Most often when a man's casual words surprisingly turn into reality, God knows whether there is any heavenly power working behind it. God doesn't spend sleepless nights to respect the combined willpower of the common man. Even the essence of a painful curse is no different from that of a searing inability. Still, often, those casual words come true—appalling and deadly.

Who doesn't know that earning means bringing other's money into one’s home, and doing this efficiently makes a man rich. Just as there exists no such thing as a forsaken woman, there is no forsaken money except that which being lost from one’s pocket, finds concealment in a roadside garbage heap. That is why honest toil and twisted intellect are the only acknowledged ways of earning money, big or small. If you want to live a meek and ordinary life, without harming anybody, earn a penny at the expense of five hundred drops of sweat: everybody will bless you, patting your back. But if you want to become rich, cheat people, ruin them. Before your birth men have taken possession of all the wealth of this earth. By some means or other, they occupy that money, making other's treasuries empty to save them in their bank account. People will humbly beseech with tears and curses simultaneously.

There is no other way to become rich. So, it can be said that Jatin's father, seeing no other means, made a huge sum of money by ruining numerous people. If there was any other option available to earn money by doing good to others, perhaps he would never have chosen this way. That is why, he can't be held solely responsible for the countless curses and grudges of the deprived in this process of earning money. Despite that, as if just to prove that inevitable truth that virtue always wins in the end and the wicked get defeated, Jatin became inflicted with leprosy at the early age of twenty-eight years before he could even relish his father's money.

People predicted it accurately. It appeared to be leprosy. One day Mahasweta asked her husband, "What has happened to your finger?"

“God knows. It was something like a blister initially.”

Mahasweta, after carefully looking at his finger, said, “It doesn't look like an ordinary bump, the surrounding area has become red.”

“The finger seems to be numb Sweta.”

“Can I apply some tincture iodine on it? Or else let me kiss it. That will cure it at once.”

After kissing his finger, Mahasweta smiled.

“As if you have borrowed your finger from Urvashi or Menoka, it’s nothing like a man's finger. It's so surprising that even a finger can look so tender, as if blood is oozing through it.”

Mahasweta took his hand around her neck. She once again said the same words that she had uttered a zillion times in her life, “This is very unjust of you, you know? Your beauty mesmerizes me. I don't understand whether I love you or your body. Not only that. These thoughts drive me crazy all day and night. I burn out of jealousy.”

Then there was something more which was beyond her comprehension. Not only on his finger but on a few other areas of Jatin's hands, appeared round blemishes just like shiny copper coins. Even after that nobody understood. To Mahasweta, it only seemed as if Jatin's health wasn’t quite well. His complexion had turned pale due to some underlying issues in his blood. He only needed to take some kind of medicinal tonic.

“See you should take a tonic.”

“What's the use?”

“I insist! Maybe it will improve your health.”

Jatin consumed the tonic but saw no result. No tonic would cure his disease. With time, a few more bumps appeared on his fingers. His skin looked rougher and more lifeless. The corners of his eyes and lips had gotten swollen like some unhealthy pile of dead mass. The sensation of touch gradually decreased. He no longer felt pain at being pinched by someone. All day and night, a kind of blunt deleterious feeling kept him depressed and irritated.

The finger on which Mahasweta kissed and applied tincture iodine showed the first sign of decomposition.

The doctor, who charged sixteen rupees fees, said, “I am hesitating to tell you that you have been affected by leprosy.”

The doctor with thirty-two rupees visiting charge said, “The type is bad, it will take time to cure fully.”

“Is there any cure possible then daktarbabu?”

"Why not? Why are you getting nervous? If a disease has occurred, it can definitely be cured."

The way he said it and his false endeavour to console Jatin became so evident that no one was left to understand that this disease of Jatin was beyond cure.

A doctor with a whopping hundred rupees fee opined, "There is no other option left than to localize the infection as much as possible. Doing more than that is impossible. You know that the disease is highly contagious. So, stay cautious, and also, having children will be riskier, do you understand?"

