Translator's Note: The Dogri title "Pati Da Bhaiwaal" carries a deliberate double meaning — "the husband's partner" in the business sense, and, in the deeper sense, a partner in life. That ambiguity sits at the heart of the story, where partnership, loyalty, and possession are contested in a courtroom.
Statement of Master Mukandlal
"Calling God to witness, I shall give my statement truly.
"Shrimati Mohini's husband too was a teacher. His salary, it seemed, was not particularly large. I did not visit their house; only at the weddings and ceremonies of the neighbourhood would Harishankar and I cross paths, and exchange a word of greeting. He was not much of a mixer — a shy, retiring man by nature. It was talked of in the neighbourhood that Harishankar kept poorly, and that Mohini nursed him devotedly. The day he died I happened to be out of town; on my return I heard the whole neighbourhood speaking of nothing but Mohini. Everyone was anxious how the poor woman would get by, who would rear her children. The date of Harishankar's death I cannot recall — it is many years now.
"He had, perhaps, four or five children. Whether the eldest was a boy or a girl, I cannot say.
"Yes — in those days there was a good deal of talk in the neighbourhood about Harishankar's friend, Rajkumar. His blue eyes were famous in the locality. But people did not all judge Rajkumar alike. When his name came up, one would say — as the old saying has it — that a one-eyed man, a man with a cast in his eye, is not to be trusted. Who is he, really? What is his hold over these people? Others would say, 'Whoever he is, to these orphaned souls, with no one to lean on, he is as God himself.' What Rajkumar did for a living I do not know. We schoolmasters do not think it well to thrust our noses into other men's affairs. Whether he drank, I cannot say either. One should speak only of what one's own eyes have seen, not of hearsay. But yes — he dressed well. Indeed, everyone in that house dressed well: Mohini, and the children too.
"I used to see Rajkumar about the neighbourhood, but I never had occasion to speak with him. To Shrimati Mohini's house I went once or twice, with others of the neighbourhood, in those days of mourning. From the look of the household, one could tell they were quite comfortably off.
"No — how much wealth Harishankar had, I do not know. A few days afterward I heard that Mohini had gone away somewhere with her children. Whether Rajkumar went with them or went off elsewhere, I cannot say.
"This girl I do not recognise. Mohini's four or five children I have certainly seen, but I could not name them. Shrimati Mohini loved her children dearly. Yes, sir… yes!"
Statement of Rajkumar
"My name is Rajkumar. I studied as far as the F.A. No — I did not pass the F.A. Nor did I fail it; I simply left off my studies midway. I had little real taste for study, and a livelihood had come my way. I had got the agency of a Calcutta firm — the work was the sale of medicinal preparations that the company made.
"My income was four or five hundred rupees a month. I ran the agency five years.
"No, vakil sahib — I had no taste for hunting. I had neither the inclination for it nor the energy. My father was a man of gentle bent; he was an astrologer. We were three brothers. One became a schoolmaster; one ran away from home, and was never traced again. No — our father left us no property to speak of. There was a little land in a village, but neither I nor my younger brother the schoolmaster could attend to it: he was forever being transferred, here today and there tomorrow, and I too was of a roving temper.
"Harishankar was my friend, and my partner besides in the business I had taken up. His share was four annas in the rupee — twenty-five per cent — though only my name stood on the papers. He was a government servant, and so his name was kept off the record. Whether Shrimati Mohini's name could have gone on it I cannot say, but at the time there seemed no need for that. Shrimati Mohini knew of the arrangement. With an extra hundred, hundred and twenty-five rupees coming into the house each month, how could it stay hidden from her? Though I always gave the money to Harishankar himself, never to Mohini.
"This was Harishankar's second marriage, so a wide difference in age between them was only natural. And yet, to see them together, they were no ill-matched pair; their household ran well enough. How much of that ease was owing to the hundred, hundred and twenty-five rupees, I could not say. The truth is, no vehicle runs without fuel. The profit from the business was his by right — and, to my mind, a mark of his good sense besides. Sir, he was often ill. The doctors said there was an ulcer in his stomach, and some trouble with one kidney too. In such a state, the love Mohini gave him, the care she took — without it, he could not have passed ten contented married years.
