4

Rajlakshmi now threw herself into the task of teaching her daughter-in-law the ways of the household, with a sudden and boundless enthusiasm. Asha's days were spent in the storeroom, the kitchen, and the prayer-room; at night, Rajlakshmi made her sleep beside her in her own bed, as though to compensate for the loss of all her kin. Annapurna, after much careful deliberation, kept herself at a distance from her niece. When a powerful guardian is consuming nearly all the juice from a sugarcane, the despair and longing of the hungry child standing by becomes intolerable and ever more acute.

So it was with Mahendra. That the full sweetness of a young bride newly come to her youth should be crushed away before his very eyes, entirely given over to the grind of household duties --- was that to be endured? Mahendra went to Annapurna: "Kaki, I cannot bear to watch Ma work my wife to death." Annapurna was aware that Rajlakshmi was carrying things too far, but she said: "Why, Mahin? Teaching a young bride the ways of the house is a good thing. Is it better to read novels and weave carpets and adopt the manner of an educated gentleman, as girls do nowadays?" Mahendra said with spirit: "A girl of the present day will be as a girl of the present day is --- for better or worse, that is what she will be. If my wife can read novels and enjoy them as I do, I see nothing in that to lament or to mock." Hearing her son's voice in Annapurna's room, Rajlakshmi dropped everything and came.

She asked sharply: "What is this? What are you two plotting?"

"Nothing to plot, Ma," said Mahendra, with the same fire in him.

"I will not have my wife kept at drudgery like a servant." Suppressing the flame of her own indignation, his mother said with great deliberate precision: "And what, pray, is she to be kept at?"

"I will teach her to read and write," said Mahendra.

Rajlakshmi, without a word, went out at a quick pace and returned a moment later, pulling her daughter-in-law by the hand. She placed her in front of Mahendra and said, "Here --- take your bride and teach her yourself." Then turning to Annapurna, with cloth at her throat and hands joined, she said: "Forgive me, Mejoginniji, forgive me. I did not understand the dignity of your niece; I put turmeric stains on those delicate hands. Now you wash and wipe and array her like a lady and deliver her to Mahin --- she shall sit with her feet up and pursue her studies, and the drudgery shall be mine to do." So saying, Rajlakshmi went into her own room and bolted it shut with a loud bang.

Annapurna sank to the floor in distress. Asha, understanding nothing of the sudden domestic upheaval, turned pale with shame and fear and grief. Mahendra thought to himself in great anger: "No more of this --- I must take the care of my own wife into my own hands; anything less would be a wrong." When desire and a sense of duty combined, the wind fed the flame.

College was forgotten, the examination was forgotten, the claims of friendship and of society were forgotten; Mahendra, to further his wife's improvement, took her into their room and shut the door --- without a glance at his duties or a thought for others. The aggrieved Rajlakshmi said to herself: "Even if Mahendra comes and prostrates himself at my door with his wife, I shall not look up --- let me see how he manages without his mother, taking only his wife for company." The days passed --- and no repentant footstep was heard near her door.

Rajlakshmi decided that if he came to beg forgiveness, she would grant it; otherwise she would inflict a great wound upon Mahendra. No plea for forgiveness arrived. Then Rajlakshmi decided she herself would go and grant her forgiveness. Was a mother to nurse her wounded pride simply because her son had nursed his? In a small room at the corner of the third-floor terrace was the place where Mahendra slept and studied. In recent days, his mother had wholly neglected the customary maternal duties of laying out his clothes, making his bed, and keeping his room clean and tidy.

After so many days of failing to perform these long-established offices of care, her heart ached within her, like a breast heavy with milk. That afternoon she thought: Mahendra will have gone to college by now; I shall slip up and set his room in order --- when he returns, he will know at once that his mother's hands have been at work. She climbed the stairs. One door of Mahendra's bedroom stood open; as she drew near it, she felt a sudden sharp prick, and stopped short. She saw: Mahendra lay asleep on the bed below, and the young bride, her back to the door, was gently, slowly running her hand along his feet.

In the harsh light of midday, framed in the open doorway, at the sight of this private scene of married intimacy, Rajlakshmi turned away --- stung with shame and self-reproach --- and came silently back downstairs.