By lamenting thus, she had roused her anger into action. She fanned the embers until they burst into flame. Hira, defeated, retreated. Punia was pulling him by the hand toward the house. Suddenly, like a lioness, Ghuniya sprang forward and shoved Hira so hard that he tumbled to the ground, and said, “Where do you think you’re going? Beat him with your shoes, beat him! Let me see your manliness.”

Hori ran over, grabbed her hand, and dragged her back toward the house.

:5:

Meanwhile, after eating, Gobar made his way to the Ahir quarter. Today, he had spoken at length with Jhunia. When he had set out with the cow, Jhunia had accompanied him halfway. How could Gobar have taken the cow alone? It was only natural for the animal to hesitate to go with a stranger. After walking some distance, Jhunia looked at Gobar with soulful eyes and said, “Why would you ever come here again?”

Until a day ago, Gobar had been a boy. All the young women in the village were either his sisters or his bhabhiya. There could be no mischief with sisters, and though the bhabhiya sometimes teased him, it was always innocent fun. In their eyes, his youth had only just begun to blossom. Until the fruit appeared, what use was it to throw stones at the flowers? With no encouragement from any quarter, his innocence clung to him like a second skin. But Jhunia’s yearning heart, made all the more restless by the bhabhiya’s jests and laughter, was drawn to that very innocence, and in the boy, too, at the slightest touch, youth awoke like a sleeping beast roused by the rustle of leaves.

With unguarded playfulness, Gobar replied, “If a beggar hopes for alms, he will stand at the giver’s door day and night.”

Jhunia retorted with a sly glance, “So, say it plainly—you’re a friend only for your own gain.”

The blood in Gobar’s veins surged. He said, “If a hungry man stretches out his hand, he should be forgiven.”

Jhunia waded into deeper waters. “But how will a beggar fill his belly unless he goes to ten doors? I don’t bother with such beggars. You find them in every street. And what does a beggar give in return? Blessings. But blessings fill no one’s stomach.”

Simple-minded Gobar could not grasp Jhunia’s meaning. Since she was a little girl, Jhunia had carried milk to customers’ houses. Even in her in-laws’ home, she had to deliver milk to customers. These days, she was the one who sold curd. She had encountered all sorts of people. Sometimes she earned a few rupees, sometimes a moment’s amusement, but this pleasure was like something borrowed—fleeting, without permanence, without surrender, without rights. She longed for a love for which she could live and die, to which she could surrender herself completely. She wanted not the fleeting glow of a firefly, but the steady light of a lamp. She was a householder’s daughter, whose womanhood had