I felt suddenly
abashed when the Bara Rani came up and said: "It is really all my
fault, brother dear. We are old-fashioned folk, and I did not
quite like the ways of your Sandip Babu, so I only told the guard
... but how was I to know that our Chota Rani would take this as
an insult?--I thought it would be the other way about! Just my
incorrigible silliness!"
The thing which seems so glorious when viewed from the heights of
the country's cause, looks so muddy when seen from the bottom.
One begins by getting angry, and then feels disgusted.
I shut myself into my room, sitting by the window, thinking how
easy life would be if only one could keep in harmony with one's
surroundings. How simply the senior Rani sits in her verandah
with her betel-nuts and how inaccessible to me has become my
natural seat beside my daily duties! Where will it all end, I
asked myself? Shall I ever recover, as from a delirium, and
forget it all; or am I to be dragged to depths from which there
can be no escape in this life? How on earth did I manage to let
my good fortune escape me, and spoil my life so? Every wall of
this bedroom of mine, which I first entered nine years ago as a
bride, stares at me in dismay.
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