"The Weed" by Amrita Pritam

"The Weed" by  Amrita Pritam

 "The Weed" is a short story by Amrita Pritam that explores themes of gender inequality, patriarchal oppression, and social conditioning in rural Indian society. The story is narrated from the perspective of a woman who observes the life and thoughts of another woman, Angoori, a newly married bride.

The story The Weed revolves around Angoori, the young second wife of Prabhati, who is a servant of the narrator’s neighbor’s neighbor. After the death of his first wife, Prabhati returned to his village for the funeral, where Angoori’s father offered her hand in marriage. However, their marriage was only consummated after six years due to Angoori’s young age and her mother’s paralytic attack. When Prabhati finally took Angoori to the city, his employers objected, but he assured them that she would manage on her own.

In the city, Angoori initially observed strict purdah but gradually became more comfortable. She loved wearing jewelry and enjoyed showing it off. The narrator, Amrita Pritam, interacted with her and learned about her deep-rooted beliefs. When asked if she wanted to learn how to read, Angoori refused, believing it was a sin for village women, though not for city women.

Angoori explained that in her village, marriages were arranged when a young girl "adored" a man's feet, which her father determined by offering money and flowers. However, she also revealed that love in the village was believed to be induced by the weed—a substance that, when consumed, made a girl fall for a man. She had witnessed a friend elope after falling in love this way.

One day, Angoori appeared melancholic and requested to learn how to read, hinting at an internal conflict. Later, she was found crying and singing a love-sick song, revealing her distress. It was discovered that Ram Tara, a young night watchman who used to take tea with her and Prabhati, had gone to his village, and Angoori had not eaten since his departure. When the narrator asked if the weed had affected her, Angoori broke down in tears, realizing she had fallen in love despite never knowingly consuming anything from Ram Tara—except tea. The story ends with her tearful realization of her unintended emotions.

Characters in The Weed by Amrita Pritam

1. Angoori – The protagonist of the story, a naïve and innocent young woman who is the second wife of Prabhati. She has internalized patriarchal beliefs and sees love as something induced by the weed. Over time, she unknowingly falls in love with Ram Tara, leading to her emotional turmoil.

2. Prabhati – Angoori’s husband, an old and unattractive man who works as a servant. He married Angoori after his first wife's death, but there is a significant age and physical disparity between them.

3. The Narrator (Amrita Pritam) – The storyteller, who observes and interacts with Angoori. She is an educated, modern woman who contrasts with Angoori’s traditional beliefs and attempts to understand her perspective.

4. Ram Tara – A young, energetic night watchman who unknowingly becomes the object of Angoori’s affection. He used to drink tea with her and Prabhati, which later leads to Angoori’s realization of her feelings.

5. Angoori’s Father – A traditional man who offers Angoori’s hand in marriage to Prabhati, reinforcing the patriarchal practice of treating daughters as burdens to be married off.

6. Angoori’s Mother – She suffers from a paralytic attack, which delays Angoori’s consummation of marriage. She warns Angoori against accepting food or sweets from men, fearing she might fall in love under the influence of the weed.

Themes ,

1. Patriarchal Conditioning – Angoori’s acceptance of her fate highlights how deeply embedded patriarchy is in society. She does not question her role or the limitations placed upon her.

2. Lack of Female Agency – The story shows how women in rural settings are often denied choices regarding their own lives, particularly in marriage and education.

3. Symbolism of the Weed – The weed represents something that spreads naturally and uncontrollably, just as patriarchal norms continue to exist and spread through generations.

4. Education vs. Ignorance – The contrast between the narrator and Angoori highlights how education can bring awareness, but lack of education keeps women trapped in submissive roles.

5. Fate and Free Will – Angoori believes that love and marriage are matters of fate rather than personal choice, reinforcing her passive acceptance of societal norms.

The text of the Story

The Weed

Amrita Pritam (Translated from Punjabi by Raj Gill)

 

Angoori was the new bride of the old servant of my neighbour's neighbour's neighbour. Every bride is new, for that matter; but she was new in a different way: the second wife of her husband who could not be called new because he had already drunk once at the conjugal well.

