At a stop in the city of Vrindivan, Koly finds she has been abandoned by Sass with only a handful of rupees, a bedroll and the book of Tagore's poetry that she traded Sass her silver earrings for. When Sass announces she has been invited to move to Dehli and live with her brother, Koly becomes unsure of her future, but, with a wry smile on her face, Sass says she may come along. Soon, though, Koly's life is disrupted again when Chandra marries and Sassur dies and both Koly and Sass are now widows dressing in the traditional white sari. Using an autographed book of poems by the Nobel Prize winning poet and philosopher, Tagore, Sassur teaches Koly how to read.
During these years, Hari's father, a teacher in the local school, agrees to teach Koly to read when she brings an old school book to him and asks if she may keep it. Where she does find pleasure is with Chandra, Hari's younger sister. She decides to dedicate herself to serving her in-laws, but they are so bereaved and her mother-in-law so resentful of and bitter towards her, that there is little happiness for her. When Hari dies the day after bathing in the Ganges, Koly is sad but tries to be philosophical about her life.
The money is needed to travel to Varanasi so that he can bathe in the healing waters of the Ganges, along with thousands of others. She soon learns that she was married to Hari only for her dowry. I nearly pulled my own hand away, but he was hanging on to it hard, as if it were keeping him from falling over." Hari is dying of a virulent strain of tuberculosis and her Sass and Sassur, mother-in-law and father-in-law, are disdainful and indifferent to her in light of this. When the priest joins Koly's hand with Hari's during the wedding ceremony, she says, "it was hot and sweaty.
When she finally sees him for the first time during their wedding ceremony she is stunned to see that he is her age, perhaps even younger, not older as her parents had been told when the arrangements were being made. Inauspicious signs are evident as Koly and her Maa and Baap arrive in the village where her groom, Hari lives with his parents and where the wedding is to be held.
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