A WIFE’s LETTER by RABINDRANATH TAGORE

1. How many years have they been married?

Answer: 15 years
2. Why didn’t they communicate during this time?
Answer: They haven’t had space enough to write a letter.
3. From where the wife is writing the letter?
Answer: Puri, she has come for a holy journey
4. What is the husband’s relationship to Calcutta?
Answer: The husband’s relationship to Calcutta is a snail’s to its shell--the city is stuck fast to him, his
body and soul.
5. What is the wife also referred to as?
Answer: She is also referred to as “Mejo-Bou.” Her real name is Mrinal. She is the second bride in
your joint family.
6. According to the wife who is this letter from?
Answer: According to her, this is not a letter from her husband’s family’s Mejo-Bou. Not from the
second wife but a woman.
7. What is the childhood incident?
Answer: In her childhood days, her brother and I both came down with typhoid fever. Her brother
died but she survived.
8. How can we say that woman life had no value during that period of time.
Answer: From the childhood incident where her brother died but Mrinal survived the neighbourhood
girls said “Mrinal’s a girl, that’s why she lived. If she’d been a boy, she couldn’t have been saved.”
Jom-Raj is wise in his deadly robbery: he only takes things of value.
9. Who came to visit Mrinal as a prospective bride?
Answer: Husband’s uncle, “a distinct relative”, and her husband’s friend Nirod came.
10. At what age Mrinal was married off?
Answer: She was married at the age of twelve.
11. Where did Mrinal live? How could people reach there?
Answer: She lived in an inaccessible village where jackals would call even during the day. Fourteen
miles from the railway station by ox-cart, then six more on an unpaved road by palanquin.
12. What did the uncle joke about?
Answer: Uncle made jokes about the East- Bengal Cookery.
13. Why the husband took so much time and trouble to choose Mrinal to such a distant village?
Answer: Your mother wanted desperately to make up for the plain appearance of the first bride with
the good looks of the second. They came all this way for Mrinal because of her good looks.
 14. In Bengal no one has to search for _________, __________, or a _____; they come and
cleave to you on their own, and never want to leave.
Answer: jaundice, dysentery, bride
15. So even with the greatest beauty, the most perfect virtues, a woman’s self-doubt can never be
dispelled.
16. Why her sister-in-law, was upset?
Answer: Because Mrinal was more beautiful than her.
17. Why beauty had no value in her husband’s family?
Answer: “Had my beauty been molded by some ancient sage from holy Ganga clay, then it might
have been loved; but the Creator had molded it only for His own pleasure, and so it had no value in
your pious family.”
18. What Mrinal had, beside her beauty?
Answer: Her Intelligence.
19. Why her mother was afflicted?
Answer: Her mother was afflicted by Mrinal’s intelligence.
20. What remarks did everyone make on Mrinal?
Answer: precocious, impertinent girl!
21. What Mrinal did secretly?
Answer: Mrinal secretly wrote poems.
22. Why did Mrinal stop feefing the cows?
Answer: when Mrinal grew older, bantering acquaintances, observing the attention she showed to the
cows, would express her husband’s family members suspicions about Mrinal’s family and ancestral
occupation: “all cowherds”, they said.
23. Where did the cows live?
Answer: Right next to the stairway leading up to the inner rooms was the room where the cows were
kept.
24. Who were the first friends of Mrinal in the city ?
Answer: The two cows and three calves struck her as being the only friends she had in the entire city.
25. I had the grief of becoming a mother, but not the freedom.
26. And a mother, even confined to one narrow world, is of the ________
Answer: Universe
27. What would have brought all the wonderful in Mrinal’s life?
Answer: If her daughter lived, she would have brought all that was wonderful, all that was large, into
her life; from Mejo-Bou She would have become Mother.
28. Describe the inner rooms
Answers: The inner rooms are like the reverse of an embroidered pattern; on the inside there is no
hiding the starkness, no grace, no adornment. On the inside the lights glimmer darkly, the breeze
enters like a thief, the refuse never leaves the courtyard. The blemishes on the walls and floors are
conspicuous and inerasable
29. What mistake did doctor make?
Answer: The doctor made one mistake; he thought this neglect would cause them sorrow. Just the
opposite: neglect is like ashes, ashes that keep the fire hidden within but do not let the warmth die out.