 As such, the prerogatives of being new went to Angoori only. This realization was further accentuated when one considered the five years that passed before they could consummate their union About six years ago Prabhati had gone home to cremate his first wife. When this was done, Angoori's father approached him and took his wet towel, wringing it dry, a symbolic gesture of wiping away the tears of grief that had wet the towel. There never was a man, though, who cried enough to wet a yard-and-a-half of calico. It had got wet only after Prabhati's bath.

 The simple act of drying the tear-stained towel on the part of a person with a nubile daughter was as much as to say, 'I give you my daughter to take the place of the one who died. Don't cry anymore. I've even dried your wet towel'.

This is how Angoori married Prabhati. However, their union was postponed for five years, for two reasons: her tender age, and her mother's paralytic attack. When, at last, Prabhati was invited to take his bride away, it seemed he would not be able to, for his employer was reluctant to feed another mouth from his kitchen. But when Prabhati told him that his new wife could keep her own house, the employer agreed.

At first, Angoori kept purdah from both men and women. But the veil soon started to shrink until it covered only her hair, as was becoming to an orthodox Hindu woman. She was a delight to both ear and eye. A laughter in the tinkling of her hundred ankle-bells, and a thousand bells in her laughter.

'What are you wearing, Angoori?'

'An anklet. Isn't it pretty?'

'And what's on your toe?'

'A ring.'

'And on your arm?'

'A bracelet.'

'What do they call what's on your forehead?'

'They call it aliband.'

'Nothing on your waist today, Angoori?'

'It's too heavy. Tomorrow I'll wear it. Today, no necklace either. See! The clasp is broken.

Tomorrow I'll go to the city to get a new clasp... and buy a nose-pin. I had a big nose-ring. But my mother-in-law kept it.'

Angoori was very proud of her silver jewellery, elated by the mere touch of her trinkets.

Everything she did seemed to set them off to maximum effect.

The weather became hot with the turn of the season. Angoori too must have felt it in her hut where she passed a good part of the day, for now she stayed out more. There were a few huge neem trees in front of my house; underneath them an old well that nobody used except an occasional construction worker. The spilt water made several puddles, keeping the atmosphere around the well cool. She often sat near the well to relax.

'What are you reading, bibi?' Angoori asked me one day when I sat under a neem tree reading.

 

'Want to read it?'

'I don't know reading.'

'Want to learn?'

'Oh, no!'

'Why not? What's wrong with it?'

'It's a sin for women to read!'

'And what about men?'

'For them, it's not a sin'.

'Who told you this nonsense?

''I just know it.'

'I read. I must be sinning.'

'For city women, it's no sin. It is for village women.'

We both laughed at this remark. She had not learned to question all that she was told to believe. I thought that if she found peace in her convictions, who was I to question them?

Her body redeemed her dark complexion, an intense sense of ecstasy always radiating from it, a resilient sweetness. They say a woman's body is like a lump of dough, some women have the looseness of under-kneaded dough while others have the clinging plasticity of leavened dough.

Rarely does a woman have a body that can be equated to rightly-kneaded dough, a baker's pride. Angoori's body belonged to this category, her rippling muscles impregnated with the metallic resilience of a coiled spring. I felt her face, arms, breasts, legs with my eyes and experienced a profound languor. I thought of Prabhati : old, short, loose-jawed, a man whose stature and angularity would be the death of Euclid. Suddenly a funny idea struck me: Angoori was the dough covered by Prabhati. He was her napkin, not her taster. I felt a laugh welling up inside me, but I checked it for fear that Angoori would sense what I was laughing about.

 I asked her how marriages are arranged where she came from.

'A girl, when she's five or six, adores someone's feet. He is the husband.'

'How does she know it?'

'Her father takes money and flowers and puts them at his feet.'

'That's the father adoring, not the girl.'

'He does it for the girl. So it's the girl herself.'

'But the girl has never seen him before!'

'Yes, girls don't see.'

'Not a single girl ever sees her future husband!'

'No...,' she hesitated. After a long, pensive pause, she added, 'Those in love..... they see them.'

'Do girls in your village have love-affairs?'

'A few'.

'Those in love, they don't sin?' I remembered her observation regarding education for women.

