Intoxicated in love

I am not sure if this is a story or a historical fact. But a beautiful one.

Akbar was one of the greatest emperor's of India. One day he had gone hunting in the forest with all his friends, and they all got lost. Evening was descending, the sun was setting and it was the time to pray. So Akbar stopped under a huge tree, tied his horse to the tree and sat on the ground to do his last prayer of the day. And as he was praying, a woman, a young woman, ran just by his side, and collided with him - the collision was so bad that he actually fell down. It seemed as if she was mad or blind. Still, she did not look back. Akbar naturally was very angry.

An ordinary village girl, not caring at all, running like mad and hitting the emperor. Akbar finished his prayer quickly because he wanted to catch hold of the girl. She could not be allowed to do such things. If she could behave with the emperor in such a way, what to say about other people? But he could not figure out – it was getting dark – where she had gone. But he waited, thinking she must come back to the village. He was just outside the village.

And finally she came. Akbar stopped her and said, "Do you remember what you have done?"

She said, "I don’t remember anything. Do you?"

Akbar said, "You seem to be very strange. You don’t understand. You are talking with the emperor of the country."

She said, "I understand, but I don’t remember anything of what you are talking about."

He said, "What am I talking about? I have been praying here and you ran in such a way that you
pushed me, and I fell down. You disturbed my prayer!"

She said, "Perhaps if you say so, it must have been so, but you have to forgive me. I was running because I wanted to reach the spot and wait for my lover just on the road which runs through the forest. I wanted to greet him – he is coming after many years – just outside the village. I could not remain sitting in the house and waiting. I knew that he will be waiting, thinking that I must be standing just by the side of a tree where we used to meet when we were young. That’s why I was so lost in my desire to reach the spot that I did not know I had committed any mistake. Please forgive me, it must have been committed without my knowing at all."

She was so innocent and tears came to her eyes because she had hurt her own emperor. "You can give me any punishment, otherwise it will remain heavy on my heart. But just one question before you punish me: you were in prayer – still you were not so much lost in your prayer as I was, because I don’t remember at all. It cannot be that I hit you ... it cannot be one-sided. Your body also must have touched my body, but I don’t remember having seen anybody on the way – praying or falling or anything. I don’t remember that anybody touched my body. So I am puzzled, and I would like to be clear about it. Is your prayer not as strong as as my love?"

Akbar felt compelled to ask forgiveness from that village girl. He later said that "I have never forgotten her face, and I have never forgotten that my prayer is just formal. If I am lost in my prayer and my love, in my gratitude towards the ultimate, then how can I be aware that somebody has touched me, pushed me, or that my body has fallen? I would not have been aware of anything. But I was aware and that makes it certain that my prayer is just superficial.