WHEN HORIHOR FIRST returned from Kashi, everyone said that he had a bright future ahead of him. No one in the entire area had learnt such a lot from such a distant place. People praised his scholarship and told each other that he was on the brink of doing something truly great. Shorbojoya had believed it all. She was sure the people in charge would be inviting her husband along soon, and awarding him a plum position in something important, somewhere. Of course, she had very little idea who these people could be or what exactly they were in charge of, but that had not deterred her hopes in the slightest. Then months upon months passed, and eventually year upon year. No horseman in royal livery arrived at their door in the middle of the night to hand-deliver an invitation to be the court scholar. Neither did the djinn from the Arabian Nights fly in a jewel-encrusted mansion to replace her husband’s crumbling ancestral home. Instead, the worn old house came closer to giving up the ghost with every passing year; the sagging support beams sagged further, and the insect-eaten doors became even more hollow. Still, Shorbojoya did not fully give up on hope. Horihor, too, spun her dreams of an imminent recovery every time he returned from his trips. None of his plans had ever borne fruit, but that did not stop them from making them.

Life is honey-sweet chiefly because it is made up of hopes and dreams. Most of those fail to make the transition to reality, but simply having them makes reality a great deal more bearable. To have a life rich in dreams and hopes––empty though they may be––is far superior to having one without them. Reality is a trifling thing. Material success, even more so.

Horihor has been gone for three months. It had been weeks since he had last sent any money. Shorbojoya was beginning to worry, because Durga had been falling ill a bit too often lately. Things would be fine for a while—she would be walking around, eating regular meals . . . and then suddenly she would come down with high fever and take to her bed for days. Before he left, Shorbojoya had been worrying her husband about her wedding. She had already made him write two or three letters to Neerendro’s father, Rajjeshwor Babu.

Her husband had said, ‘Have you lost your mind? They’re big people. Rajjeshwor Uncle would never respond to a proposal from people like us.’

But Shorbojoya had refused to give up hope. ‘Where’s the harm in trying?’ she had said over and over again. ‘Write again. Keep writing. Neeren saw and liked her before he left. That’s practically a bride selection. It’s just a matter of formalizing things now.’ When a month or two passed after the most recent letter went unanswered, she had urged her husband to write again.

When Horihor went abroad this time, he had promised Shorbojoya that he would absolutely finalize a deal to have them move out of Contentment and into a better situation. While her larder depleted and her daughter carried the threat of sickness within her, Shorbojoya sat in her empty house and dreamt of the promised future.

They would have just enough, not much. An assembly of two or three thatched huts forming a new home on one side of the neighbourhood. A well-fed, lactating cow tethered in the cowshed a few feet away, bundles of hay around it in high scaffold-shelves. A small granary in their compound, full of ripe paddy. The strong, sweet smell of ripe peas would drift across the open courtyard, from the little vegetable patch next to the field outside. Bird calls would fill the house—tailor birds, blue-throated barbets, white-rumped shama thrushes. Opu would break his morning fast with warm puffed rice, soaked in a large earthen bowl of fresh, frothing milk from their own black cow. Durga would no longer suffer from malaria. Everyone would know and honour their family as brahmins, come by just to touch their feet and collect their blessings. No one would dismiss them for being poor.

These are the dreams that Shorbojoya dreams. Through the day, through the night, these are the dreams she dreams that keep her going. A voice in her mind constantly whispers, ‘Maybe this time, after all those other failed times . . . maybe this time something will come through.’

Why has it not come through so far? From her childhood days of running around under the black plum and drumstick trees, to the years of drawing elaborate patterns on the floor for the Shenjuti ritual, she had but one wish: to be able to settle happily into her in-laws’ home, to be able to draw the footsteps of the goddess of wealth at her doorway, and live a contented, fulfilled life. Why, after so many years, was she still waiting? Why did she, despite her rituals and faith, end up in this broken old house, surrounded by wilderness and bamboo groves? These are questions she tries to silence when they threaten the fragility of her dreams.

Durga had fetched a large corm of taro from who-knows-where. She had practically organized a sit-in in the kitchen, begging her mother to cook some for her. Her mother had been saying all morning, ‘What’s happened to you, Durga? How can you have rice and curry today? Didn’t you have fever just last evening?’

Durga had tried her best to wave this fact away. ‘That’s not . . . it was hardly fever, Ma! I was just a little cold, is all. Go on, make me a little rice with this, just a little boiled kochu with rice, please Ma . . .’

‘Malaria has made your greed go wild,’ her mother had chided. ‘All right, if the fever doesn’t visit today and tomorrow, you can have some kochu and rice day after. But not before that.’

When no amount of pleading had