The Solution

The sky was blue; breeze was soothing; flowers were beautiful and meaning of my name resembles rainbow. Still I was married to a village girl whose name signifies ‘unwanted’. She gave birth to a girl-child after a year and named her ‘Buchi’. I expressed my disagreement over the name-selection. But everyone in my family and the neighbourhood dissuaded me with a true statement, “Do you want to name your dark and ugly daughter ‘a bouquet of flowers’? Such an insane idea of yours….!”

She was really ugly. Not only she was dark, one of her eyes was larger than the other. In addition to that, she seemed dumb; salivated all the time. True, she could not be called ‘a bouquet of flowers’.

After two years…

My wife went to her paternal home taking Buchi along.

It was Sunday. We did not have any work; was spending our lazy hours under the shed of our Durga temple, as usual by discussing different topics. The discussion took an abrupt turn towards me.

Nripen told, “Think of Nihar’s fate. Poor man fathered only a girl child – that too so ugly!”

Shyam Bose told, “So true! He will have a tough time to get her married – will need lot of money.”

Haru uncle took a long puff before telling, “No brothers, only money does not suffice these days. People want not only money, but beauty too. Biggest problem is her asymmetric eyes – God know what will happen.”

Everyone was so worried.

The peon of our post-office came at that moment to deliver me a letter.

Nripen asked, “Whose letter is that?”

I finished reading it and announced, “My wife wrote it – Buchi passed away yesterday.”

Translation of the story "Samadhan" by Balaichand Mukhopadhyay