ACTRESS 1: Don’t mention his name!
ACTRESS 3: You couldn’t be mad if you can scream like that.
ACTRESS 1: Leave me to my sins.
ACTRESS 3: Sins! Did I hear correctly?
ACTRESS 1: Jhali, what does it mean to be attached?
ACTRESS 3: It is the sweetest and the most painful thing.
ACTRESS 1: I have the pain and none of the sweetness.
ACTRESS 3: Who are you attached to?
ACTRESS 1: Krishna.
ACTRESS 3: Oh, is that all?
ACTRESS 1: I want him in a different way.
ACTRESS 3: I don’t understand you. You mean, you mean …
ACTRESS 1: Yes, Yes.
ACTRESS 3: You mean you lust for him?
ACTRESS 1: Yes.
ACTRESS 3: While I was driving a tiger from the front, I find a wolf has entered from the back.
ACTRESS 1: Listen, I will tell you. When I first discovered this, I looked for the best way to endure it. I tried to hide it, I couldn’t. I tried to control it, I couldn’t. I finally decided it was best for me to die.
ACTRESS 3: Die?
ACTRESS 1: The sky is high but a woman’s heart leaps higher.
ACTRESS 3: Are you mad?
ACTRESS 1: I am going mad with passion.
ACTRESS 3: Sugar killed the ant; passion killed the woman. (Pause.) How can you feel that way about a god? What arrogance!
ACTRESS 1: I feel as humble as the earth who kisses the feet of peasants and kings. (Pause.) You are hurting me.
ACTRESS 3: Keep quiet. A person of few words at least escapes slander.
ACTRESS 1: Stop, you are smothering me.
ACTRESS 3: Please don’t go mad!
ACTRESS 1: I am not going mad, stupid woman.
ACTRESS 3: Then look at the world clearly.
ACTRESS 1: To be clear-sighted is to see yourself.
ACTRESS 3: What do I see?
ACTRESS 1: Alive, you don’ t see your soul. Dead, you don’ t see your corpse. My soul is the universe. The universe is my lord, Krishna. I am he who I love and he who I love is I.
ACTRESS 3: Then where is your sin?
ACTRESS 1: I crave him as a woman and that’s sinful. I want him as a woman.
ACTRESS 2: Enter Uda with a cup.
(Dance of the cup.)
ACTRESS 2: The Rana has sent this medicine for Mira.
ACTRESS 3: What is it?
ACTRESS 1: My dear sister has brought me poison to drink.
ACTRESS 2: It is medicine for the sick.
ACTRESS 1: If my husband thinks I am sick, then I am.
Mira takes it from her.
ACTRESS 3: Don’t drink it.
ACTRESS 1: I forgive my sister.
ACTRESS 2: Uda is forgiven by Mira.
ACTRESS 1: Mira drinks it and finds it nectar.
(Song of the Cup.)
Rana sent a cup of poison,
Mira drank it and laughed.
Bells on her flying feet,
Mira drank it and danced away.
15. Since when is She Mirabai
ACTOR 1: Three months later.
ACTOR 2: Sounds of an army in retreat. Jai and Rana are on camelback in the hot desert noon of Rajasthan, returning from the war with the Mughal. The up-and-down rhythm of the camel sets the tempo of the scene. The mood is philosophical.
(Dance of the camels.)
ACTOR 1: It is all over my friend, and I feel sad.
ACTOR 2: Only a battle is lost—not the war.
ACTOR 1: Fallow ground can be useful; even dead wood is of some use; but a king who has lost a battle is of no use at all. I have fooled myself long enough. If only I had not turned back at least I could have died honourably.
ACTOR 2: The Rana doesn’t do honour to the Sisodia blood.
ACTOR 1: You can’t carve rotten wood. We have lost all our men. Don’t speak empty words, Jai. (Pause.)
Would you believe it if I told you that the only thing I want now is … Mira.
ACTOR 2: Mira?
ACTOR 1: I want to go back to her. I miss her.
(Dance of the creation.)
ACTOR 2: (Chanting.) Listen:—Brahma took a cluster of bees, gaiety of sunbeams, weeping of clouds, fickleness of wind, timidity of the hare, vanity of the peacock, hardness of stone, sweetness of honey, cruelty of the tiger, the warm glow of fire, coldness of snow, chattering of jays, cooing of the kokila, hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the rainbird—he put all of these together, made her into a woman, and gave her to man. Eight days later man returned the woman to Brahma lamenting:—‘She chatters all the time, cries for no reason, and is always ill. Take her back.’ Brahma took her back.
Eight days again passed, and man returned to Brahma with a sigh:—‘Since she left there is no one to sing and dance with me, play with me, glance at me, and cling to me. Give her back.’ And Brahma returned her to man.
Three days later, man returned crying, ‘I can’t live with her.’
The story has no ending.
ACTRESS 3: Many years ago, when Mira was a little girl, she saw marriage procession. She went in and told her grandmother that she too wanted a bridegroom. Her grandmother jokingly took Mira to Krishna’s shrine, pointed to him and said, ‘This is your bridegroom.’
Since that day she has been very attached to it.
ACTOR 1: Noble Jai, it’s time you married. What about the Princess Uda? We would be honoured to have you as our brother-in-law.
ACTOR 2: I am already that.
ACTOR 1: We are thirsty.
ACTOR 2: I shall get some water.
ACTOR 1: When drinking water remember the source.
ACTRESS 1: (Chanting.) On top of the highest heaven, above the dwelling place of the gods, by the dark and gentle river lives Krishna, the eternal lover.
The sunshine on the riverbank blues his slender shoulders as he joyously bathes to the sound of the Name, the sound current.
In the dusk of the day an eon long, beside the blue-flowered meadow where cattle graze, peacocks dance and nightingales sing, the blue-lover plays his flute.
