These are imaginary letters between two people – I hope you will read them all, and then read the postscript to this love story
My Dearest Pearl
I trust that you will excuse the liberty that I have taken in addressing you with this term of endearment, a name that suits you so well. Like a pearl, you are fair and brilliant, and perfectly well rounded. I remember my first meeting with you, about ten years ago in the city of your birth. At that time, I only got to see one small facet of your extraordinary personality, as a singer and composer. Over the past three months that I have bathed in your hospitality, you have allowed me to see so much more of you.
It is but a week since we parted, and I must confess that not a day has passed when I have not thought about you, and immersed myself in the recollection of our idyllic days in your home. The days were filled with the busy activities of the great movement that both of us have devoted our lives to – but it was the evenings and nights that I most remember. Each evening, I have marveled as I listened to you recite from the poetry that you write so well, or heard you read from your magazine pieces where you passionately argue on behalf of the women you so ably represent.
I await the great pleasure of meeting you again soon, and remain
Your Law-Giver
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Dear Law-Giver
I was delighted to see your letter, scarcely a few days since our parting, and even more delighted by the way you both addressed and signed it. I cherish the beautiful name you have bestowed on me. I can now see myself only as a Pearl, and you are, of course, my Law Giver.
Each evening, for the past week, I have returned home, eager to see you and then bitterly resent the fact that you are no longer here. I can only describe my state as ‘burning’ – burning with the joy from the days we spent together, burning with the excitement of all the subjects we discussed, burning with the anticipation of meeting you again, and burning with agony of our parting.
Even during that idyllic period, when you were staying at my home, I was always torn by having to share you with all the multitudes that craved your attention, when I wanted to keep you all to myself. This great movement of which you are now the recognized leader has the first right, of course, on your enormous wisdom, but I cannot help selfishly seeking to retain more of your time with me alone.
My thoughts are consumed by the anticipation of our next meeting. I await your letter and I am ready, as you requested, to join you on your travels to any part of the country that your work takes you to.
Until then, I am, and always will be, Your Pearl.
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My dearest Pearl
How wonderful the past week has been – when you accompanied me to the various public events in different parts of the country. We did not have too much time to converse privately, but I was struck with admiration as I watched you take the stage and address the large gathering. I am sure that many more came to listen to you than there were people waiting to hear from me. It is rare to find a woman so intelligent and yet articulate, and my admiration for you has only grown recently. I remember how you described your youth, being the lone woman in your college class and your many early achievements – standing out even in your very famous family of achievers – containing such luminaries as your world-famous uncle, the revered poet and all his remarkably talented siblings.
I have a confession to make – and you are the only person to whom I can confess it. All day now, I find my thoughts wandering – and I must work very hard to focus on the daily tasks at hand. I am both disturbed and delighted, that thoughts of you intrude on my daily routine so regularly and so often. There is so much to be done and the challenges ahead of us are daunting, but I am also pleased that I have you by my side in this great effort.
Awaiting your reply,
Your Law-Giver
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My Beloved Law-Giver
I was so pleased to read your letter, and find that the affliction that has beset me is not mine alone, and that you are affected by it too. I had no sooner returned from our trip than I had started preparing for the next one, with thoughts running through my head on all that I would like to talk to you about.
I was made aware of many articles in the local newspapers wherever we went, which seemed to call out the fact of our appearances together, and I was not entirely pleased with the way that it was reported. I trust that this has not caused you any discomfort, and I hope that you will ignore these unsavory rumor mongers, as they deserve.
Every day of the past several months, since your first visit to my home a few months ago, I have been busy, of course, with the various activities of my vocation – but a great deal of each of those days has been spent immersed in thinking about my extreme good fortune, thanking my stars for bringing this relationship into our lives. I do not know where this will lead us, and I cannot say I care about that – it is sufficient for me to see you, speak to you and when you are away, to receive your letters, which I await anxiously.
Your loving Pearl
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My Dearest Pearl
I was certain of a letter from you yesterday. But none came. Today too I thought there would be a blank. I wondered, however, I know you have not failed me.