Does he not? Jatin understood, and Mahasweta too. But only if it could be known six months earlier. As if Mahasweta saw death itself, she exclaimed with utter horror, "Have you been afflicted by leprosy? Oh God! Leprosy?"

Even then Jatin was not dead, he was dying slowly. Ignoring all the rhythms of an ordinary speech he just said, "What sin have I committed Sweta?"

"Why would it be your sin? It's my fate."

Jatin remained untouchable among his own family members. Although nobody could prevent him from roaming around his own house according to his will, what he yearned for was only privacy. He kept himself secluded and isolated in a deserted part of his home. Except Mahasweta, no one was permitted entry into his secret abode. His friends and well-wishers were all denied access. They failed at their attempts to show verbal empathy to him. Jatin did not give consent for the exposure of his degenerating distorting body before anyone else. He took refuge in his room, taking some comfort through the radio and the piles of books among which he arranged to spend his limitless time. He connected with the outside world through the phone. All of a sudden, his usual lifestyle and habits changed drastically.

Though he untied the knots with everyone around the world, he could not leave Mahasweta. It can't be said how he managed to acquire the strength to reject his very near relatives but remained childlike and innocent in the case of Mahasweta. The oath he had taken to contain his infectious disease within his body till his death and then burn it off in his funeral pyre didn't seem to include Mahasweta in it. He took no notice of Mahasweta's possible affliction, while being too cautious regarding others. It was taken for granted that Mahashweta wouldn’t have much objection to sharing this ugly disease with him since they had, so far, always lived together.

He always sought his wife's company; tried to keep her around him every time. He wanted her to talk with him, and read him books by sitting close to him. He didn’t enjoy listening to songs alone without the company of Mahasweta. Even if it were not so, he wanted her to sit near him quietly, so that Jatin could see her as much as he wanted. Mahasweta did all this without any complaints. As if she had surrendered to all his newly found whims like a doll. She succumbed before all his whimsical and odd desires. She never tried to reform or change Jatin's desires. Seeing her tireless obedience and endless efforts to follow her husband's orders, one could hardly see that, she also had a life of her own and basic daily essential routines to perform—that she also required the company of healthy people and a time of her own. She ate when Jatin spared her for a few moments, she walked around the garden when Jatin allowed her to do so. Otherwise, she completely neglected herself and kept fulfilling her husband's changing desires with careful endeavours.

However, she did not do anything unsolicited. She kept a careful eye on whether the methods and practices prescribed to ease his pain, to some extent, were being properly carried on; but to increase Jatin's pleasure and to provide him happiness, she did not discover any new means.

There used to be a combined harmonious pace in their life. There were ceremonies to perform to spend the life together. That pace had ceased now, and those ceremonies had also transformed. Old love, old affections, old curiosities had to be reshaped to a new mold. There arrived the need to establish a modified and new relationship between them even after four years of their marriage. Earlier understandings had to be completely altered.

Before they could overcome the initial depressing situation, these changes happened almost simultaneously and they didn't even have the moment to realize it. The beds of the diseased and the healthy had been separated for the sake of the huge arrangements required for the treatment. Even a kiss between the couple now seemed impossible. They had forgotten their way of expressing love. Though not everything had ended, now their eyes only expressed the unspeakable, the unbelievable pain which had transformed into the question, “What has happened?”

Perhaps Mahasweta kept thinking only about this all day and night. Her lips became hardened, her breathing heavy, it sounded almost like a sigh as if she was cursing her fate.

Jatin angrily asked her, “Why are you behaving like this?”

Mahasweta uttered indifferently, “How do I behave? I do nothing.”