"In the last month of his illness, Mohini tended Harishankar with all the watchfulness and conscience of a clever, gentle nurse over a patient in her charge. Once he had taken to his bed, rising grew impossible for him; his strength ebbed away day by day. To give him new life, Mohini became now a tonic, now a hot-water bottle to warm his failing body. Against the gathered weight of sorrow about him, she became now the steady flame of a soft, comforting lamp, and now a vase of fresh flowers, filling the room with fragrance and colour.
"I did not mean to say, vakil sahib, that the love between Mohini and Harishankar was something put on — such as a nurse feels for a patient. I meant only to show the vigilance of her devotion.
"Yes — none can deny that Mohini and Harishankar were a deeply ill-matched pair. At their wedding Harishankar must have been past forty; and ten years after his death, Mohini even now is not yet thirty. There is no doubt of it: to me too this was a most singular thing. It was a hard trial of a woman's power of sacrifice, of her selfless will to serve. To watch her anguished struggle to save her husband in those last three months filled one with wonder. I too wished Harishankar might be saved; but knowing what the doctors had said of his case, I could only look on at this strange, cruel drama of fate.
"In those days I marked a remarkable change in Mohini. Through the earlier part of his illness she had let go all thought of herself — as though she had forgotten how to eat, how to dress — and then, all at once, she took up again the grooming and adornment she had once been known for. Her former gloom, her seeming carelessness of life, had frightened me; I thought her dejection dangerous for Harishankar too, for a sick man's tender feelings are easily wounded. But it gave me a jolt to see that this renewed beauty of hers was a thing the ailing man could scarcely bear. With the warmth of her presence and her adorned form, Mohini would try to kindle some heat in Harishankar's ever-colder body — and his state would become that of a fine, flawed crystal vessel into which boiling water is poured, again and again.
"One day Harishankar said to me: 'Raj, I have never been able to understand Mohini. In ten years of this shared life I have seen, as from a piece of cut crystal, the flickering of who-knows-what colours. Sometimes these colours seem to scatter and spread; sometimes, gathering, they make a beautiful rainbow. Mohini's whole beauty and bearing are just such a piece of crystal.
"'Raj, I know Mohini was not happy in our marriage. It was all done against her will. For that reason she never once went to her parents' house, nor let any of her own people set foot in ours; for that reason, too, no one of hers ever came to me in this illness. I always shrank, abashed, before that bright, flashing beauty of hers. The first two years she kept with me only the barest, formal exchange. In those days we lived in this house like two strangers sharing a railway compartment — bound the same way, yet wholly unknown to each other. But that coldness of hers was overcome by the silent worship of my love. Our children are the sign of it. And now, when what I need above all is to be loosed gently from the grip of this disease — Raj, I know well what the doctor has told you — Mohini will not even let me die in peace. What strange new tenderness is this that has woken in her for my sick body? In the heat of her adorned beauty this wasted frame of mine is scorched. From this heap of ash she sifts and searches out some last surviving ember, and breathes on it and breathes on it till it brightens — and then, with a single flare of light, it dies, and all goes colder than before. Ember by ember, what is it she is rousing in these dying coals? She comes and sits beside me and I feel scalded; then, by slow degrees, the gooseflesh rises on my cold body.
"'Even in the cage of my desire a stirring seems to begin. From my own eyes a warmth seems to flow toward her. But then, when she rises and goes, I feel my body turning cold again, as though the very leaf of my life were withering. This heat, this cold — what is the secret of it, Raj? What manner of love is this? What manner of bond? Sometimes I think she is taking her revenge on me in these last hours — exacting, drop by drop, the price of a marriage she never wanted. And if her love is true, then what celestial being is this woman, from what heaven has this apsara come, to lose her way upon this sorrowing earth?'
