THE VISION
[ONE-ACT PLAY]
HARINDRANATH
CHATTOPADHYAYA
PERSONS IN THE PLAY
An Old Labourer
His Old Wife
His Daughter
A Labourer Boy
An Old Man, a Vision of
twenty years hence.
[Scene: Interior of a
labourer’s cottage .. .. .. Evening. The labourer’s wife, an old woman, is
cooking her husband’s meal in a dark comer to the right. Her young daughter is
seen sitting by kneading wheat-cakes.]
Daughter: You slept a long sleep at mid-day, mother of me,
and I all the while keeping watch over your quiet face. Dead and gone to the
other life I thought sometimes you were, but then again you smiled in your
sleep and I knew you full of life.
Old Woman: Child of me! God in the blue skies were good to us
if he would close up our life…for we are poor and poverty they say now-a-days
do be a crime! The poor ones suffer while the rich folk hold the whole big
world in their strong hands .... and mock our poverty ... It was not this like
in days gone by … Ah, child of my bosom! these be bitter times!
Daughter: I have often heard my father say this too, that
hunger like a tongue of fire is licking the children’s empty stomachs and of
women, he often does be talking .... who hide their pure naked bodies in cold
earth digging out graves for themselves, there being no money to buy them their
share of clothing .... and he often speaks of their men; God save them from
shame .... their men, father says, are hard-worked as if they be bullocks or
dumb creatures ... They are flogged till their strong male flesh cries out “Tyranny!”
“Blood!” and such like noises!
Old Woman (weeping): And your father is a man too! … He comes to his cottage
how often with a dark cloud on his brow, and when I ask him “What be the matter
with my child’s father?” he smiles and cools my burning bosom with a cheerful
word! ... and when at the deep of night he sleeps, I wake and under his share
of tattered shirt, I see stripes like blue flame, and marks like purple flame,
and such-like signs of his master’s cruelty, out there among the fields. These
are cruel times, dear child of my womb, but we must live somehow till the great
Master of all sings “Come to my Field of Glory!”
Daughter: Poor mother! how brave you are, and you so old and broken
and that sorrowful... and father, he is a saintly soul the like of him they
shall find beyond the great big clouds!
Old Woman: But, my girl, our chains must break somewhere,
sometime, if we only wait, for, as I slept at mid-day, I fell into dreaming.
Daughter: It was then you smiled and I knew you full of
life! What did you dream, mother?
Old Woman: Fields! green fields! and millions of poor
labourers ... The hot sun baking their naked brown bodies, men, women and
children … The poor women hiding their shame beneath their tattered breast
cloth, and a meagre rag round their pale bodies. The children crying, crying
for bread and yearning for a patch of cool shadows ... Among them of a sudden
sprung a man, their master, with hard cruel looks of him, cracking his whip in
the air ... The cracking sound frightened the young ones who shrieked in
themselves, and choked their shrieks in their tired little throats parched and
desert-like for want of water. Then again, as of a sudden, dear child of me, I
glimpsed your father labouring and wiping the sweat at his brow, among the
labourers. The blood of me jumped up like a mad woman and yelled, when the
master lashed his body because he saw a tear-drop break in the edge of his
eye! “O cruel God!” I cry in my dreaming, “Where be justice? Be there justice?”
when a voice brake from the trees in the field “Yea! as long as God do be in
the blue sky and the heart of the labourer!”
Daughter: Mark you mother! “As long as God is in the blue
sky and the heart of the labourer”... and have we not always thought on His
mercy?
Old Woman: Then a figure, as of the days to be, stood in the
midst of the labourers in the fields and cried “The day is yours! You are all
kings! The tyrant shall bend low and drop his eye-balls in the dust!”
Daughter: May be, it is a vision, for we poor people do
often see visions ... We dream ... and the dreams of the poor, they say, are
born in God’s purple heart-core.
Old Woman (looking out of the cottage-door): The sun is red
on the edge of the sky. How like a bit of bleeding flesh! May be your father
comes on his roadway home … where he shall rest after his scanty meal ...