Then suddenly Jatin started sobbing and said, “I am already on the verge of dying, and on top of that if you hurt me…”

Jatin, for a moment, forgot his reality and, being unmindful, tightly grasped Mahasweta’s hand. Initially, his wounds used to be covered by bandages but nowadays they are kept open for better absorption of adequate light and air. The doctor had advised him to absorb the sunlight as much as possible after rinsing the wounds thoroughly. Bandages were only meant to be used during the night.

Mahasweta stared at his three damaged distorted fingers. She did not even shiver for a moment at being touched by those infected wounds. It seemed as if on Jatin's pleading, she could even kiss that small coin-like bloody wound slightly below his elbow.

Jatin took away his hand. He angrily remarked, "Do you despise me, Sweta?"

Mahasweta, in a tone of denial, replied, “Did I ever despise you?"

"Then why do you look at me in such a way?"

"How do I look?"

In such circumstances could men tolerate such counter retorts? Jatin laid straight on the couch on his porch under the scorching sunlight. Even an ordinary healthy person couldn’t tolerate such burning heat of the sunrays for more than five minutes, but Jatin's senses had become blunt. He laid under the sun for hours. Only after the sunset, he removed his easy chair. He had heard from the doctor about the immense benefits of sunlight in healing the wounds, so he tried his best to utilize the sunlight as much as possible. He could not waste it.

After a while, he called out, "Sweta come here".

Once she came, he said, "Sit here".

Mahasweta sat near him, under the shadow. Her sweating body dried up in the scorching heat and started burning. But she didn't move away from the place. She sat drowsily near her husband like an obedient wife.

Jatin said, "I am thirsty".

Mahasweta brought him water.

Jatin said, "I need a pillow".

Mahasweta brought him another pillow.

Jatin said, "Is that all? Place the pillow under my head".

Mahasweta obeyed his demand.

Jatin, giving her a sharp glance, asked, “What are you contemplating upon?”

Mahasweta answered, "What would I think?"

Amidst her sleep at night, she had seen Jatin crawling up to her bed. The habits of human beings are also prone to change just like them. When the king turns into a beggar, though this much can be assumed that he was not always a beggar, nothing more can be surmised.

Jatin's inhuman nature became explicitly visible, due to his isolated confinement for days and nights within the narrow walls of his room. The effect of his disease only increased, showing no sign of cure. His tender, appealing body became unattractive and ugly. This distorted outer being also started to maim his inner being. It became impossible for Mahasweta, his lifelong companion, to spend even a few hours with him. His mood had worsened. His voice had become coarse and rough, he had lost almost half of his hair, the color of his nose had started to become copperish in tone. The mass of his face and body seemed to have started rotting from the inside. His appearance started to scare Mahasweta, along with his agitated and frightening behaviour like that of a deserted fierce animal.

Jatin understood that he no longer belonged to the ranks of ordinary human beings. All his hope of receiving respect, love and affection had been lost. Since he had isolated himself, nobody seemed to care about his existence. He didn't want to live with this self-deception. He came to realize that the silence and unaffected submission of Mahasweta was nothing but the peculiar expression of her deep abhorrence. He had nothing left to give to people, so he learnt to be selfish. Since he himself was suffering tremendous pain, he no more hesitated to hurt others.

But it was only Mahasweta who was within his reach, only she had to bear the burden of his diseased body and depressed mind.

She had become awfully calm. Her feelings of dejection and indifference had also reduced. Probably her will to survive had once again rekindled. She tried to become lively again and live her life. She would not waste it.

She asked Jatin, "Do you want to go somewhere?"

Jatin retorted sharply, "No."

"I wonder if the seawater would have been beneficial in healing your wounds."

Jatin dubiously remarked, "Beneficial? No way. No doctor has opined that."

Mahasweta angrily remarked, “The advice of doctors is proving to be futile too.”

After a few moments she again said, “Maybe praying before the deities could help, hopefully if you could receive some divine instruction in your dream.”

Jatin scornfully stared at Mahasweta's healthy and fit body.

"After eating your son up, why do you pretend to be so devoted to God? Divine order? God never blesses the husband of a mischievous woman like you."