'They don't. See, what happens is that a man makes the girl eat the weed and then she starts

loving him.'

'Which weed?'

'The wild one.'

'Doesn't the girl know that she has been given the weed?'

'No, he gives it to her in a paan. After that, nothing satisfies her but to be with him, her man. I

know. I've seen it with my own eyes.'

'Whom did you see?'

'A friend; she was older than me.'

'And what happened?'

'She went crazy. Ran away with him to the city.'

'How do you know it was because of the weed?'

'What else could it be? Why would she leave her parents. He brought her many things from the

city: clothes, trinkets, sweets.

Where does this weed come in?'

'In the sweets : otherwise how could she love him?'

'Love can come in other ways. No other way here?'

'No other way. What her parents hated was that she was that way.'

'Have you seen the weed?'

'No, they bring it from a far country. My mother warned me not to take paan or sweets from

anyone. Men put the weed in them.'

'You were very wise. How come your friend ate it?'

'To make herself suffer,' she said sternly. The next moment her face clouded, perhaps in

remembering her friend. 'Crazy. She went crazy, the poor thing,' she said sadly. 'Never combed

her hair, singing all night....'

'What did she sing?’

'I don't know. They all sing when they eat the weed. Cry too.'

The conversation was becoming a little too much to take, so I retired.

I found her sitting under the neem tree one day in a profoundly abstracted mood.

Usually one could hear Angoori coming to the well; her ankle-bells would announce her approach. They were silent that day.

'What's the matter, Angoori?'

She gave me a blank look and then, recovering a little, said, 'Teach me reading, bibi.'

'What has happened?'

'Teach me to write my name.'

'Why do you want to write? To write letters? To whom?'

She did not answer, but was once again lost in her thoughts.

'Won't you be sinning?' I asked, trying to draw her out of her mood. She would not respond. I went in for an afternoon nap. When I came out again in the evening, she was still there singing sadly to herself. When she heard me approaching, she turned around and stopped abruptly. She sat with hunched shoulders because of the chill in the evening breeze.

'You sing well, Angoori'. I watched her great effort to turn back the tears and spread a pale smile across her lips.

'I don't know singing'.

'But you do, Angoori!'

'This was the ...'

'The song your friend used to sing.' I completed the sentence for her.

'I heard it from her.'

'Sing it for me.'

She started to recite the words. 'Oh, it's just about the time of year for change. Four months

winter, four months summer, four months rain!....'

'Not like that. Sing it for me,' I asked. She wouldn't, but continued with the words :

 

Four months of winter reign in my heart;

My heart shivers, O my love.

Four months of summer, wind shimmers in the sun.

Four months come the rains; clouds tremble in the sky.

 

'Angoori!' I said loudly. She looked as if in a trance, as if she had eaten the weed. I felt like

shaking her by the shoulders. Instead, I took her by the shoulders and asked if she had been a ting regularly. She had not; she cooked for herself only, since Prabhati ate at his master's. 'Did

you cook today?' I asked.

'Not yet.'

'Did you have tea in the morning?'

'Tea? No milk today.'

'Why no milk today?'

'I didn't get any. Ram Tara......'

'Fetches the milk for you?' I added. She nodded.

Ram Tara was the night-watchman. Before Angoori married Prabhati, Ram Tara used to get a

cup of tea at our place at the end of his watch before retiring on his cot near the well. After

Angoori's arrival, he made his tea at Prabhati's. He, Angoori and Prabhati would all have tea

together sitting around the fire. Three days ago Ram Tara went to his village for a visit.

'You haven't had tea for three days?' I asked. She nodded again. 'And you haven't eaten, I

suppose?' She did not speak. Apparently, if she had been eating, it was as good as not eating at

all.

I remembered Ram Tara : good-looking, quick-limbed, full of jokes. He had a way of talking

with smiles trembling faintly at the corner of his lips.

'Angoori?'

'Yes, bibi'.

'Could it be weed?'

Tears flowed down her face in two rivulets, gathering into two tiny puddles at the corners of her mouth.

'Curse on me!' she started in a voice trembling with tears, 'I never took sweets from him... not a betel even.... but tea ...' She could not finish. Her words were drowned in a fast stream of tears