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Updated: May 10, 2025
Then they chewed betels in blissful rumination, before separating with emphatic acknowledgments of the hospitality they had enjoyed. On the following afternoon both bridegroom and bride were taken in palanquins to Kumodini Babu's house, where she instantaneously won every heart by her grace and beauty. Two days later the Bau-Bhát ceremony was held.
Shám Babu's face wore a worried look. "Surely that would be flying too high for such as us," he rejoined. Kumodini Babu would hardly allow his son to marry the daughter of a poor clerk." "Still, there is no harm in trying," remarked the wife. "If you don't feel equal to approaching him, there's Kanto Babu who would do so.
Ere long a cart was descried approaching from eastwards, whose driver bawled snatches of song and puffed his hookah between whiles. When it reached the crossing, the bailiff shouted: "Stop! whither so early, friend?" "To market," the man replied carelessly. "Whose market?" "The new one, started by Kumodini Babu." "What have you got in those baskets of yours?"
Amarendra Babu rubbed his son's body with a mixture of turmeric and oil and despatched a supply to Kumodini Babu by his own barber, with injunctions to have it applied to his daughter's person before 9 A.M., because subsequent hours would be inauspicious. On the barber's arrival, the ladies of Kumodini Babu's household anointed Basumati with turmeric and oil and clad her in a gorgeous wrapper.
The time has long since passed away when arbitrary difference of clan was considered a bar to marriage among Kayasthas." "You are quite right," was Kumodini Babu's reply, "and personally I am above these old-fashioned prejudices. My daughter-in-law may be Dakhin Rárhi, Banga-ja, or Bárendri for all I care, provided she be comely, well-mannered and come of good stock.
The necessary security was immediately forthcoming, and Kumodini Babu found himself temporarily a free man, after enduring nearly forty-eight hours of unspeakable misery in the station lock-up. In due course his case came on for hearing before the Deputy Magistrate.
The story of his tyranny spread like wildfire through neighbouring villages, with many amplifications, of course. Kumodini Babu heard that his rival had arrested a hundred frequenters of his market and was about to destroy the shelters he had erected for salesmen. This information filled him with anxiety and, after consulting friends, he lodged a complaint at the police station.
The Magistrate saw that he had been the victim of an abominable conspiracy and released him amid the suppressed plaudits of the audience. His reasons for discharge contained severe strictures on the local police, and even suggested their prosecution. Thus, after weeks of agonising suspense and an expenditure on legal fees running into thousands of rupees, Kumodini Babu was declared innocent.
After examining them in silence awhile, Amarendra Babu kicked the nearest contemptuously aside, remarking that they were "mere rubbish". In point of fact he fully expected Kumodini Babu to give Rs. 4,000 in cash, Rs. 2,000 in respect of Barabharan and Phulsajya and Rs. 4,000 worth of jewellery Rs. 10,000 in all.
His own ryots were enjoined to attend; shopkeepers, hucksters, and fishermen who had hitherto gone much further afield, came in considerable numbers; and business was amazingly brisk. Kumodini Babu, however, began to reap where he had sown in less than a fortnight.
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