It was a matter that happened a few months ago. Jatin had heard briefly about this. But he didn’t believe in divine accidents. He had suspected Mahasweta and became mad in furious anger. Mahasweta did not disclose anything. Jatin could not trust her words. Her relentless endeavours to maintain secrecy became evident. She behaved as if it all had to do only with her personal life. Even if it was believed that all of this was her conspiracy still then, Jatin had no right to claim that she was more responsible than God for this. Her fate was cursed, she was destined to suffer, to be deprived of everything and that is exactly what had happened. But did that have anything to do with Jatin? Why was he so worried?

Mahasweta couldn't accept his remarks that he would not receive any divine order being her husband. She said, "If you are so desperate about your son, how can you be so sure that it was a boy?"

Jatin's eyes reflected his fierce anger.

"Isn't it? But why did they say that it was a boy?"

"Is it possible for them to be surer than me?"

Jatin said no more. He silently contemplated. The next day when the weather became cloudy, he sought for romantic indulgence with Mahasweta. It started to rain heavily and Jatin in a tone of forgetting all his past resentment towards her, said, "Is a girl child worthless?"

Mahasweta astonishingly asked, "Are you still thinking about that?"

Jatin asked, "Tell me what you have done? Surely you couldn't have strangled her Sweta? Did you?"

Mahasweta answered, "Why would I answer your meaningless questions? Why do you keep blabbering about what you don’t comprehend? I have consoled myself by the fact that she would have suffered a lot if she lived. Why can't you think this way? Oh! It's raining so much, spare me a little."

Mahasweta was standing near the window. Jatin's rebukes and the pattering of raindrops—both continued at the same pace. Mahasweta silently listened to all his grudges while watching the rain outside. When Jatin said that a woman who is capable of performing such a heinous crime can do anything, in reply Mahasweta only smiled slightly.

One day, they had had such a conversation...

"What sin have I committed Sweta to suffer like this?"

"Why would it be your sin? It's my fate".

But today the tone had changed. Now Jatin desperately blamed her saying, “It's because of your sins that I am suffering. You have eaten up your own son, you monster. Why couldn't you die? Are there any other wishes of yours left unfulfilled? Is there anyone even now pouring love upon you?”

This assumption of Jatin had now become his prime weapon to attack her. Nobody could assume that Mahasweta was happy seeing her remorseful face. But Jatin’s perspective was different. The dejection of her face seemed to him enchanting beauty attempting to captivate men, the blank stare of her eyes appeared before him to be the contentment of happiness. Her cleanliness seemed to him as adornment. The increasing boundaries of her life which was beyond Jatin's range, had become a matter of great suspicion for him. He wondered, where did she spend her whole day leaving him alone? Did she take respite in another room? Jatin did not believe so. If she only needed a room for resting, why did she not choose the room adjacent to that of Jatin's for that matter? She could not relax in any other room except the corner room down the stairs in the solitary afternoons where anybody could easily enter avoiding other's eyes!

“I am not that much of a fool. Don't you get it?”

Mahasweta did not have the habit of proceeding with counter-arguments. She only said, “Who has told you so?”

Jatin remained adamant, “Things can't go that way in my home. You can't continue this while staying in my house. I am warning you this. I am not dead yet.”

"What nonsense are you talking?"

"Oh! God! I have been ruined in every way."

Jatin screamed aloud. Mahasweta calmly watched him crying. With Jatin's increasing agitation she only became calmer. She leisurely heard the noises coming from outside and felt them slowly. She felt as if someone was crying around somewhere.

Derangement had affected Mahasweta too. It was bound to happen. Insanity is doing such things which human beings don't usually do when they remain in their senses. Her life had surpassed ordinary life, she had to do those things. Friends appeared to be foes, and the dear ones became strangers. Life appeared to be an endless puzzle, a labyrinth. Some died in sorrow, some felt indifferent, since they had forgotten to take afternoon tea, their heads were aching, what a wonderful bird flew across the sky!

