EYESORE
By Rabindranath Tagore.
V
THEN Rajlakshmi set about with tireless energy to initiate the daughter-in-law into her household duties. During the day her time was divided between pantry, kitchen and household god: at night, to make up for the separation from her own people, Rajlakshml would make Asha sleep with her in her room.
Annapurna, after much thought, decided to keep aloof from her niece.
Mahendra felt very much like the small boy watching an elder, of whom he is afraid, sucking all the sweetness out of a piece of sugarcane.
He went to Annapurna and said, "I really can't bear the way mother is making the poor girl slave."
Annapurna was quite aware that Rajlakshmi was overdoing it, but she said, "Why, Mahin, it's only right that your wife should be taught her housewifely duties. Would it be good for her, like the girls one sees now-a-days, to be playing the fine lady with novels and fancy needle-work?"
"Good or bad," replied Mahendra excitedly, "the girl of to-day must be like the girl of to-day. If my wife could enjoy a novel the same as I do, I'd see nothing to be sorry for, or to laugh at either."
Hearing her son's voice in Annapurna's room, Rajlakshmi left her work and hied thither. "What's all this discussion about?" she asked in a hard ringing voice.
Mahendra replied in a tone of unabated excitement, "There's nothing to discuss, mother, but I can't allow my wife to do household drudgery like a servant-maid."
The mother, suppressing her rising temper, asked with an incisive calm, "What then is to be done with the lady?"
"I'll teach her to read and write," said Mahendra.
Rajlakshmi hurried away without another word and returned in a moment, half dragging by the hand her daughter-in-law, whom she placed before Mahendra, saying, "Here she is, teach your wife to read and write by all means!"
Then turning to Annapurna she said with a great parade of mock humility, "Forgive me, Mistress Aunt, I beg you, if I've been unable to appreciate your niece and have let her stain her delicate fingers in the kitchen. I now leave you to scrub and polish her into a fine lady and hand her over to Mahendra. Let her take her ease at reading and writing—I shall be the maid-of-all-work!"
With this Rajlakshmi went off to her room and shut herself in with a great clatter of bolts.
Annapurna sank to the floor in dismay. Asha, unable to understand the inwardness of this sudden domestic storm, went pale with shame and fear. Mahendra, with rage in his heart, said to himself, "No more of this. I must look after my wife myself, or else I should be doing a great wrong."
With the wish thus supported by the sense of duty, the flame was fanned by the wind. And college, examination, friendship's claims and social duties—where were they when Mahendra, to educate his wife, went with her into retirement?
The proud Rajlakshmi vowed that even if Mahendra and his wife sat starving at her door, she would not so much as vouchsafe them a glance. She would see how Mahendra could manage with his wife without the help of his mother!
Days passed—yet no repentant footsteps were heard near her door.
Rajlakshmi conceded that if pardon was begged, pardon must be granted, or poor Mahendra would be too grievously wounded.
But the petition for pardon did not arrive.
Rajlakshmi decided that she would go and offer her forgiveness. After all, if the son was in a huff, should the mother sulk too?
Mahendra's bedroom and study was a small room, the only one on the third storey, at a corner of the terraced roof. The last few days his mother had entirely neglected the making of his bed and the tidying of his things. Like breasts aching with an excess of milk, her maternal heart had begun to feel the weight of these undischarged daily cares. That noon she thought, "By this time Mahendra must be at his college. I'd better go and do up his room. When he comes back he'll at once recognise his mother's touch."
Rajlakshmi climbed up the steep stairs. The door of Mahendra's room was ajar, and as she came up to it she started as if pricked by a thorn. Mahendra was lying asleep on a bed made on the floor, and with her back to the door his wife was gently stroking his bare feet with her hands. The sight of this conjugal scene in the broad light of day was too much for Rajlakshmi. She crept back downstairs, abashed and mortified.