"Harishankar died, sir. It seemed to me then that to walk away and leave his family helpless in such a calamity would be a base thing. Whom were they to turn to? Any man in my place would have thought the same. My self-respect, my plain humanity — these were the questions set before me, and I could not simply run from them.
"My business had fallen off. In the very days of Harishankar's illness the company had appointed two more agents in the city.
"At that time I asked Mohini what she had thought for the future. I remember clearly that she answered, 'I do not wish to stay in this place a single day longer.' I took her words to mean that, in this hard hour, she had come to look on me as her support.
"Some days later we went to Dehradun. Over the ten years since, we have lived as husband and wife. Soon after we reached Dehradun, Mohini's daughter Manju died of typhoid. Her elder son I put into a public school, but he was weak at his books; the school did not suit him, and he ran away from it. I did not care for such irresponsibility, and was angry with him over it. He was a stubborn boy, and had grown wayward; and one day he ran off from the house for good. Mohini believed I had driven him away. From that day on, things between Mohini and me began to sour. This girl was then an infant in her lap.
"This girl is the daughter of Mohini and myself. I claim my right over her: she should be given to me. With her mother she will get neither a proper upbringing nor a proper education. It may even be that Mohini's stubborn temper will lead her to treat this tender child as harshly as she treated her own near kin. It is three months since we came back from Dehradun. Before we left, we had already settled that we could no longer live together; but on who was to keep this girl, no agreement was reached. Seeing the bitter struggle Mohini now faces even to keep herself alive, it is the more unfitting that the child should stay with her.
"I believe that, driven by her need, Mohini may either sell this girl off for money, or make some ill-matched arrangement for her so as to live on the proceeds. Sir, the tender feelings — love, affection, care — can live only where a person's basic wants are met. In the fire of poverty and want and hunger, these delicate things wither and die. In these ten years I never let Mohini feel want of any kind.
"She has never so much as thought of earning by her own labour, and she cannot even go to her own people's house. In such a case, how could it be right to leave the girl with her? I therefore pray the court: this child is mine, and the court should make it over to me from her."
× × ×
Statement of Mohini
"I love my children more than I love God; so I swear upon them that whatever statement I give shall be true and correct.
"Whatever statement my late husband's business partner Rajkumar has given, I have heard out with full attention. He has said a great many things, and most of them shaped to suit himself.
"First, his claim of a business partnership with my late husband. If one party can put in no capital of his own, is that to be called a partnership at all? The money my husband took from Rajkumar cannot be treated as the profit of a joint venture. It was a loan — or simply the kind of help one friend takes from another. And even that help only truly began once my husband was bedridden.
"Rajkumar and Harishankar shared what I took to be an ideal friendship. Harishankar believed he would recover, and I too wished him well; so when he borrowed from Rajkumar, I thought no ill of it. If Rajkumar had other designs behind his generosity, of that I cannot speak. But the picture he has painted of the bond between my husband and me holds a great deal of falsehood. It is true I was married against my will. But to suggest that I was the one who turned my own household into a tragic drama would be a wrong — to me, to my children, and to my dead husband.
"My two beautiful children are the proof of the bond between my husband and me. It is Rajkumar who is to blame for the ruin of one of them. It was his lust that set out, by deliberate scheme, to destroy Harishankar; and it was he who put it into my head to dress myself up and sit at my husband's side to nurse him. Once he told me: 'Harishankar is very low today. There are tears in his eyes. He says it is his ill fortune that he could never make a place in your heart — that since he fell ill you have not, for a single day, made him feel he is your husband. These clothes of yours, this listless manner, this unkempt hair — what sort of state is this? Why do you people not put him in a hospital?'
"After that, sir, I would always change my clothes and look at myself in the glass before going to sit with Harishankar. But after some days I began to see that the sight of me well-groomed did not gladden him. At times I sensed that his silent pain was only deepening; when he looked at me, it was as though a volcano behind his eyes had broken open. It was a bewildering thing, sir. I was a fool. I kept thinking those were tears of happiness. But in truth they were the tears of a small child who, out of fear, neither speaks up nor complains to anyone — and only weeps. Rajkumar is the director of this whole drama; he worked us both by his cunning. He is right when he says it was all a spectacle to him. Harishankar's frail body came under the strange burden of that fragrance, that beauty — and he could say nothing. His eyes stayed wet, the tears falling from them in silence.