Mahasweta did not sleep with Jatin in the same room at night. She stayed in the next room.

Jatin asked, "Why?" She didn't utter a single word. Locking herself in the room she prepared the answer for the whole night. Jatin threatened, standing in front of the closed door, "I am loading the revolver, I will shoot you once you come out in the morning." He said, “I can't bear this insult Sweta! Will you hate me this way?”

Jatin, lonely and deserted, spent sleepless nights, while in the other room Mahasweta lying in her empty bed searched for her reason to live. She tried to think so many things but couldn't, tried to comprehend so much but failed. Everything ended up in utter confusion. The memory of her earlier life before marriage haunted her like an unimaginable experience. Her thinking capacity ceased the moment she tried to think of the period when Jatin was healthy and sturdy for the four years after their marriage. All of a sudden, her life turned into this suffocating, decaying existence cantering around Jatin's rotting, melting body from those of the wild joyous and innocent celebration of their happy life, where a newborn child, had to be sacrificed before he could see the world. Life and death were repetitive events here.

All the lights of Jatin's heart had extinguished. His mind was filled with myriad ridiculous superstitions in the darkest sleepless nights. Recently he had come to believe in the hidden wonder of divine power. Once, God was, for him, an imagination of leisure; religion was the old age's compensation; and he considered knowledge to be only the strong logical and rational thought. Today he had begun to hope that his disease could be cured only if God wished, it was only God who could show him the way to eradicate his malady.

"But which God? From where would he get the divine order?"

Jatin couldn't decide for himself. He asked for Mahasweta's opinion. "Where should I go Sweta to seek blessings of God?"

Mahasweta tried to remember the farthest pilgrimage place possible and then said, "Go to Kamakhya."

"Am I to go alone?" Jatin became startled with surprise and hesitation. "How will I go in my situation?"

Mahasweta said, "Who will go then?"

"Why? You should go. It is the duty of wives to pray before God in their husband’s illness and bring with them the divine order.”

Mahasweta answered, “Me? I am not worthy enough to receive the blessings of God, since I am an atheist.”

“Really?” Jatin did not believe her.

“Not even a bit. All of this seems like nonsense to me.”

Jatin became furious with anger.

“Oh! Yes, you find it to be ridiculous. Your husband is dying here and you are enjoying with the other there. Do you think I don't understand anything?”

Mahasweta asked, “Who am I enjoying with?”

“If I knew, would I even have allowed you to stay in my house until now?” Jatin breathed in slowly through his decomposing nose and screamed his lungs out pointing his rotting finger towards her, “You will also suffer one day, more terribly than me. Nobody can escape the punishment of committing this much sin."

Jatin vigorously rubbed the fresh wounds of his finger in Mahasweta's hands in a fit of fierce anger. He felt monstrous happiness, as if like setting on fire with fire, he had transferred his deadly disease into Mahasweta's body and said, “Soon you will also be infected and you will pay the price by suffering, for despising me."

After this curse, Mahasweta renounced her husband. Long ago she had almost stopped nursing him, now she had reduced her frequency of visiting him too. If in the morning, she visited him for a few moments, she couldn't be seen the whole day thereafter. She only peeped for a while before going to bed at night. It all seemed to be an irony.

It couldn't be said whether Jatin, in his fit of anger, would have asked her to leave his home, but within a few days he went to Kamakhya in the hope of divine cure. Mahasweta agreed unwillingly to accompany him, submitting to his helpless pleadings and patronizing orders but just at the time of departure, she went missing from the house. One of his aunts informed, “Mahasweta has gone to Kalighat. Just a while ago she left in Jatin’s motor car, taking his servant with her.”

Mahasweta had told Jatin that she didn't have faith in God. But it wasn’t true. If it were true, she wouldn't have worshipped the Goddess, spending loads of money on the day of Jatin's journey to Kamakhya; she wouldn't have donated so much money to the beggars.

