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Chapter 5 - PERSECUTION AND BANISHMENT

Perhaps noticing that Uda was no longer trust-worthy, Vikramjit, appointed special guards to keep watch over Mira's temple day and night.

At long last, Mira was caught. At midnight the guard brought the news secretly to the Rana that Mira was flirting with some one in the temple. Sword in hand the Rana rushed to the shrine and finding no one, asked Mira, 'Where is the man with whom you have been frolicking all this while?"

'My beloved is there standing before you. Why do you ask me?' replied Mira.

The angry and self-righteous Rana, however, unable to see the Lord, proceeded to make a special search, when to his utter fright and dismay, he saw the horrible figure of a man-lion confronting him. Valorous Rana Vikramjit swooned on the guard, sword in hand.

And Mira herself was not a little surprised, because the same Giridhara, who was sporting with her as the beloved, had now assumed this horrible form to frighten her tormentor.

For the Rana it was too shocking an experience. Therefore, there soon came an order from the Rana, ostensibly to save the prestige of the family, that Mira must leave Chittore. This was an order of banishment.

For a lady of the royal household it was not an easy order to take, but inside Mira was a revolutionary, and she did not care what was in store for her.

Was not Giridhara her beloved and her refuge? Before leaving she sang for the Rana's household firmly and frankly:

If the Rana is angry what harm can he do to me?

Friend, I shall continue to sing

The glories of Giridhara

If the Rana is angry,

His own Kingdom will give me shelter,

But if God is angry, O! friend,

Where can I go?

Friends, I care not to follow worldly conventions,

And shall unfurl the banner of independence.

I shall row the ship of God's name,

And will cross the illusory world.

Friends, Mira has taken refuge,

With powerful Giridhara and will cling to his feet."

Mira left Chittore, and the very goddess of fortune was gone, as it were, from the capital. Shortly after her banishment, the waves of invasion of Chittore by Muslim chiefs began, at the conclusion of which, Chittore was reduced to almost a mass of ruins.

For a while Mira stayed with her uncle at Merta, but as political misfortune overtook him, Mira was compelled to leave Rajputana. Her Giridharalal had probably a fancy to see the lady of an ancient royal family standing and singing the glories of His name on the dusty roads of this earth.

Mira was now really the vertiable beggar, a singing minstrel, moving from one place of pilgrimage to another. In this most trying situation, her dependence on the Lord increased a hundredfold, and in a ringing voice she sang her immortal song of renuncitation:

Father, mother, brother ir friend, I have none-Lord, for your sake I have given up all happiness, Do not forsake me now! Do not forsake me.

On this pilgrimage there were moments when she felt that she was forsaken by the Lord. This, in fact, was only her hunger for His perpetual vision, and so, like a neophyte she would cry:

'Lord, will you not grant me your vision before life leaves this body?'