Child! ... but, God knows, how many new stripes our eyes must suffer on the old
trembling body of him in the darkness of night!
Daughter: I shall wet them with my tears, mother, and cover
up their flames with the love of my heart ... but who be he coming on the roadway alone ... a boy
quietly weeping.
Old Woman: A labourer lad may be; call him in that we may
love him and ease his little breast of its vast sorrows. (Exit Daughter)
A labourer-boy ... God
have mercy on the labourer and his woman and his young one.
(Enter Daughter with the
little labourer-child who is sobbing.)
Boy: O! Grandmother of me!
Old Woman: What hath befallen thee, little angel?
Boy: I have no corner of the world to hide me ... Hide
mc in your lap ... O hide me – anywhere!
Daughter: The poor wee soul is trembling … and he so young
and lovely! ... who hath hurt thee little lonely angel? ...
Boy: My master ... the cruel master ... His eyes are
dark and poison-like, and in his tongue a black scorpion crawl ... He flogs us
all day, and with a long long whip; looking serpent-like; His fingers are thick
and hard and strong like mountains that we do see ... and we hate him ... He is
a bad master … I don’t want to serve a bad master ... A cruel unfeeling master
… and he not paying us wages at the end of daylight!
Daughter: Poor tiny sorrowing bosom!
Old Woman: And he is only one of the millions that do be
crying ...
Daughter: Have you no father?
Boy: They say he is gone to another land where the
fields are fine and the Master that do be there is a good kind Master, and He
paying wages to him in silver stars, they, say ... and my mother ... my own
darling mother ... (Sobs).
Old Woman: God rest her soul in peace, may be she too has run away from our
world of pale shadows ... Poor boy of the bleeding heart! ...
Boy: Gone! ... but not to father. She is gone, no one
knows where, and she leaving a bitter tale in the mouths of the labourers.
Daughter: Poor woman! and she brought him into the world to
be living by his little self all lonely in this great big world! .. why did she
leave thee, little one?
Boy: The master that does be treating us like worse
than dogs, the field-folk say he took her with him one evening ... for wages,
he said, she, the mother of me, believed his lips that lied ... for we poor
folk do be simple and believe the world truthful ... and then, the field folk
say, she fled in shame, in a kind of rage ... an outrage, the field-folk say, and
I living alone now in this world of many fears. Hide me, O grandmother of me,
or send me to my father in the fields that do be fine and the Master do be kind
and good doling out wages in silver stars as they say.
Old Woman: Child of me! let us feed this little angel. It is
hungry he is ... this boy of the fields ... Fear no more, wee heart. It is you
will be with us and call me your mother, you will ... and a father will come to
you at the setting-in of dark. Forget the cruel master.
(The daughter sets a
plate of evening meal before the lad and a mug of
water.)
Boy (eating hungrily): Good folk! I have not supped
nor eaten I have for two days past, nor could I forget my share of pride and
ask for a morsel, for we poor folk do often be proud and ashamed to beg ... we
are ... and we that sore and hungry ... Now God be praised, there do be kind
folk among the poor ... O! the wealthy folk are cruel, cruel, no mercy in their
hearts, or no heart may be for mercy to enter … For days we hunger and no wages
given us ... What are we to do, God save us … Many there do be steal and
plunder to keep them full of life … and often it is caught they are and sent to
closed rooms with bars, prison, the field-folk call it … and they do be happier
there for sure of bread and water it is they be, and scanty work, and a roof to
keep the sun-burn from them …
(The boy finishes his
meal.)
Old Woman: He is weary and sleep will hush the flame of his
eyelids ...
(The daugher spreads
apiece of mat in the corner to the left.)
There little boy! sleep till the dawn be
red on the hills and a new day begin for your heart that has known sorrow.
Boy: (Goes towards mat to sleep): Now God be praised!
there do be kind folk among the poor ... The rich folk are cruel ... cruel ...
(falls asleep).
(The stage begins to grow
dark. Only a faint sense of approaching star-light is felt pulsing in the
darkness.)
Old Woman: His wee body is old with sorrow ... He has stripes
too and they do be the badge of the tribe of labourers.
