Also Read
Ambika is Jagan's wife who dies of brain tumour prematurely leaving behind her only son, Mali. She does not share her husband's views which he professes in the name of Gandhi. Two instances are mentionable in this context. First, she feels upset at the foul smell emanating from the dead animal's hide brought home by him for the purpose of tanning it in order to get his non-violent foot wear prepared by a cobbler at Albert Mission. Secondly, she feels resentful at her husband's fad of prescribing some nature cure for every sort of ailment. Once suffering from severe headache, she asks him to give her aspirin. But instead of giving the tablet to her, he argues with her not to take allopathic medicines as they are like poison. He advises her to take some leaves of margosa tree fried with ghee. She loses temper at his unsolicited for medical advice.
 |
| Ambika |
Ambika is uneducated and like a homely woman remains confined to the four walls of the house. She possesses a mediocre but appealing physical figure. Her marriage with the protagonist is settled after meticulously going through all the formal customs, traditions and rituals prevalent about marriage in the Indian middle-class society. She can sing, though in a bit masculine voice, in accompaniment with a harmonium as Jagan listens to her singing in the room next to the one in which he alongwith his elder brother and other members of the bride's family are sitting. When Jagan, in the company of his elder brother, comes to the village, Kuppum, in order to see her, she appears before them in a customary fashion. Jagan is under instructions from his parents not to speak too much and to behave on every occasion as suggested by his elder brother through his gestures.
Ambika's appearance before the guest tickles Jagan's heart. He continues staring at her in order to satisfy his insatiable curiosity about her physical features. She is described to possess "a thick wad of wavy hair, plaited and decorated with flowers, and many pieces of jewellery sparkled on her person. She wore a light green saree which suited her complexion." Jagan is in perplexity whether to call her 'fair' or 'dusky'. In a flicker of moment, his eyes met hers and his heart "palpitated and raced, and before he could do anything about it, it was all over." She is neither tall, nor short and nor fat nor puny. Ultimately, she is approved and the marriage takes place on an auspicious day with all ceremonial show of drum-beat and feasting.
She is modest and carries out the necessary homely duties expected from a daughter-in-law. Jagan insistently demands from her to be with him for most of the time. She makes him understand that she can't do it as she has to attend to other members of the family as well. Jagan keeps himself confined to his room and hardly allows any time for other members of his family. That is why, he becomes a target of perpetual taunts uttered by his sister and his elder brother. Ambika feels uneasy about this self-imposed aloofness of her husband and pleads with him to spare sometime for other members of his family. In this way, she follows the due decorum and code of conduct in her in-law's house.
Jagan's wife has a sufficient reserve fund of patience towards her mother-in-law. She does so in the interest of maintaining the peace and harmony of the house-hold. She does not pay serious attention to the occasional taunting and pugnacious remarks aimed at her by her mother-in-law. She remains cool to her being unjustly blamed for repeated failures of Jagan in his Intermediate and then B.A. examinations. Her mother-in-law teasingly taunts that Ambika does not want her husband to be educated as she is illiterate. She swallows patiently the oft-repeated snide remarks of Jagan's mother that she has not brought a golden waist-belt in her marriage.
The situation worsens for Ambika as she is not able to bear a child even ten years after her marriage. The mother-in-law does not spare her for this failure. While Ambika is scrubbing the floor in the other room, Jagan's mother will move about muttering sarcastically, within her earshot, the remarks "All one asks of a girl is that she atleast brings some children into a house as a normal person should, no one is asking for gold and silver, one may get cheated with regards to a gold belt even. Why can't a girl bear children as a million others in the world do?" But Ambika bears all such carping remarks without giving a counter-reply to her. She wears submissively the cross of silent suffering.
Generally, Ambika is good-natured, courteous and cheerful. She takes the things uttered in bad taste by her mother-in-law in a light vein. But, at times, she finds it hard to maintain the same balance of mind and hence will lash with her tongue when her anger is roused. One such incident Occurs when the sauce is over-salted. This happens because both the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law have added salt to it without each other's knowledge. The mother-in-law shouts at her for adding salt to it without first asking from her and follows it with her oft-repeated taunts about golden waist-belt and her infertility. It is too much for Ambika to bear. She shouts back loudly saying, "I don't care's" drops the dish and retires from the scene in anger. She shuts herself in her room and refuses to take food. Thus, the whole house is thrown into turmoil. After this incident, her mother-in-law never again refers to gold belt.
Ambika feels pained at her barrenness. She exposes her bitter feelings on this subject to her husband when they are in the privacy of their room. She taunts, in peevishness and distemper, at Jagan when he rolls up his mat to sleep in the verandah on the pretext of feeling hot inside the room. This situation is equally baffling to Jagan as he cannot think what else he should do about it. In course of time, Jagan starts feeling cold towards her. His boredom and exasperation with repeated sexual exercise are given expression in these words:
He felt fatigued by all the apparatus of sex, its promises, and its futility, the sadness and the sweat at the end of it, all.
He finds solace in conventional theories of celibacy and of reduction of one's longevity due to seminal waste-a drop of which is equal to forty drops of red blood. The agonised state of barrenness ends when she gives birth to a son who is named Mali. This happens after a visit by the whole family to the temple on Badri hills. Her father-in-law makes the proposal of going to the temple saying, "The temple is known as Santana Krishna, a visit to it is the only known remedy for barrenness in woman." And this prophetic belief comes true, may be just a coincidence. The birth of the child is celebrated with all pomp and show. According to a custom, a weight in gold, silver, and coIn equivalent to the weight of the newly born baby is given as offering to the god in the temple on Badri hills. Ambika is an amiable, homely, ordinary and accommodative good-natured woman of an Indian middle-class society. She fits in the normal ethos prevailing in the tradition-abiding society of Malgudi. Her conduct and domesticity of life bear strong resemblance to many other Narayan's female characters depicted in his other novels.