ear stage is darkened; the light on the main stage dimmed
to the greyness of dark._]

_Band of Youths_

They all cry, "There, there," and when we look for it, we find
nothing but dust and dry leaves.

I thought I had a glimpse of the flag on his car through the
cloud.

It is difficult to follow his track. Now it seems East: now it
seems West.

And so we are tired, chasing shadows all day long. And the day
has been lost.

I tell you the truth. Fear comes more and more into my mind, as
the day passes.

We have made a mistake. The morning light whispered in our ears,
"Bravo, march on." And now, the evening light is mocking us for
that.

I am afraid we have been deceived. I am beginning to feel greater
respect for Dada's quatrains than before. We shall all be soon
sitting down on the ground composing quatrains.

And then the whole neighbourhood will come, swarming round us.
And they will get such immense benefit from our wisdom that they
will never leave us.

And we shall settle down like a great big boulder, cold and
immovable.

And they will cling to us, as we sit there, like a thick fog.

What would our Leader think of us, I wonder, if he could hear us
now?

I am sure it is our Leader, who has led us astray. He makes us
toil for nothing, while he himself remains idle.

Let us go back and fight with him. We will tell him that we won't
move a step further, but sit with our legs tucked under us. These
legs are wretched vagabonds. They are always trudging the road.

We will keep our hands fast behind our backs.

There is no mischief in the back; all the trouble is in the
front.

Of all our limbs, the back is the most truthful. It says to us,
"Lie down."

When we are young, that braggart breast is a great swell; but, in
the end, we can only rely on our back.

The little stream that flows past our village comes to my mind.
That morning we thought that it said to us, "Forward! Forward!"
But what it really said was, "False! False!" The world is all
false.

Our Pundit used to tell us that.

We shall go straight to the Pundit, when we get back.

We shall never stir one step outside the limit of the Pundit's
Scriptures.

What a mistake we made. We thought that moving itself was
something heroic.

But really not to move, that is heroic, because it is defying the
whole moving world.

Brave rebels that we are, we shall _not_ move. We shall have the
audacity to sit still, and never move an inch.