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