“HALLO!” cried Ramesh, “where are you off to, Umesh?”
“I’m going with mother.”
Ramesh. “But I took a ticket for you as far as Benares and this is only Ghazipur. We’re not going to Benares.”
Umesh. “Neither am I.”
Ramesh had not anticipated that Umesh would be a permanent addition to their household but he was amazed at the boy’s calm assurance.
“Are we going to take Umesh with us then?” he asked Kamala.
“He has nowhere else to go.”
Ramesh. “He has some relation or other in Benares.”
Kamala. “He wants to come with us instead. Now remember you’re in a strange place, Umesh, and keep close to Uncle or we’ll lose you in the crowd.”
It was evident that Kamala had taken sole command and assumed entire responsibility for the destination and constitution of the party. The phase in which she had meekly accepted Ramesh’s dictates had come to an abrupt close. Umesh accompanied them accordingly without further discussion, carrying a little bundle of clothes under his arm.
Uncle lived in a small bungalow between the city and the European quarter. In front of the house was a stone-built well and behind it a mango-orchard. The compound was separated from the road by a low wall, and between the wall and the house was a small kitchen-garden irrigated from the well. Ramesh and Kamala were offered hospitality here till they could find a house of their own.
Uncle’s wife, Haribhabhini, though always described by her husband as delicate, betrayed no outward sign of a weak constitution. She was past middle age, but her face was strong and capable and only at the temples did she show a few grey hairs. Age had, so to speak, obtained a decree against her but had not yet executed it.
The fact was that soon after Chakrabartti married her she had fallen a victim to malarial fever for which a change of air was, in her husband’s opinion, the only cure, so he had found employment as a schoolmaster in Ghazipur and had migrated there with his family.
Haribhabhini’s health had long been re-established, but her husband never relaxed his watchful care over her.
Chakrabartti ushered his guests into an outer room and then proceeded into the inner apartments in search of his wife; he found her in the walled courtyard laying her pots and pans out in the sun and winnowing wheat.
“Here you are!” cried Chakrabartti. “It’s rather cold to-day. Shouldn’t you be wearing a shawl?”
Haribhabhini. “What can you be thinking of? Cold! Why, the sun’s scorching my back.”
Chakrabartti. “That’ll never do. Surely we can afford a sunshade for you.”
Haribhabhini. “All right, I’ll get one. Tell me now, why were you away for so long?”
Chakrabartti. “It’s a long story. I’ve brought some guests with me, and we’ll have to attend to them before we do anything else,” and he briefly described the new arrivals.
It was by no means the first time that Chakrabartti had offered hospitality to strangers but Haribhabhini was hardly prepared to receive a married couple. “Bless me, we’ve nowhere to put them!” she exclaimed.
“You had better see them first,” said her husband, “then we can decide about accommodation for them. Where’s my Saila?”
“She’s bathing the child.”
Chakrabartti then ushered Kamala into his wife’s presence.
Kamala saluted Haribhabhini with the respect due to her years. The old lady in her turn touched Kamala on the chin, then kissed her own finger and remarked to her husband, “Don’t you think her very like our Bidhu?” — Bidhu being their elder daughter who lived with her husband in Allahabad.
Chakrabartti was secretly amused at the comparison. As a matter of fact there was not the slightest resemblance between Bidhu and Kamala, but Haribhabhini would never admit that any other girl was her own daughter’s superior in beauty or attainments. Their other daughter Sailaja lived with her parents and was liable to be worsted in a contest of looks, hence the mother kept the flag flying by instituting comparisons with the absent one only.
“We’re very pleased to have you,” Haribhabhini went on, “but I’m afraid you won’t be very comfortable. Our new house is under repair at present and it’s all we can do to squeeze in here.” True enough, Chakrabartti did own a small house in the bazar which happened to be undergoing repairs at the moment; but it was not the sort of place which they could ever use as a residence nor had they ever contemplated doing so!
Chakrabartti chuckled over his wife’s fib, but he did not give her away. “If you objected to discomfort I should never have brought you here,” he remarked to Kamala, then turned to his wife. “Well, you had better not stand out here any longer. The autumn sun isn’t safe for you,” and he departed in search of Ramesh.
Left alone with Kamala, Haribhabhini plied the girl with questions about herself.