Daughter: Mother! the hills are beginning to sleep too ...
and father is still out in the fields ... Punished, may be, and forced to end
more work than is his usual share … But there he comes with a quiet splendour
in his eyes … Father!
(Enter Father unusually
calm and preoccupied as if he were touched with vision and prophecy.)
You come late and the
darkness growing on the hillside ... already a star breaks.
Old Woman: Punished may be and worked into the heart of the
grey evening.
Old Man (smiling with an inner consciousness of new
power): No! Woman of my poverty! a strange thing hath befallen! … I fell asleep
on the roadside ... and I coming over the tired fields to our home the labour
of tile daylight being done ... my limbs trembling and worn, my eyes closing on
the red wake of the sun … and, as of a sudden, a soft touch on my feverish head
woke me .. then darkness folding the hillside .. In my dreams I dreamed that we
knelt … You, your daughter, and I, ... in prayer to the great Master in the Land of the Stars
and of the sunrise, where everything that chanceth do be beautiful ... Oho! but
who may you childer be? ...
Old Woman: A labourer child … and
seeking that he is refuge in our love and poverty …
Old Man: How like a God he sleeps!
Daughter: But they say that God does never be asleep ... He
ever waketh, some say.
Old Woman: And some, that sleepeth. He for certain! ... for
there are strange things befalling the world of His own making! no justice in
any corner ... But when He wakeneth, the flowers shall blossom once and the
desert laugh like a red rose.
Daughter: Let us pray the great God then and wake Him ...
(wakes up the sleeping boy) May be, the prayers of four souls do be stronger
than of three .... and the fourth a pretty child of pure heart ... That may be
will make our voices fill His blue sleep in Heaven ... for the child’s voice is
sweet ever ... and God loveth children.
(The boy wakes up and
comes to the Old W oman.)
Old Man: Here is your father, dear angel.
Boy: A night of stars to you father, dear angel.
Old Man: How like a God he speaks!
Old Woman: Child of our poverty! Bend low and kneel with us.
We shall wake up the sleeping God in the blue skies ... that is.
Boy: That is where my father does be working in fields
that are fine ... and the Master is good and loving he is.
Old Man: Pray with us. The prayer of the poor may be heard
for once, if they be from the flowering mouth of a child! (They kneel to pray.
Suddenly a lightning runs through the room as if to herald the voice of
thunder. Then an Old Man, the Vision-of Twenty-Years-Hence-appears.)
Vision of Twenty Years Hence: Rise, souls in prayer! I
live in the present, I who have always lived in the past ... I Come from the
Master of the skies and my lips are flaming with prophecy! People who know me
call me “Vision of twenty years hence!” – and many there are who feel my
presence day and night ... Labourers! poor labourers, fear not! times are soon
coming when you shall be powerful masters! when your race that is now bruised
and under the word of fetters, will seek its freedom through you. Labourers!
fear not! for the tyrant shall not prosper long! He shall die a bitter death,
his eyes shall be put out, and his mouth, closed with a coward’s silence … His
limbs will tremble in heavy chains, and all the rich blood that has oozed out
of your bodies and the bodies of your women and children shall gush in an
eternal stream from out his nostrils ... He shall kneel before each one of you
... man, woman and child, in the garments of a slave, he that was once your
hard master ... Rise, Souls in prayer, Labourers! a destiny of kingship awaits
you! You are the makers of the future … and at your bleeding feet opens the
splendid white Road to Peace and
Immortality.
(Disappears. The stage is growing bright, as though a new dawn were being ushered into the world of darkness.)
Boy: God in the blue skies hath woken, mother!
Old Man: My dream of mid-day hath come to pass!
Boy: A fine old being! He cometh from the blue skies and the
Master that does breathe there, may be ...
Daughter: Miracle!
Old Man: Twenty years hence! and then a white dawn shall
break through the black hills of our sorrow ... This boy may be hath brought
vision with him ... I shall go, stand in the midst of the suffering labourers
and give them this message.
“The tyrant shall die!
... Ye shall be kings – Twenty years hence!”
[Curtain]
–From “SHAMA’ A”, July 1920