The Tulasi Plant
And now a gallant purpose formed in her; to the west of the village lay the cotton fields that had belonged to her family. Some still belonged to her relatives. She would work there like any coolie woman, and earn money to keep her husband and boy. And she did this, in sun and wind, and, what was far harder, she worked in the stuffy little courtyards where the piles of cotton were flung in heaps to be carded, breathing the fluff-laden, stifling air for days onend. Ten minutes in one of those courtyards sends one out half choked. Mimosa spent an age of minutes there.
What inspired her, who can tell? She had never heard the command to owe no man anything. The traditions of her country lay towards debt, not from it. Her husband, the responsible one, saw nothing uncomfortable in sitting down in it. Perhaps it was the delicate purity of her mind, perhaps the effect of the light from the lighted candle the winds had not blown out; whatever it was, it carried her through years of hard living, and never once through all those
years did her hands drop to her sides in despair. 33 8
But the years were piled with pain. Every indignity which ingenuity could devise was heaped upon her. For India, kind land as she is in many of her aspects, can be very cruel to one who crosses her law of caste and custom, and a worshipper of a strange God is not beloved in a conservative community.
The Tulasi plant is sacred through all India. It is a small inconspicuous basil and it grows wild everywhere. Some hold that it is pervaded with the essence of Vishnu and his wife Lakshmi, and it is considered to be a deity in itself. Others say it is Sita, Rama’s wife, one of the beautiful Indian women of story. Others say it embodies all the deities in its fragile, fragrant stems and leaves and tiny, unpretentious flowers and fruit. Monier Williams believes it certain that it is the object of more adoration than any other plant in India, and so in all the world. And he quotes the prayer to it: ‘“‘I adore that tulasi in whose roots are all the sacred places of pilgrimage, in whose centre are all the deities, and in whose upper branches are the Védas.” Every day millions of Indian women, to whom it specially seems to belong, walk round it, in its little pot set in the midst of their courtyard or in the temple. And they offer rice and flowers to it, and the childless wife drinks a concoction made of its leaves chopped fine and mixed with water, and the snake-bitten finds healing in its juice.
In Mimosa’s village it is more feared than worshipped; for all the people there are Saivites and, though worshippers of Siva consider it sacred, it is not to them what it is to worshippers of Vishnu, or Rama (one of Vishnu’s incarnations), and so it comes to pass that the plant in that part of the country is left to grow and multiply as it likes in the fields, no one touches it for fear of enraging the gods, and it is not enough used in worship to put any check on its growth.
Mimosa saw it growing in masses of aromatic clusters. She badly needed firewood. Its slender stems do not suggest fuel, but dried they would serve her need. If the one true God had made it, her living God, was it His desire that it should waste itself in the fields? But to use it for kindling? Who would dare?
She dared. One day she carried home a huge armful of it, and spread it to dry in her courtyard. The horrified women gathered round.
‘““The vengeance of the gods!’’
“Oh, bitterly they will avenge themselves on thee!”’
‘* Stay, stay, thou fool woman! Touch it not. Burn the tulasi of the angry gods! Disaster will follow; the curse will fall!”’
The clamour grew about her. She stood quiet in the midst: ‘‘ But these gods are not as my God. There is one great God, one only. How, then, can the lesser gods avenge themselves upon me? He whom I worship is Creator of the tulasi.”’
It was a wonderful chance to witness to the truth she held. But the women were furious and terrified too, not hurt in heart, else she could not have touched the plant. It was not affection that sharpened their abuse, it was fear; fear of the vengeance of the offended powers.
Mimosa used her fuel and, to the surprise of the village, nothing immediately happened. But they still said, Parpom.
And she’ was a derision daily.