"Rajkumar likened Harishankar's sick body to a cracked crystal vessel. That vessel was indeed most fragile; it had to be kept from extremes of heat and cold. But those extremes were the doing of this cunning man — this man who says he never had a taste for hunting. Hunting is not done with guns and rifles alone. I understand that now. A man hunts whatever rouses in him a boundless lust for the chase. Harishankar too was such a quarry. And to hunt quarry like that needs no great labour. When a single poisonous word, a single poisonous misunderstanding, can bring down a soul as innocent as Harishankar's, what need to run such game down with a gun?
"Whatever Rajkumar set out in his statement about Harishankar's feelings over my appearance is wholly his own invention — though he built it to seem perfectly natural. I understand Harishankar's anguish now. At the time I was so taken up with nursing my husband that I never saw his health being destroyed.
"It is untrue, too, that I told Rajkumar after my husband's death that I no longer wished to stay here. My one thought then was for my children — that they should be cared for. Never in my life had I been beyond this city. How was I to know whether Dehradun was the better, or Bombay? And not one of my own people had come forward to help. I was like the doe who, out of fear, takes the very hunter that has snared her for her protector.
"There is one more lie Rajkumar has told — about my son. In the first year he did put my son into a boarding school, but he did it to keep the boy at a distance. My son was a gentle child; he loathed Rajkumar. The mere sight of his face filled the boy with a quiet, swallowed anguish. That is why he could not study, and that is why he ran away. Rajkumar kept assuring me the boy would come back, that the police were searching for him too — but he never came. After two years a letter reached me from him. It said: 'Is that blue-eyed snake still there, or gone? He is my father's murderer. He robbed us of our mother's love. One day I will come and undo his poisonous schemes.' That letter I have brought with me.
"I have given this whole statement because I want the court to see this man's true face. Today he wishes to seize my daughter. I ask the court to do justice, and to weigh whether this innocent girl can be handed over to him.
"One thing more, sir. After we reached Dehradun, I learned that he drinks. The kind of helplessness and dependence in which we passed our years there is a tale in itself. In keeping us, what was his selfish end? How much good was he truly laying up, and how much sin? How much of it was truth, how much falsehood? All of it is a long story.
"I have lived with him these many years; yet in the eyes of the law, and in the eyes of society, we are nothing to each other. I used to believe that whatever support this man gave us rose above the bounds of law and society. Had he but asked me, I would not have refused to marry him. In our Dehradun years everyone there took us for husband and wife; and when need required, we too would tell people we were married. But I kept the feeling shut within me. How was I — a woman heedful of law and of propriety — to be the one to say we should marry? This trouble first arose when he put my son into school. On the school certificate, Harishankar's name was entered in the column for the father; and Rajkumar told the school authorities that Harishankar had been his elder brother, now dead, and that he himself was the boy's guardian.
"He charges me with having no income, with not living with him. He fears I may sell this girl to someone, or fix some ill-matched arrangement for her and keep the son-in-law in the house, that I may live off his earnings. But is he the only one who may fear such things? I may fear them too."
Epilogue
What came of it after that, I could not learn. There was nothing further on any paper in the envelope I found among the rubbish. I confess it troubles me, that the end of so gripping an affair should have stayed hidden from me. But what fault is that of mine? This happened some three years ago, and there is now no chance of my ever coming upon either Rajkumar or Mohini.
What may have become of that girl — of that I am truly curious. But there was no way to find out. One can only wish that she has found a home where there is no helplessness like Harishankar's illness; no blue eyes like Rajkumar's — lakes in which drowning came easy and swimming was impossible; and no beauty like Mohini's, which could not become the elixir of life for anyone.