“Your husband is a lawyer, isn’t he? How long has he been practising? What income does he make out of it? Oh, he hasn’t started practising yet? How do you live then? Did your father-in-law leave him well off? You don’t know? What a queer girl you are! Don’t you know anything about your husband’s people? How much does your husband allow you for housekeeping every month? You ought to see to everything yourself when you’ve no mother-in-law, a girl of your age! My daughter Bidhu’s husband hands over all his earnings to her.”
With such a running fire of questions and comments the old lady soon demonstrated to Kamala her own incapacity, and the girl saw clearly how unusual and ignominious her ignorance of her husband’s worldly position and family history must appear. She realised that she had hitherto never had an opportunity for a heart-to-heart talk with Ramesh about his affairs and that she knew almost nothing about the man who was her husband. For the first time she felt how peculiar her position was, and a sense of her own unworthiness overwhelmed her with confusion.
“Let me see your bangles, dear?” Haribhabhini began again, “the gold isn’t very good, is it? Didn’t your father give you any ornaments when you were married? Oh, you’ve no father? You should have some things all the same. Hasn’t your husband given you any? Bidhu’s husband manages to give her some sort of trinket every two months or so.”
This cross-examination was interrupted by the entrance of Sailaja, leading her two-year-old daughter Umi by the hand. Sailaja had a dark complexion and small features, but her expression was animated and her forehead broad. She gave promise of possessing sound sense and a placid disposition.
After a brief inspection of Kamala, Saiiaja’s little daughter hailed her as “auntie” — not that she saw in her any resemblance to Bidhu but she unhestitatingly classed as an “auntie” any adult female to whom she took a fancy. Kamala lifted the child on to her lap at once.
Haribhabhini introduced Kamala to Sailaja in these words: “This lady’s husband is a lawyer; he has come up-country to practise his profession. They met your father on the way and he brought them here.”
The eyes of the two girls met and that one look made them fast friends.
Haribhabhini went off to arrange for her guests’ comfort, and Sailaja took Kamala by the hand and invited her into her own room.
It was not long before they found themselves talking quite intimately. The disparity in age between the two was hardly noticeable.
In breadth and subtlety of view Kamala was much in advance of her years. It may have been because her individuality had never undergone the chastening effects of a mother-in-law’s discipline. Such phrases as “Hold your tongue!”
“Do what I tell you!”
“Young girls shouldn’t say ‘No’ so often,” had never been dinned in her ears. Consequently she faced the world with body erect and head held high, a graceful plant with a tough stem.
The two new-found friends soon became immersed in conversation in spite of the little girl Umi’s unceasing efforts to attract all their attention to herself. Kamala could not but be aware of her conversational inferiority to the other. Sailaja had much to say, she herself almost nothing. The sketch that Kamala presented of her wedded life was a mere pencil outline, incomplete in parts and totally uncoloured.
Hitherto she had never found occasion distinctly to note the meagreness of it. She had known instinctively that something was lacking and there had been promptings to revolt, but she had never clearly envisaged what it was that was wanting.
No sooner was the ice broken than Sailaja began to talk of her husband. One had but to touch what was the keynote of her life and it gave forth no uncertain sound; but Kamala knew that she could not play on that string. She had nothing to say about her husband; for such discourse she had neither the material nor the desire.
While Sailaja’s craft coursed merrily down-stream with its freight of happiness, Kamala’s empty bark stuck miserably in the shallows.
Sailaja’s husband, Bipin, was employed in the Opium Factory at Ghazipur. Chakrabartti had only two daughters and the elder lived with her husband’s people. The old man could not face separation from the younger, hence he had selected as her husband a young man without means who was content to accept the post which Chakrabartti by judicious wire-pulling obtained for him and to live with his wife’s parents.
Sailaja suddenly broke off the conversation in the middle with the remark, “Excuse me for a few minutes, dear; I shan’t be long.” She then proceeded to explain a little self-consciously that her husband had just come in from his bath and that she must give him breakfast before he went to the office.
“How did you know he had come in?” asked Kamala in the innocence of her heart.
“Now don’t make fun of me,” retorted Sailaja. “How does any one know that? Don’t you know your husband’s step when you hear it?”
She laughed, pinched Kamala’s cheek, flung over her shoulder the loose end of her dress in which her bunch of keys was tied, snatched up Umi, and left the room.
Kamala had not known before that the language of footsteps was so easy to learn. She gazed out of the window absorbed in thought.
Outside was a guava tree; and about its blossomladen branches, intent marauders, the bees hummed.