The Guru of Love by Samrat Upadhyay Read Free Book Online Page B

unless you start thinking about it now, how will it ever be completed? Besides, something can always be arranged to get started.” Ramchandra knew what he was hinting at. The Pandeys had suggested several times that they would lend the necessary money for Ramchandra to get started on a house. They’d never approached him directly with this offer; they channeled it through Goma, who passed it on to her husband and then kept silent when Ramchandra adamantly rejected it. He would not, he said, be beholden to anyone. Especially to his in-laws, but he didn’t say that to Goma. After all, who knew how long it would take him to repay the loan, and it would lie on his tired shoulders like a heavy stone for the rest of his life.
    Whenever the Pandeys brought up the subject, Ramchandra turned to Goma for support, but Goma, despite her complete agreement with Ramchandra in the privacy of their bedroom, preferred not to argue with her parents. Once, when Goma was putting the newborn Sanu to bed, Ramchandra asked her, “Why didn’t you say something? Perhaps if you had, they’d stop this constant criticism. We’re lucky I have a full-time position now. Why don’t they understand?” And Goma responded, with a guilty look, “I know, I know. Please, I’ll say something the next time, I promise.”
    He knew she never would, so each time he’d nod with a bitter sense of understanding. He also knew that Goma’s parents would never stop their criticism of him, even if he built a grand four-story house and taught at Tribhuvan University. “Are you unhappy with me?” he’d once asked Goma. “Tell me, frankly. Are you, having come from a big house and now living in this dump, are you unhappy with me?”
    â€œJust because my parents say those things to you, don’t you say them to me,” she answered. “I am not that kind of a woman. Whatever you provide, I’ll be happy.”
    And she’d meant what she’d said, because in the years that followed, she never complained about having to count paisa during festivals, about the difficulty of paying tuition for their children’s school, or about wearing the same sari to several weddings because they couldn’t afford a new one.
    A year before he started teaching at Kantipur School, when his mother was still alive and it became obvious to Ramchandra that his in-laws’ expectations of him would be a constant irritation, he’d asked his mother, with bitterness, why she thought Goma’s hand had been given to him in marriage. The parents could easily have married her to someone with more money. “Maybe she was not a virgin,” his mother abruptly said. “Maybe she slept around with other men, and her father was afraid no one would marry her.” Ramchandra tried not to flush with embarrassment. In her old age his mother sometimes spoke her mind without regard to propriety. Ramchandra knew Goma had been a virgin the first time they made love, but he had wondered whether her parents were avoiding some sort of scandal by marrying her off to a poor student.
    Ramchandra’s suspicions about Goma’s past surfaced again one evening during a gathering at Pandey Palace. Throughout dinner, Ramchandra had been subjected relentlessly to innuendoes by his father-in-law in the presence of all the relatives, and as the evening progressed, a dark cloud formed in Ramchandra’s mind. Then, when Goma was in the kitchen, Mrs. Pandey brought out barfis. She served everyone, starting with Harish, until it was time to offer a piece to Ramchandra—and there was none left. “So foolish of me,” Mrs. Pandey said. “I should have bought more.” Treating the senior son-in-law like that was bad enough—Ramchandra was staring at the floor in shame—but what Mrs. Pandey said next made him feel he was burning. “But what does it matter, eh, son-in-law? This penchant for