When self-respect ebbs, a lack of attention does not seem unjust. So it causes no pain.
30. What view on women suffering is presented by Mrinal?
Answer: According to Mrinal, “ if this be your arrangement, that women will suffer, then it is best to
keep them in neglect, as far as possible; with attention and love, suffering only grows worse.”
31. Describe the near death experience of Mrinal in the delivery room.
Answer: In the delivery room, death came and stood by my head; I felt no fear. What is our life that
we must fear death? Those whose life-bonds have been knotted tight with love and care, they flinch
before death. If Jom-Raj had caught me that day and pulled, then, in the same way that a clump of
grass can easily be pulled out from loose earth, roots and all, I too would have come out in his hand. A
Bengali girl will wish for death on the slightest pretext, but where is the courage in such a death? I am
ashamed to die--death is too easy for us.
32. What did Mrinal compare her daughter to?
Answer: An evening star
33. How did Mrinal compare her world with a seed?
Answer: A tiny seed blown on the wind can lodge in a brick terrace and put down the roots of a peepul
tree; in the end that seed can split open the heart of brick and stone. Into the set arrangements of my
world a tiny speck of life flew from who knows where, and that started the crack. Bindu is that seed.
34. Who is Mrinal’s elder sister-in-law’s sister?
Answer: Bindu
35. Why did Bindu came here?
Answer: Bindu, mistreated by the cousin she lived with after the death of her widowed mother, came
to their house to seek refuge with her sister.
36. What did everyone feel when Bindu came to lodge in their home?
Answer: All of them thought: “Why did this misfortune have to land at our doorstep?”
37. Even if we are forced to accept someone against our will, should we push them away, ignore
them?
38. What is Didi’s dilemma?
Answer: Didi had great compassion for her orphaned sister Bindu, but also she is a devoted wife so
when she saw her husband’s annoyance she couldn’t express their affection publicly.
39. What did Didi do to prove herself as the devoted wife?
Answer: She made the rudest arrangements for Bindu’s food and clothing--and she ensured that
everyone knew about it--and so she demeaned her in every way, even engaging her in household
chores as she would a housemaid. Didi was anxious to prove to everyone that our household had been
fortunate in obtaining Bindu’s services at bargain rates. The girl would work tirelessly, and the cost
was minimal.
40. Why Didi thought of her marriage as a grave indignity to her husband’s family?
Answer: Didi’s father’s family had had nothing other than its high lineage: neither good looks nor
wealth. They fell at Husband’s father’s feet and importuned him to take Didi into her husband’s
family. That is why she tries in every way to draw herself in, not to impose; she takes up very little
space in this house.
41. Why Didi gave great trouble to Mrinal?
Answer: Mrinal could not humble myself in all ways as she had done. If Mrinal find something
worthy, it’s not her inclination to disparage it just to please someone else.
42. Why was Didi relieved?
Answer: Didi had Mrinal display the affection towards her sister that she could not herself show, and
her heart was lightened by it.
43. How old was Bindu?
Answer: Bindu was no less than 14 years old.
44. What did people think of the red rash?
Answer: Everyone thought it was a small pox.
45. What did Mrinal fear?
Answer: Mrinal feared when Bindu began to love her.she had never seen such an embodiment of love
in real life.
46. Not for many years had I had occasion to remember that I was beautiful; that long-forgotten
beauty had charmed this plain-looking girl. She’d stare at my face, and the hope and trust in
her eyes would grow. She’s say to me, “Didi, no one but me has seen this face of yours.”
She’d become upset when I tied my hair myself. She liked to play with my hair, arranging it
this way and that. Apart from the occasional invitation, there was really no need for me to
dress up. But Bindu was eager; and every day she would ornament me one way or another.
She grew besotted with me.
47. What was Bindu accused of?
Answer: Bindu was accused of stealing an armlet, and being a police informer during the Shodeshi
Movement.
48. What did Mrinal do after her spending money was cut-off?
Answer: The very next day She began to wear coarse, unbleached, mill-made, ten-anna dhutis. And
when the maid came to take my plate away after lunch, She told her not to. She fed the left-over rice
to the calf and went to the courtyard tap to wash the plate myself.