This she had done herself. At the entrance of the temple, there were a large number of beggars sitting in a row on both sides of the road. She was giving them money unsparingly. It was a great gathering, not only beggars but even common people gathered to watch her tremendous donation.

There were leprosy-affected people too among the crowd. While one's hands and legs were covered by torn rags, some other's nose had completely melted and converted into a blank hole, or someone's hands had to be amputated a long time ago and the surface of the skin had become smooth. Mahasweta's one hand was not enough to distribute the money among them. No matter how much money one can give, nothing is adequate for them, to ameliorate their miserable condition.

After returning home that afternoon, Mahasweta decided to open a leper’s home to shelter those poverty-stricken masses of people.

Her servant brought five beggars from the road on that day. Two of them did not agree to live here despite all the luxury and comforts that it provided. The rest of them had relaxingly settled since then. They had no work to do, except eat, sleep and bless Mahasweta, wishing her more abundance and wealth. Within seven days their number increased to twenty-one.

She had transferred all her relatives and family members to another house. She lived here alone with these leprosy-affected victims and few paid servants and workers. She had appointed a doctor to look after them every morning and afternoon and advertised the requirement of two experienced nurses.

The doctor had informed her, “They will not allow you to open a leprosarium here.”

“Why?”

“Can they permit to establish such a leper house right in the middle of the town?”

Mahasweta astonishingly remarked, “They were roaming aimlessly in the roads of the city, I have rather reduced the risk of transmission of the disease by segregating them within a home.”

The doctor smiled and said, “Despite that, they will not let you do so. But you know, this is a noble job. Nobody without any cause hinders such initiatives. First, your neighbor will lodge a complaint, then they will send you a notice. Even then you can stay unmoved for two months until further notice is sent, then you can make arrangements to move it to some other place.”

Mahasweta, in reply to the doctor's advice, asked, “Is leprosy such a terrible and fatal disease doctor?”

“There are so many diseases like this in this world, they destroy human beings, such genetically transmitting diseases are huge in numbers Mrs. Dutta.”, said the Doctor.

Gene! Heredity! Who knows how much the doctor had assumed? Jatin's suspicion itself only made him mad, since he thought Mahasweta had deceived him. But even the doctor, after knowing everything, had remained indifferent.

Jatin returned home before the nurses were appointed. He didn't receive any divine order whatsoever, rather he had a dream about wearing a white flower-like amulet which would eventually cure his illness. He had already worn the amulet, before coming back home.

“What have you done Sweta?”

She said, “I have done all this for your good, I met a monk in Kalighat, I have never seen such an austere monk, his eyes were shining like bright fire. He advised, “Build a leper home, your husband will be cured.”

Jatin was still strongly captivated by the effect of the amulet, being overwhelmed he said, “Is it true?”

“Am I lying to you? You have not seen that monk. If you did, you would have had goosebumps all over your body.”

Jatin said, “You could have asked for some medicine, Sweta.”

Jatin again took his old place. His mood had become delighted after relying on the amulet and the monk's remedy.

But Mahasweta still maintained her distance from him. She remained far away from his reach as she stayed before his journey to Kamakhya. She kept herself busy with her leprosarium. When the number of inhabitants increased to twenty-five from twenty-one, her happiness was immeasurable. She nursed these decaying distorted-bodied men all day and night. Her affection was like that of a mother. As if those twenty-five diseased, rotten skeletons had her bosom, they got all the warmth of her heart.

One day Jatin complained with tears, “You only nurse them, Sweta. You don't even look at me.”

Mahasweta stood still with her neck down. She couldn't utter a single word.

Once she loved her healthy and handsome husband and hated the leprosy-ridden people on the roads. Today she hates her husband and loves those wretched victims of leprosy. There was no intricate psychology there. It was an easily comprehensible truth.
Mahasweta was not a Goddess. She was only the ordinary wife of a leper.