them, takes up their ’load’, but they are unaware of it.
Man thinks, blinded by his own ego, that he is the doer of all his actions. Silently God works through man, through his ego, to realise his own dreams. So did Savitri.
Moreover, even if any human being wants to help her, he cannot because Savitri’s work is on the cosmic level. So, alone and unhelped she must do and
fulfil her work:
Unhelped, she must foresee and dread and dare.
As says Narad (Book VI, C.2):
The great are strongest when they stand alone...
A day may come when she must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers...
Alone with death and close to extinction’s edge,
Her single greatness in that last dire scene,
She must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time
And reach an apex of world-destiny
Where all is won or all is lost for man.
That day had come:
The long-foreknown and fatal morn was here
Bringing a noon that seemed like every noon.
The ’fatal noon’ was apparently like any other morn. For, Nature, in her eternal march goes on, ’unheeding’ man’s sorrows and joys, his failures and
success, his death and life:
Nature seems to be impersonal, untouched by the dawning of every day - ’she walks upon her mighty way’, keeping in view only her destiny. But, for
Savitri it was not a day like any other:
”For soon we part and who shall know how long
Before the great wheel in its monstrous round
Restore us to each other and our love?”
(Book VII, C.l)
So, Savitri, the woman, carries deep within her the tremendous load of the mortal tragedy:
Then a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved,
And sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom
And recognised the close and lingering ache,
Deep, quiet, old, made natural to its place...
The pressure of the ’cosmic load’ had reached in her to such an extent that her ’unassisted brain found not its past’ and
It was at this critical point when the sense-faculties had dulled, when
when her life-energies are all sapped - ’with no wages of delight’ – that there arose in her spirit -
Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back, ...
Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams
Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.
The above lines also indicate that Savitri the woman has suddenly turned into Savitri the Incarnate. When even the Divine Consciousness incarnates upon
earth, the incarnate’s consciousness also gets veiled by the dark resistance of earth and it gets dulled, as says the poet:
At first life grieved not in her burdened beast:
On the lap of earth’s original somnolence
Inert, released into forgetfulness
Prone it reposed, unconscious on mind’s verge,
Obtuse and tranquil like the stone and star.
There comes a critical moment, even in the Avatar’s life, when he remembers his avatarhood and the mission of his descent. In Savitri’s case it was the
poignant moment before Satyavan’s death when she is awakened to her inner force, inner mission:
All came back to her: Earth and Love and Doom...
Awake she endured the moments’ serried march
And looked on this green smiling dangerous world,
And heard the ignorant cry of living things.
Amid the trivial sounds, the unchanging scene,
Her soul arose confronting Time and Fate.
Immobile in herself, she gathered force.
Thus, Savitri the Divine Incarnate was all ready to face Death who was awaited, for,
This was the day when Satyavan must die.
It is indeed a day that has been prophesied by Narad:
Twelve swift winged months are given to him and her;
This day returning Satyavan must die.
But, the question is, does Satyavan die? Narad did not say that Satyavan ”will die”, he says ”must die”. So, there is a possibility that something else
”may” happen. Thus, Satyavan, in a way dies momentarily and then returns to life because Savitri brings him back. Interpreted differently, Satyavan dies to the old and his return to life is a new transformed life
symbolic of what Savitri has done: conquered Death and brought to earth a new divined life.
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