49. What did Mrinal did for Bindu?
Answer: Mrinal engaged a special maid for her. Mrinal gave different kinds of clothes to Bindu to
wear.
50. Why Mrinal’s husband did not force Bindu to leave?
Answer: I understand it now: deep inside, you were all afraid of me. Deep inside, you could not help
respect the intelligence that God had given me.
51. “You must realize, Bindi dear, a husband is a woman’s shelter, her protector, her salvation, her
everything. If suffering is written on your forehead, no one can avert it.” Who told this and
when?
Answer: Didi said this to Bindu on the day before her wedding.
52. Where did Bindu’s wedding take place?
Answer: In groom’s place, everyone said that it was their ancestral custom but actually no one wanted
to spend on Bindu’s wedding.
53. What did Mrinal gave to Bindu?
Answer: Mrinal gave Bindu some of her jewellery secretly.
54. Bindu is also referred to as Bindi
55. Woman has no compassion for woman. Woman will say, “She’s nothing more than a woman.
The groom may be insane, but he’s a man.”
56. Why did Bindu marry an insane man?
Answer: Bindu’s father-in-law wasn’t in favor of this marriage, but he’s mortally afraid of his wife.
He went off to Kashi before the wedding. Her mother-in-law insisted on getting her son married.
57. Why did Bindu’s husband flung her brass plate?
Answer: Bindu had just sat down to lunch when her husband suddenly grabbed her brass plate and
flung it, rice and all, out into the courtyard. For some reason he was seized with the notion that Bindu
was Rani Rashmoni herself, and that the servant must have stolen her platter of gold and given her his
own lowly plate instead.
58. Why was Bindu’s mother-in-law even more dangerous?
Answer: Her mother-in-law was a terrible woman; if she was angered she lost all control of herself.
She too was unbalanced, but not completely, and therefore all the more dangerous.
59. Who was raising a racket outside the house?
Answer: Bindu’s brother-in-law had arrived and was raising a racket outside the house. He said he
was going to file a report at the police station. Mrinal found the audacity to say, “Fine, let him go file
a report then.”
60. Who is Shorot?
Answer: Mrinal’s younger brother Shorot was a college student in Calcutta. You all know about his
different kinds of volunteer work, running off to help the Damodor flood victims, exterminating the
rats when the plague struck—he had such enthusiasm for these projects that even failing the F.A.
exams twice had not dampened his spirit.
61. What news did Shorot gave of Bindu?
Answer: He returned in the evening and told me, “Bindu went back to her cousins’ house, but they
were terribly angry and took her back to her in-laws’ right away. And they haven’t forgotten the
money they had to spend on fares and other expenses for her.”
62. With whom and where did she go on a piligrimage?
Answer: Aunt had come to spend a few days at her husband’s house before leaving for Srikhetro on a
pilgrimage. Mrinal joined her on this journey.

63. Where did Mrinal plan to go?

Answer: Mrinal planned to go to Puri with Bindu on Wednesday.
64. Why did Shorot not bring Bindu after being asked to?
Answer: - He said, “There was no need any more. Last night she set fire to her clothes and killed
herself. I talked to her nephew—the one I was in touch with—and he said that she’d left a letter for
you. But they destroyed the letter.”
65. why the dramatics take place only with Bengali women’s sarees and not with the so-brave
Bengali men’s dhutis?
66. But there was some solace in her tears. However it was, at least now the girl was beyond
suffering. She had only died; who knew what might have happened if she’d lived?
67. Address of Mrinal?
Answer: Number Twenty-Seven Makhon Boral Lane
68. A sorrow, an insult, can imprison; but the proud standard of life flies from the hand of death!
69. Death was stronger. In her death Bindu has become great; she’s not a mere Bengali girl
anymore, no more just a female cousin of her father’s nephews, no longer only a lunatic
stranger’s deceived wife. Now she is without limits, without end.
70. Meera-Bai, too, was a woman, like me; her chains, too, were no less heavy; and she didn’t
have to die to be saved. Meera-Bai said, in her song, “No matter if my father leaves, my
mother too, let them all go; but Meera will persevere, Lord, whatever may come to pass.”
71. When was the story written – 1914