5

A crop of grain that has withered and yellowed in a long drought does not wait when the rains come; it shoots up at once, obliterating the penury of a prolonged hunger, shedding its weak and bowed demeanour, and asserts itself throughout the field --- confident, luminous, unapologetic. So it was with Asha. Where she was bound by ties of blood, she had never been permitted to claim the rights of kinship; now, in a stranger's house, she had received without petition the most intimate of bonds and the most unambiguous of rights.

When her husband placed with his own hand on the head of this neglected, motherless girl the crown of Lakshmi, she did not hesitate for a single moment to receive the dignity that was hers. The bashfulness and timidity of a new bride fell away; and in the glory of a fortunate wife, she claimed her throne at her husband's feet without the shadow of self-consciousness. That midday, when Rajlakshmi saw this newly-arrived stranger's daughter seated upon that throne with such a settled, habitual air of queenship, she descended to the lower floor in a bewilderment too great to bear.

She went to scorch Annapurna with the fire of her own inward burning: "Listen," she said, "see what your young nawab's daughter has brought from the nawab's house as her education. If the master were alive today---" Annapurna said, pained: "Didi, she is your daughter-in-law --- you will teach her, you will correct her. Why do you say it to me?" Rajlakshmi rang out like a drawn bow: "My daughter-in-law? With you as her chief minister, will she ever take any notice of me?" Then Annapurna, with a deliberate heaviness of foot that would rouse the couple from their absorption, entered Mahendra's bedroom.

She said to Asha: "Is this how you intend to shame me before the whole world, you wretched girl? No shame, no modesty, no sense of time or occasion --- you pile all the household duties onto an aging mother-in-law and sit here at your ease? My accursed fate --- I was the one who brought you into this house!" As she spoke, the tears fell from her eyes; Asha too stood with her head bowed, picking at the corner of her sari, crying in silence.

"Kaki, why are you rebuking my wife unjustly?" said Mahendra.

"It is I who have kept her here."

"And is that a fine thing to have done?" said Annapurna.

"She is a girl, an orphan --- she never had a mother to teach her anything, she does not know right from wrong. What are you teaching her?"

"See here," said Mahendra, "I have bought her a slate, a notebook, and books. I intend to teach my wife to read and write --- let people criticise if they will, and you be angry if you wish."

"Does that mean teaching her all day long?" said Annapurna.

"An hour in the evening would be more than sufficient."

"It is not quite so simple, Kaki," said Mahendra.

"Learning requires a little time." Annapurna left the room in vexation.

Asha slowly made to follow her --- Mahendra stood at the door and blocked the way; he paid no heed to the pleading of her sad, tear-filled eyes.

"Stay," he said.

"We have wasted time sleeping; that must be made up." There may be persons of so grave and venerable a simplicity that they will believe Mahendra was indeed lamenting time wasted in slumber and lost from study.

For the particular benefit of such persons it must be stated that the mode in which instruction was carried on under Mahendra's superintendence was one that no school inspector would sanction. Asha had believed her husband; she had truly thought that learning to read was, for various reasons, not an easy matter for her, but that it was an absolute duty, enjoined by her husband. She would accordingly compose her restless, distracted mind by a great effort of will, seat herself with great gravity on one side of the mattress spread upon the floor of the bedroom, and, hunching intently over her books, begin to memorise with a rhythmic nod of her head.

At the small table at the other end of the room, the schoolmaster sat in his chair with his medical textbook open before him; now and then he glanced across to observe the attentiveness of his pupil. Then, all at once, he would shut the medical book, and call his wife by her pet name: "Chuni." Asha would look up with a start.

"Let me see your book," Mahendra would say, "show me what you have been reading." Asha would fear an examination --- for her chances of passing were not great.

The seductive pleasures of the Charupath conspired against her wayward mind; the more she tried to improve herself on the subject of anthills, the more the letters merely marched past her gaze like columns of black ants. The examiner would call; Asha would come to him like a guilty prisoner, carrying the book to Mahendra's chair. With one arm drawn around her waist, he would hold her close and take up the book with the other hand and say: "Let us see how much you have read today." She would show him the lines she had managed to get through.

He would say in an aggrieved tone: "Good Lord --- is that all you have done? Let me show you what I have read" --- and then indicate, by way of comparison, nothing more than the heading of some chapter in his medical book.

Asha would widen her eyes in astonishment: "Then what were you doing all this while?" He would take her by the chin and say: "I was thinking of someone --- but the heartless creature was too absorbed in the delightful natural history of the white ant to give me a thought." Asha could well have given an adequate answer to this groundless charge --- but alas, for the sake of modesty alone, she was compelled to accept, in silence, an unjust defeat in the contest of love.

