(A Story)
(Rendered from TAMIL by
K. Chandrasekharan)
“Sister, a letter for you. I suspect, from the
handwriting, it is my brother-in-law’s,” said her little brother Gopu throwing
at her, as he entered, a postal cover. She had just then retired for rest after
food.
Parvati got up and took the letter saying, “A
letter for me, and that from your brother-in-law!” Her voice and manner
betrayed surprise. She had never received, these six years since her marriage,
any epistle from her husband. Although, after her first confinement, she stayed
in her parents’ home till the child had completed the first anniversary of his
birth, she had not been favoured with any letter. Now, she had been detained by
her mother so that she should not be left alone, to worry too much with a
tender baby in her arms. No objection had been raised by her husband to her
staying away from him so long. Nor had he written anything to her separately.
So she had continued her stay longer than necessary and had been free from all
cares. Occasionally there used to be correspondence between her husband and her
father, and much of it would be by way of formal enquiries on either side.
Whenever her father read aloud such letters, she showed no particular interest.
Not that her behaviour denoted any disrespect, but her personal embarrassment
and sense of delicacy deprived her of the desire to communicate her thoughts to
others. Perhaps she imagined that people around her might make fun of her
affection and solicitude for a husband so much her senior in age.
Her brother Gopu did not fail to remark jocularly,
as he handed her the envelope, “Has brother-in-law turned youthful all of a
sudden to feel like writing love-letters” Her avidity to peruse the contents of
the letter vanished as her brother’s words fell on her ears. She felt a sense
of confusion coming over her.
What could be the occasion for a letter from him?.
There must be adequate reason for it.
Parvati was beautiful. Her physical charms and her
poise seemed to suggest the appropriateness of the name she was given. Slender
like a creeper, and of golden complexion, she easily justified the term ‘a
beauty’ which was enhanced by the curly locks. But, we know, good looks are not
by themselves everything to a person; wealth is what people desire nowadays.
Her father belonged to the middle class of society,
being the head of a large family composed of sons and daughters. His financial
condition had deteriorated owing to the expenses incurred in getting his
daughters married and his sons educated. When he had to search for a proper
bridegroom for his youngest daughter, he was on the verge of exhaustion,
feeling in his heart, “Well, I have another daughter yet to give away in
marriage. And so there seems to be no end to my domestic worries.” About the
same time a cousin of his wife had become a widower and expressed a desire to
have Parvati as his second wife. He was rich and had no children by his first
wife. He was straight in conduct and came of a respectable family. He was
courting marriage again, more to relieve his home of its desolation and
cheerlessness. He was a bit aged. At first, Parvati’s father hesitated slightly
for this reason. But his wife prevailed upon him by her conclusive argument,
“How can you get all that you require!” Added to this was his own feeling of
weariness, which finally made him yield.
Was Parvati agreeable to the proposal? Who cared to
know her mind? Till recently it was not the custom in Hindu households to
consult daughters regarding the choice of their husbands. The parents were
supposed to arrange matches for their daughters which would ensure their
ultimate good.
In this particular instance the whole village had
been discussing the un-wisdom of the parents in keeping a grown-up daughter
without marriage. People seemed to have no other topic of discussion. Parvati’s
mother heaved a sigh of relief the moment her daughter’s marriage was decided
upon. Her father also breathed freely. “God has been pleased to send Parvati this
choice. Everything augurs well. Otherwise, I should be wearing out my foot in
endless journeys. Further, where is one to get the money?” By fixing up the
marriage he thought he would be relieved of further expense on trains and
travels. Moreover, he had now the approval of his wife, which added to his own
satisfaction. Only Parvati had no share in that smug feeling that all was well.
But was she against it?. She was not. No special
felicity sprouted in her heart. “Father wishes it; mother approves of it.
Brothers and sisters are not opposed to it. So I shall also be agreeable to
it,” thought she, in private. Rather, she had forced herself to think in that
strain. Her beauty, her youth, her capacity for love, all seemed to have no
existence before that way of thinking. None else in her home showed any concern
for them either. Nor did she herself evince any concern for them!
