Ratnaprabha frequently recalled Marish’s comments, and the memories connected with them. The first time the atheist artist—a young man with prematurely grey hair—had come to her house, had been three years ago, when he was on his way to Sagal from Dakshinapath. He had attended a concert. Ratnaprabha had seen nothing in his face or his dress to attract her attention. Even after the assembly had dispersed, he had lingered on in the hall. When Ratnaprabha was about to retire for the night, he asked for an audience with her. But she had declined to meet him. Discouraged, he had sent his reply through her maidservant, ‘Yes, the lady’s behaviour is in keeping with her vocation. I only wanted to have the pleasure of her company, but I cannot pay for that pleasure with money. But, there are other things in the world besides money.’

The remark had intrigued Ratnaprabha, and she had agreed to see him, though not very willingly. She had found that there was something in Marish’s behaviour, which commanded attention. In the end, he had stayed on as her guest for some weeks. At first his utterances would only rouse her curiosity, but later she had begun to reflect on them, and had found some truth there.

Her heart was not at peace, but she still had faith and hope. A significant portion of her earnings went for religious offerings. She believed that the deeds of her previous life had resulted in her present fame and wealth, but that she had been deprived of life’s real fulfilment. And that by performing meritorious deeds in this life she would attain life’s consummation in her next birth, and also in the other world.

‘Devi,’ Marish had said in a bantering tone, ‘would it give you greater satisfaction if you touched your nose, not directly, but circuitously by stretching your arm round the back of your neck?’

‘What a curious question! Why do you ask?’

‘Because abstinence in this world, in the hope of getting greater opportunities of enjoyment in the next one, is no abstinence at all,’ Marish replied. ‘According to your way of thinking, abstinence is the price you are paying for the pleasures of your next birth. If you wish to indulge yourself in the pleasures of life, then do so while you still have the means. There is nothing to be gained by depriving yourself. The next world is only a figment of the imagination. No one has ever seen it. The person who assures you about its existence is only repeating what others have told him, and those others too have been doing the same. No one has given evidence of its existence after seeing it with his own eyes. In everyday life, we do not accept such evidence. Is it wise, therefore, to sacrifice the tangible for a figment of our imagination?’

Ratnaprabha had simply stared at Marish. She could not say anything in reply. ‘How will you attain the next world after your death?’ Marish went on. ‘Through the medium of your soul? Devi, the individual soul, of which the sages talk, has no existence. That too is mere conjecture and a mental invention. The ability to feel and think with which man is endowed, is a subtle attribute of the physical body alone. It exists in man as fragrance exists in a flower or light in a burning lamp. Where does the light of a lamp go after the lamp is extinguished? Can light have an independent existence separate from the sun or the lamp? It is the same for the individual soul. How can there be any soul without the body?