I received your letter, and share in your expression of concern about the various scandalous reports following our joint tour of the past few weeks. Your advice is sound, and I am too busy to take notice of, or respond to these reports. In any case, I value you, and the pleasure of your company too much to want to change anything now.
It is such an irony that the two of us have been brought together so late in life, at a time when we should be worrying more about the romantic entanglements of our grown children. The questions we ask ourselves, about whether this is appropriate or correct, are swept away when I think of how rare it is for such a spontaneous and deep connection to be formed between two people. There is both happiness and regret – regret that fate did not bring us together much earlier in our lives, but still, some joy that, though untimely, we have been blessed with this. There is also agony, that we find ourselves placed in such conflict with the promises that we have made to ourselves, and to others dear to us when we were younger.
These are the thoughts that wander through my restless mind, even as the day to day work of our movement keeps me busy. You still continue to haunt me even in my sleep, and I awake each day eagerly looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours, Law-giver
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My dear Law-giver
Each of my days are now spent in breathless anticipation of your next letter, as I continue to keep myself engaged until I see the postman arrive with your next missive, or hear of your next visit to be with me. I try to hide my grief at our separation, and the bathroom is the only place to receive my sobs – but I am hoping they will come to an end very soon.
I have faithfully followed all of your prescriptions, and obeyed all the laws that you have laid down for me. Yet, I crave for much more from you, and not the guarded words in your last letter. If it be love, tell me… in simple touching language you are missing me daily, suffering the pangs of separation yourself as I do, longing for the dawn of the day when we shall meet again. If it be love, let pride be prostrate once and for all and love use its language in a free flow once more.
Until I hear from you, I am
Your Pearl
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My dear Pearl
The contents of your letter are disturbing. I am assailed by my closest advisors and friends with entreaties to disengage myself completely from our relationship, because it poses such a great danger to our public reputation. Yet, I am torn between that and this great attraction that exists between us, that is a strange mix of the intellectual and physical. I am proof that sex does not discriminate between the young and old – and I have to erect all sorts of walls around me for the sake of safety.
I have struggled to describe our relationship, sometimes as an intellectual wedding, and in my mind, called you my spiritual wife. But I am assailed by doubt even as I write that. Have we that exquisite purity, that perfect coincidence, that perfect merging, that identity of ideals, that self-forgetfulness, that fixity of purpose, that trustfulness? I am too physically attached to you to be worthy of enjoying that sacred association with you. I require in me an infinitely higher purity than I possess in thought.
It is with great regret then that I have to write this as I question myself on how our relationship will continue. I advise you to give it serious thought, just as I will, in the coming days. With dearest love, I still subscribe myself,
Yours
LAW-GIVER
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If you have read this far, and traversed the distance from the beginning to the end of this love story, thank you for reading.
These letters are, of course, made up by me – but they tell a completely true love story, with very little embellishment of the facts.
All the words in these letters may not have been written by the real people involved – but the evidence of the truth of the broad arc of the story, I hope is conveyed by some of the words – bold faced and italicized above, these are the exact words found in letters between the two lovers. After reading this postscript, please go back and read those words – because the entire exercise of writing these imaginary letters was to try and fit in at least some of their actual words. Also, the nicknames that they use to refer to each other are completely accurate – they actually did address each other by those very names.
The subjects of this romance are a pair of very remarkable people, one of them very famous, and the other is a footnote in the history books. All the evidence that we have is that this was a relationship that was never physically consummated, but it did come extremely close to that state. It was a scandalous story for a few months, in the year 1920, and quickly disappeared after that year.
The less famous of the couple is Saraladevi Chaudhurani who is “Pearl” – depicted above as the author of one half of this exchange of letters. She was the daughter of Swarnakumari Devi, the younger sister of Rabindranath Tagore. I encourage all of you to read about her – a woman with remarkable talents and an independent spirit – and the Wikipedia description of her as ‘Educationist, political activist’ seems wholly inadequate.
The other half of this couple … the “Law-Giver”, is of course, Mahatma Gandhi.
Sources:
- When Gandhi Nearly Slipped by Pramod Kapoor; Outlook
- Gandhi – The Years that Changed the World by Ramachandra Guha, 2018