Speaketh thy heart

I apologize for my long absence from the blog scene had a lot of other reading to do, but here I am and lets go back to the 20th century story we started on...



Nirmala's woes were just beginning when she began her new life.. as the wife of Munshi Totaram. She was married alright, to a person she had no romantic interest in and to her utter dismay there was her Sister In Law - Rukmini (finally a decent name) who wanted to play Lalita Pawar all the time. Every time poor Nirmala made an effort to reach to someone outside the house, Rukmini would call her names and say she's characterless trying to talk to everyone shamelessly and when Nirmala not wanting to conflict with Rukmini, would confine herself to the kitchen or the bedroom, devious SIL would call her names again accusing her of being an anti-social. Many more tiffs and quibbles like that arose over time between the in-laws.



At this point I really wondering why the kid was quiet, Nirmala could have raised her voice back, she could have stood up for herself, told her SIL that she was the one who reprimanded her to go quietly to a corner.. gave her SIL a piece of her mind. After a few pages she did do something more than be a church mouse, but before I go into what she did when her patience crumbled, I have to mention here that Totaram being the man he is and the times and trends that this novel is set in felt hurt and retired when his beautiful young wife refused to come close to him (romantically). So he tried and tried in all ways to impress is wife and get her close. And when Nirmala's patience with Rukmini ran out, Totaram got the oppurtunity to win his wife's heart.. She complained, he screamed, ending Nirmala's tiff with Rukmini and Rukmini's monopoly in the household matters. Responsibilities of money and house shifted to Nirmala's young an inexperienced hands..

Of course this did not make things better for Nirmala or for Totaram, except that it gave a Nirmala some importance in the house and a connection to Totaram's kids, but Nirmala was still not as close as Totaram would have liked. The responsibility of kids and home took toll on Totaram's moves to woo Nirmala. She'd always be with the kids, feeding them, learning from them or teaching them, playing with them... yes yes you get it.. its always them them.. never Totaram.. and another drama in line.. this time fury was directed towards the eldest kid - Mansaram. Without divulging any details, Nirmala was in for the most miserable time of her life! Her husband suspected her of having 'feelings' for Mansaram.

I closed the book there.. I felt anger rising, I know its only a novel, but then, I read novels as though I were a part of them, and putting myself in that situation, I loathed Totaram. I mean first you marry a girl fit to be your daughter, and suspect her natural instincts of gelling with people of her age and that's what she did, gel well with her step son. She was spending some quality time and sharing few laughs with him.. how can the husband assume she is having an impure relationship.. and after all would you suspect a mother of illicit relation if she enters the son's room at late hours to enquire why he hasn't eaten food? What was the husband thinking! And the feminist in me says, so what even if she was in his room, it is quite natural for people of the same age to be drawn towards each other, at least initially, values and customs do have a role later to ward off any thoughts.. if you are really bound by them.

What would have been an interesting twist would be if the boy Mansaram really liked Nirmala as herself and not as his mother and left the house with her, ridiculing not just the relationship his father wanted so much to establish, but also the customs of those times, that did not see the tenderness of age, did not see the willfulness of a woman's heart but saw the girl child just as a burden.. or the wife as an object not even an entity let alone human...