It was the end of Ani, the season for weddings. So
everything had to be hustled through. The date and the hour were fixed.
On the night previous to the marriage, her elder
sister was dressing up Parvati for the Presentation Ceremony. The fresh silks
and ornaments she wore added a distinct charm to Parvati’s natural attraction.
After giving the finishing touches, her sister gazed for a moment at Parvati.
She expanded as she felt that Parvati’s loveliness did not suffer by comparison
with anyone; so she burst out: “Well, considering our dear Parvati’s beauty,
she should not have been so oddly matched. She could have been spared the ignominy
of becoming a second wife.”
Parvati took to heart these words of her sister.
She realised for the first time how incongruous seemed one’s possession of good
looks in association with a second marriage. Looks are certainly enviable. But
the stigma of becoming a second wife seemed inerasable. The very idea was a
design to sacrifice beauty and youth at the altar of worldly considerations.
She was exercised considerably in mind.
She was to be a second wife–did she not know of it
previously? She was well acquainted with that fact, no doubt. She also knew
that her husband was middle aged. She had not felt any of those points as
objectionable. What if she became a second wife? Was not one of her own elder
sisters given in marriage in the same way? She had never complained of
unhappiness. Again, she had heard elderly women dinning into her mother’s ears
how second wives always fared well and gained influence and position in their
new homes. She therefore entertained no grievance at all on that score.
Still, what her sister had uttered that night must
have come from the depths of her heart. Those words upset her.
The bridegroom, according to custom, never goes to
the bride’s place on the night of the Presentation Ceremony. Therefore Parvati
was given no opportunity of knowing how her husband looked, before actually
facing him the next morning when garlands were exchanged between the pair. As
soon as she saw him, her heart sank within her. For, there was nothing in his
looks to attract her. Moreover he was almost bald of head. He was developing a
paunch too. These gave him a more aged look. Nevertheless there was a touch of
dignity in his deportment, though Parvati did not even for a moment deem it as
compensating for his other defects. Naturally her disappointment was great.
Every time she peeped through the corner of her eyes at him, her heart began to
echo the sentiments of her elder sister.
As soon as the tali of saffron and gold was
tied round her neck, the couple received the blessings of every one of the elders
present. When the bridegroom tried to prostrate before Parvati’s sister’s
husband, the latter reminded him of his own comparative youthfulness and
prevented the bridegroom from doing obeisance. Those words, uttered casually,
probed the sore spot in Parvati’s heart. True, her sister was older than
herself. But her sister’s husband was much younger than her own husband. Well,
that reminded her how much older her husband should be than herself! As she was
calculating the difference in years between them, her head reeled. If her
sister had, by her remarks, touched her sensitiveness, she became only too
prone to take to heart her sister’s husband’s unwitting observations.
With downcast looks, therefore, Parvati entered the
inner apartments to remove the garlands on her person. One of her aunts
standing near by began to pity her lot thus: “Poor girl, how unfortunate! It
can’t be helped.” Another dame of greater age and experience shouted in order
to suppress this unseemly sympathy: “It isn’t a great misfortune, really! You
will find Parvati more lucky than the rest.” But Parvati in truth retained her
aunt’s words in her memory and hardly remembered the older lady’s attempts to
erase them.
Her sorrow could not be restrained. Her sadness,
which was already full to the brim, coursed down in a stream of tears. She was
partly unhappy about her own state of mind. She was hurt as well, that she was
becoming the target of everyone’s fun and adverse comment. On top of it all,
was her own sense of humiliation and anger rising towards all those who spoke
so unfeelingly.
Thus within the brief span of two days, three such
instances wiped out all trace of satisfaction in her heart. They tended to
remove any feeling of tenderness she possessed. They brought in, on the other
hand, a certain amount of hardness and reserve. The world, to her, seemed a
mere hunting ground for the ambitious. Her own father came in for a good share
of her resentment. She refused to be a party to the many little items of fun
and frolic usual in Hindu marriages. She feared that such occasions would only
provide more opportunities for her misfortunes getting advertised. Her husband
too discouraged all customary merry-making. Parvati felt grateful to him for
this kindness.
