ploughing the land, it will be impossible for us to maintain the family; and it is for this reason, that we have still, with so much trouble, kept these ploughs.
Sabitri. How shalt thou go with this headache? Oh oh! was such Indigo produced in this land! (Places her hand on Nobin's head).
(Enter Reboti.)
Reboti. My mother! Where shall I go? What shall I do? They have done what! Why is it that through ill-fortune I brought her? Having brought one of a strange caste, I am become unable to preserve propriety. My eldest Babu! preserve me; my life is on the point of bursting out. Bring me Khetromani; bring me my puppet of gold.
Sabitri. These destroyers can do all things. Ye are taking by force the pieces of ground of men, their grain, their kine and calves. By the force of clubs, ye are cultivating Indigo, and the people are doing your work with cries and sobbings.
Reboti. My mother! I am preparing the Indigo, taking only half the food. Those bigahs which they had marked, on them I worked. When Ray works, he weeps with deep sighs; if he hear of this my work, he would become, as it were, insane.
Nobin. Where is Sadhu now?
Reboti. He is sitting outside, and is weeping.
Nobin. To a woman of good family, constancy in faithfulness to her husband is, as it were, the loadstone; and how very beautiful does she appear (ramaniki ramaniyá) when she is decorated with that ornament. Is a woman of a good family carried off, when the Bhima-like Svaropur of my father is still in existence? At this very moment shall I go. I shall see what manner of injustice this is. The Indigo frog can never sit on the white waterlily-like constancy of a woman.
(Exit Nobin Madhab.)
