Gobind. "I have come to get a little fresh air.[1] Can't you bear even that?"
"Why should I?" she answered. "Do you want to be eating already? Does not eating the household food suffice you that you must be peering about the fields and ghâts to breathe [lit. to eat] the air?"
Gobind. "What is there that I have eaten so much of in the house?"
"Why, you have only just this minute received [lit. eaten] all this scolding from me."
Gobind. "Don't you see, Bhomrâ, that if a Bengali were unable to live upon a diet of scolding, the entire race of the people of this country would by this time have died of indigestion. Food of this sort is readily assimilated in a Bengali’s stomach. [i.e., he soon gets to take a scolding from his wife as a regular thing.] Shake your nose-ring again, Bhomrâ. Let me see you do it again."
- ↑ This is expressed in Bengali by the idiom "to eat the air," as, a little further on, "to receive a scolding" is "to eat a scolding." The whole point of this playful banter between husband and wife hinges on a play on the verb "to eat," as expressed in its ordinary and its idiomatic meanings. Its force is necessarily much lost in an English translation.