She had changed much since then. She gave up
completely her communicativeness. In sorrow and satisfaction alike, her
feelings never sought any outlet.
After the marriage festivities were over, Parvati
left for her husband’s. Her grandmother accompanied her. But the old lady was
very decrepit and deaf. If any confidential talk were necessary, how could
Parvati ever make the old lady understand?
Her life there began in earnest. Devotion and
regard for her husband she had. Her culture at home had taught her these
virtues. To look upon the husband as a personal deity was an inherited trait.
Bu t of the untaught arts of love and sympathy she had none. Their springs were
dried up in J. her. Her husband was her master and not her lover. She was bound
to serve him. That was all. She could never aspire to be his equal in anything
or feel the impulses of a life of freedom. Her marriage vouchsafed her nothing
more.
Unlike other women, she was not in the habit of
chatting freely or unreservedly with her husband. If he was in the company of
others, she never got anywhere near him, out of sheer shyness. Were she seen
talking with her husband, her own servants might consider it strange for a
young woman like her to enjoy the company of an elderly husband. She tried, as
far as possible, to avoid being noticed too much. She therefore sought
something or other to engage her mind. Her former geniality and liveliness
seemed to have left her. Even while in active work, there was a sense of
self-suppression gripping her. She became a by-word for restraint.
Often, she ruminated upon her own condition of
inferiority to others, even in her parents’ home. She lost the traits of
heartiness and easy familiarity with others. But none ever took notice of the
change. If her mother was not aware of it, there was an excuse, for she was
always busy about a hundred little things. Her sisters were indifferent, as
their own domestic duties hardly left them time for taking more interest in
their sister’s affairs. Her brothers had their own outlook on life; they could
scarcely understand the nuances of a woman’s sensitive soul. Thus, though born
with many brothers and sisters, she moved in a lonely sphere of her own.
Only a month had passed after her second
confinement. Her husband, against his wont, had sent her a personal epistle.
She was excited about it at first. Snatching the letter, she tried to look into
its contents in secret. It was a letter from her husband for the first time
after her wedding; so she could not keep calm. If she had been the normal type
of a woman in love, intense emotions would have been aroused in her heart as
the result of a letter from her dearest. But Parvati’s lot was different. The
letter was quite unexpected. Yet there was no flutter of approaching happiness
in receiving it. On the contrary, a strange discomfort lest others should know
about it, and a vague fear of unwanted jibes suppressed even the slight flutter
caused by the unusual nature of the incident.
The desires proper to her age had remained
unfulfilled. Everything seemed to come tardily to her. When she got, after all,
a husband, he was over forty-five; there was no opportunity for youthful pranks
and pleasures with a person of advancing middle age. Even the personal letter
she received, came to her after such a lapse of time. She could not dream of
any happiness as a result of it.
As she was perusing the letter, her mother entered
her apartment unawares.
“Whose is
it?” was her immediate question. And before her mother could get a satisfactory
response, Parvati suffered no little embarrassment. The mother was not easily
reconciled to a letter from Parvati’s husband to her directly.
“What’s the matter with your husband,–to be writing
to you?” asked her mother with apparent irrepressibility.
“He is not well, I gather. He wants much to see
Balachandran,” answered Parvati, with hesitation in her voice.
Indeed there was nothing strange about a letter of
the kind. But her mother began speaking fast: “I see, he wants you, then. Funny
indeed! Quite apt, the saying, ‘old fellows are fonder of their second wives’.
It is hardly a month, –your recent confinement. Why this undue haste to have
you back? Can’t he get along without you? Well, well, if only people should
come to know of this, they would all mock at him.”
Poor Parvati! She regretted she had communicated
the news to her mother. No more words came to her. Only shame and a sense of
frustration assailed her.
How differently would a letter of the kind have
been treated, were her fate also different? Would her own mother have treated it
with such unseemly contempt? Could that lady not understand how much her
indecorous behaviour hurt her daughter’s sensitive soul? Whose fault was it
that she had an elderly person for a husband? Moreover, what if one was aged?
Cannot an aged person evince a desire to see his own wife and child? And what
was wrong, if he also grew fonder of them? What had the world come to!