It will be evident from the foregoing that Asha feared her husband would test her --- and her chances of passing were not great. For the enticing pleasures of the Charupath defeated her unruly mind entirely; the more she endeavoured to master the matter of anthills, the more the letters paraded before her sight like orderly columns of black ants. Hearing the examiner's call, Asha came like a guilty creature and placed herself beside Mahendra's chair, her heart in her mouth. With one arm he encircled her waist and held her firmly captive, with the other he held the book open, and said: "Let us see how much you have read today." She showed him the lines she had covered.

He said in an aggrieved tone: "Good Lord --- this much? Now shall I show you how much I have read?" --- pointing to nothing more than a chapter heading in his medical book.

Asha's eyes went wide: "Then what were you doing all this time?" He took her chin in his hand and said: "I was thinking of someone --- but that heartless one was deep in the delightful and detailed description of the white ant and had quite forgotten me." Asha could have mounted a perfectly adequate defence against this unfounded charge --- but, in the wretched code of love, mere modesty forces one to accept an unjust defeat in silence.

It will thus be sufficiently clear that Mahendra's schoolroom followed no rule laid down by any school, government or otherwise. There were days when Mahendra was elsewhere, and Asha, seizing the opportunity, would be making a genuine effort to attend to her studies; at which point Mahendra would appear from somewhere, press his hands over her eyes, then snatch away her book and say: "Heartless girl --- when I am not here, you give me no thought and sit with your books?"

"Do you mean to keep me ignorant for ever?" said Asha.

"It is hardly as though your welfare is advancing my own learning," said Mahendra.

The remark struck Asha suddenly; she made to leave at once and said: "What hindrance have I been to your studies?" Mahendra took her hand and said: "You cannot understand. As easily as you can study without me, so easily can I --- not --- study without you." A grave accusation.

In the natural order of things, there followed a brief squall of tears --- like an autumn shower --- which, after no very long while, dissolved entirely in the sunlight of tenderness, leaving behind nothing but a bright, tearful luminance. When the teacher is the supreme obstacle to all instruction, what power has the hapless pupil to find her way through the forest of learning? From time to time the memory of her aunt's sharp rebuke would unsettle her --- she understood that the reading and writing was nothing but a pretext; the sight of her mother-in-law made her wish to sink through the floor with shame.

Yet her mother-in-law never gave her any task to perform, never offered any counsel; and when Asha, left without direction, ventured to assist with the household work, Rajlakshmi would flutter and cry: "What are you doing, what are you doing? Go to the bedroom --- you are missing your lesson." At last Annapurna said to Asha: "I can see very well what education you are receiving --- but are you also going to keep Mahin from his medical practice?" Hearing this, Asha steeled herself and told Mahendra: "Your examination studies are going nowhere. From today I will go and stay in Masima's room downstairs." At her age --- so great a vow of renunciation!

To banish herself from the bedroom to her aunt's room! In pronouncing this stern resolution, tears came to the corners of her eyes, her disobedient little lower lip trembled, and her voice very nearly failed her altogether.

"Very well then, let us both go to Kaki's room," said Mahendra.

"But in that case she will have to come up to our room." At this magnanimous and solemn proposal, Asha felt she was being mocked, and grew angry.

Mahendra said: "Better still --- you yourself watch over me day and night and stand guard over my eyes --- see whether I commit my examination lessons to memory or not." That arrangement was settled with great ease.

What form the keeping-watch-over-him-with-her-own-eyes assumed does not require detailed description; it suffices to say that Mahendra failed his examination that year, and that, for all the detailed natural history in the Charupath, Asha remained no less unfamiliar with the subject of earthworms. It cannot be said that this singular enterprise of teaching and learning proceeded entirely without interruption. Bihari would come now and then and raise a considerable disturbance.

He would make the whole neighbourhood ring with cries of "Mahin-da! Mahin-da!" and would not rest until he had dragged Mahendra out of the burrow of his bedroom.

He reproved Mahendra at great length for his neglect of his studies. He would say to Asha: "Bouthon, if you swallow your food whole, it cannot be digested --- you must chew it. You are gulping all the rice in a single mouthful at present; afterwards you will find there is no remedy for indigestion." Mahendra would say: "Chuni, pay no attention to him --- Bihari is jealous of our happiness." Bihari would say: "When happiness is in your own hands, enjoy it in such a way that others have no cause to be envious." Mahendra would reply: "There is a pleasure in having others be envious. Chuni --- I very nearly handed you over to Bihari like a dolt." Bihari would flush scarlet and cry: "Enough!" In all these episodes, Asha was inwardly very much put out with Bihari.

The fact that a match between them had once been proposed had created a kind of aversion in her towards him; Bihari was aware of this, and Mahendra made sport of it. Rajlakshmi would call Bihari to her and air her grievances. Bihari would say: "Ma, when the caterpillar is spinning its cocoon there is less to fear --- but once it cuts through and flies, it is hard to call it back. Who could have imagined it would break your bonds so thoroughly?" When the news of Mahendra's failure reached Rajlakshmi, she blazed up like a sudden summer fire --- but all its roaring and scorching was borne entirely by Annapurna.

Annapurna lost both her appetite and her sleep.