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Raju's mother is another female character in the novel. She is a home-bound, ordinary and orthodox lady. Her sphere of concern is limited to the world of her husband and son. She is a prudent, frugal and vigilant housewife. Her husband runs a shop at the Grand Trunk Road selling coffee, eatables and peppermints. The villagers who come in carts to the city on errands are specially fond of taking things at his shop. Hence, he remains busy with them talking about their personal feuds till midnight. He takes his food very late. Like a dutiful wife, she keeps awake till he comes back home. She, off and on, advises him not to be casual in taking his food as it will tell upon his health. Her shrewdness is reflected in her advice to her husband not to purchase a horse and jutka as it will mean unnecessary extra-expenditure. They will have to spend on grains and grass and a groom will have to be employed for looking after the horse. She is proved right when her husband is forced to hire out the horse and jutka to the groom to ply the same on fare. The groom agrees to pay him two rupees daily and one more rupee monthly for the use of the shed. He plays a fraud upon him and ultimately purchases the horse and jutka with the money he has fraudulently saved from them.
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| Raju's Mother |
Raju's mother is a loving and affectionate mother. She caters to all the needs of Raju when he is a child. She lulls him to sleep by telling him the story about Devaka. Raju tells Velan about his mother saying, "She told me a story every evening, we waited for father to close the shop and come home. The shop remained open till midnight." Further he says, "Her presence gave me a feeling of inexplicable cosiness." When Raju starts going to school, she feeds him early in the morning puts his books and slate in his bag and makes him wear clean washed shorts and shirt and combs his hair backwards. She bestows full attention on him so that his school-going becomes smooth. Raju tells Velan about his mother thus:
"My mother fed me early and filled up a little aluminium vessel with refreshment for the afternoon. She carefully put my books and slate into a bag and slung it across my shoulder. I was dressed in clean shorts and shirt; my hair was combed back from the forehead, with al the curls falling on my nape."
After her husband's death, she advises Raju to keep himself limited to the running of the shop at the railway station. She does not approve of his job as a tourist guide. But Raju puts her off by assuring her that he is keeping proper care of the shop accounts. Her fears come true and one day Raju loses his shop to the porter's boy to whom he has entrusted the job of running his shop. The porter's boy has cheated him. Rosie's affair makes Raju totally indifferent to his shop. Raju's mother has an uncanny understanding of human ways. Raju's consciousness about his dress reflected in his change from Khaki bush-shirt and a dhoti to silken jibba and edge-laced dhoti is enough to suggest to her about her son's suspicious ways. She, therefore, warns him against the danger of getting involved with one whom she calls a 'serpent girl' i.e. Rosie. Her worldly wisdom helps her to warn him of the impending risk but he does not care about her caution. The result is the loss of his source of income.
The episode of Rosie's stay at Raju's house reveals the mother's qualities of tolerance, kindliness, understanding and traditional wisdom. At Rosie's first appearance, she asks her about her name, place, purpose and whether married or unmarried and whether she has come alone or escorted by someone. In no time, she comes to understand that Rosie is a married woman who has broken off her relations with her husband. Her sense of social properiety does not approve of such conduct. She believes like a traditional Hindu wife that the right place for a married woman is always with her husband and a woman should, in no circumstances, leave him. She suggests all this to Rosie through recounting to her parables and anecdotes. Raju describes the behaviour of his mother in these words:
"After a few days she began to allude to the problems of husband and wife whenever she spoke to Rosie and filled the time with anecdotes about husbands: good husbands, bad husbands, reasonable husbands, unreasonable husbands, savage ones, slightly deranged ones, moody ones, and so on and so forth; it was always the wite, by her doggedness, perseverance, and patience, that brought him round."
Her orthodox thinking that a woman should not move out of the house unescorted makes her feel amazed at the ways of modern girls who move freely. The knowledge that Rosie has Come alone provokes her to remark:
"Girls today! How courageous you are! In our day we wouldn't go to the street corner without an escort. And I have been to the market only in my life when Raju's father was alive."
Despite her disapproval of Rosie's stay with Raju, she does not maltreat or misbehave her. She tenders her advice to Rosie suggestively through oblique references so that she may not feel hurt. This shows her tender, sympathetic and human heart. As a last resort, she calls her brother home in order to make Raju realise the impropriety of his act. But, Raju does not allow Rosie to go despite his uncle's anger and threats. His mother, therefore, decides to go with her brother so that she may live in peace. She leaves her old house not so much in anger as in sadness. She is steadfast in not compromising with an act, she considers, socially unacceptable even if it entails making a great sacrifice like leaving her house to which she is so sentimentally attached.
Raju's mother is religious-minded. She prays daily before the pictures of some gods kept in a niche in the hall. While departing from the house, she takes with her only the religious prayer books saying, "I need nothing more. This will do." Her contentment, born out of her pious faith, is supreme. Raju tells feelingly to Velan about the religious aspect of his mother thus:
She picked up several small prayer-books, which she read everyday of her life before her mid-day meal, sitting before the pictures of the god in meditation. I had seen her for years at the same time sitting with closed eyes in front of the niche in the wall..
Possibly, this religious attitude enables her to accept with a sense of resignation the progressive degeneration of Raju which, ultimately, culminates in his getting convicted to two years imprisonment on the charge of forging Rosie's signatures on a legal document. Initially, she feels upset at Raju's trial and tells him that she has already warned him about the 'serpent girl.' But in the end, she is reconciled with what has happened as something fated to happen. She passes the rest of her life in peace with her brother. Such a report is given by Mani to Raju in the jail.