Parvati’s sad thoughts caused a storm within her.
But nothing escaped her lips to indicate the commotion in her heart.
Parvati had a strong dislike of her husband, at
first, because she felt she became his wife, owing to his own initiative. She
never recognised him as the possessor of her heart, nor as her dear lord. Only
as her dear son Balachandran’s father did she begin to like him. And this
feeling began to take shape only with the demonstration on his part of great
fondness for the child.
Her husband was a straight man. He showed some
remorse that he had committed a wrong in having taken a young girl as his
spouse and condemning her to a life of dreariness.
In the first few days after her marriage she used
to sob unrestrainedly. But her husband had behaved splendidly in not returning
anger for un- reasonableness. He appeared to have understood the language of
tears. But he never tried to appease her. Perhaps, he knew that his attempts to
console her would only make her more disconsolate. She was truly grateful to
him for this utter absence of fuss or any display of emotion on his part.
Parvati was really ignorant of the magnanimity of
his heart in those days; she realised it, but gradually.
Her son Balachandran was born two or three years
later. The child also responded to his father’s attentions, with peculiar
fondness.
This was the reason for Parvati’s change, from
resentment to a feeling of devotion and regard. But never had she told anyone
what had influenced her. Frankly, she had lost all capacity for freedom of
expression.
The unusual letter stirred her considerably. She
was convinced that her husband had felt a strong desire to see them both. For
never before had he been wanting in self-control in any matter concerning
himself. Her experience had assured her of that quality in him.
The letter ran: “I have been slightly unwell for
the past two or three days. The temperature is not high. But I feel extremely
weak. I wish very much to see the little fellow Balachandran. Can you make up
your mind to start early?”
Very ordinary, these words seemed. But Parvati
could penetrate their meaning and find out their intensity and eagerness. Her
mind was not in-different to them. She was quite willing to start. But how was
she to communicate her desire and achieve her purpose?
Her mother broke the news to her father while he
was taking his food. He said at once: “It is harvest time. Who can escort her
now? Gopu is needed here to assist me. None else is here with me. I shall write
to him today.”
Her mother could not be satisfied with this, but
would proceed: “ Further, she has hardly spent a month convalescing. The
railway journey would certainly affect her in her delicate condition.”
“Yes, you are right. But how is it, he has written
to her directly this time, instead of to me?” said her father, more to himself.
Her mother would not be herself if she did not add
a sharp remark: “Perhaps he is growing younger!”
Listening to this conversation, Parvati gave up her
desire to go. How could she plead that her desire to go was justified? Her own
mother was taunting her. If she tried to make a suitable reply to the letter,
what would her little brother say? He would not let go the opportunity of
making fresh fun of her. “A love letter, eh!” he might cry out, and inform
everybody around. She would then have to die of shame.
Two days passed in this state of mental conflict.
There was no immediate note in answer to her father’s letter. Her mind got more
disturbed.
The unusual letter written to her was troubling her
all the time. She then determined to write a letter in reply without further
waste of time, and post it without being noticed by others. She sent the
servant to the post office to buy her a stamped envelope. But that woman also
asked her, “What for?” Even she seemed intrigued a bit. “Why should you know?
Go and get it,” commanded Parvati.
She made up her mind to write her letter while everybody
had retired for the noon day siesta after meals.!
Her father went to stretch himself in the
store-room. Her mother reclined on the pial spreading a portion of her upper
garment. Gopu also had left the house either to a friend’s place or on some other
errand of his own. Her two children were fast asleep. So she sat up with paper
and pencil.
Parvati had read many romances. Her only pastime
during intervals of domestic work in her husband’s home was to read modern
novels. Words of love were not new to her. But what could they avail her now1
She felt no necessity for any of them. She began her letter in a formal manner.
Her only satisfaction was that at least a reply to her husband was on its way
to reassertion. She tried to express her new-born sense of pride in him, as she
had not felt bold enough hitherto to express it to him in person.
Half the letter had not been written, when there
was a knock on the outer door. “Who is it? Find out” uttered her father from
inside, disturbed in his slumber. She put her letter down and started towards
the door. It was a telegraph peon. “Is this Mr. Jagadisa Aiyar’s residence?”
asked he, once again looking at the address on the envelope of the telegram.
Parvati received it after duly signing the receipt.
The peon had left. Some stray dogs in the street
chased him for some distance, startled by his cycle bell. The neighbours, some
of them, also got up to see what the noise indicated, and, finding some
telegram delivered at Jagadisa Aiyar’s, waited to know the news.
Parvati handed it to her father. Somehow her heart
was not calm. Maybe her sister-in-law at Bezwada had been delivered of a child.
There could be other items of news as well. The telegraph peon was not a rarity
either in the village, as a number of college girls and boys had come there
-during the holidays to be with their parents. Still a telegram excited her a
bit; and before her father could peruse it fully, she was on the verge of
despair. Just as she had anticipated, bad news awaited her. Her father read
aloud the contents: “Kailasam seriously ill; consciousness lost; start
immediately.” Parvati was stunned by the news. Her mother came from within and
began bewailing: “We do not know what is in store for her. May God spare her,
at least the auspiciousness of a married woman!” The news spread all around.
The neighbours tried to assuage their tears with the words: “Maybe, there is no
real cause for so much anxiety.”
Parvati with her parents and two children started
for the village. With her things got mixed up her unfinished letter. As she
went, she nursed the hope that he might have a chance to see it after
recovering from his illness.
By the time they arrived, Kailasam had lost
consciousness. The doctor from the Government Hospital of the neighbouring town
had pronounced the case serious and said: “The patient cannot be expected to
breathe much longer.” For he had diagnosed the case as one of septic-poisoning,
and gave it as his opinion that neglect at the initial stages had brought about
this dire consequence.
Kailasam was lying on a bedstead in the inner
apartment. He was breathing feebly. His agents and neighbours were crowding
round his bed. As soon as they noticed Parvati and her parents, they made way
for them. Parvati’s father bent down to the patient’s ear and loudly called him
by his name. There was no response. Save for the lingering breath in the body,
there was hardly anything to indicate his contact with the world of the living.
Parvati’s father could not contain himself any longer and loudly bemoaned his
daughter’s lot. Parvati too felt like crying aloud.
She had but recently resolved to convey to her
husband, her feelings of genuine regard for him. And now, he was leaving her
with no knowledge of her feelings. She was crushed under the weight of
unbearable grief. The child Balachandran, bewildered at seeing so many dolorous
faces, neared the bed and called in babbling tones, ‘Father, father!’ Someone
nearby caught him up, and kept him from approaching the father. The patient’s
chest shook violently as if in answer to the child’s voice. A moment later he
opened his eyes and gazed wildly, only to close them for the last time. He left
the world without knowing that his dear child and its mother were near him at
the last moment.
Parvati felt her heart breaking. Her grief impelled
her to fall on the corpse and wail aloud. But how was she to extricate herself
from the grip of habitual self-suppression and exhibit her grief in the
presence of so many? That habit of utter restraint would not leave her even
then. What did it matter to her now, what anyone thought of her? Her husband,
her own Balachandran’s father, had gone for ever. Poor boy! He had lost a
father’s love while so tender. Her pathetic situation urged her to cry herself
out. But she did nothing of the kind. Her self-immolation all these years had
disabled her from behaving as she wished to. She could only stand petrified in
her place and shed silent tears.
Everyone pitied her deeply. Her youth and her
handsome looks moved everyone.
Thus Parvati’s life moved towards its finale. Her
father enquired of her husband’s agents why they had not informed him of their
master’s serious condition in time. Their answer, given in submissive tones,
was that till the previous day there was nothing in his condition to cause
alarm, that he was waiting to write a reply to his father-in-law’s letter, that
he was even expecting some letter to arrive. But that night, there was a sudden
turn for the worse. As soon as the change was noticed they had sent the telegram.
“What was the letter he was expecting? Was it the
same that I have left half finished?” Parvati began to reflect. Yes, he did not
live to see that letter. He did not even look at her when she arrived. The
letter remained, to the last, unfinished. But her wedded life had been
extinguished much earlier.