Bou

Bou, introduced as Chandramukhi, is the owner of a house in Chitpore where Devdas Mukherjee arrives with Chunilal. Their first meeting is marked by Devdas’s revulsion, but the encounter becomes the beginning of a relationship shaped by rejection, attachment, and care. When they meet again, Bou explains that his hostility stayed with her; later, as his health fails, she tends to him and hears him acknowledge that he loves her.

Identity and Introduction

Bou is identified as the owner of the two-storied house to which Chunilal brings Devdas and Chunilal one evening. The two men arrive in a hired buggy at nine o’clock, dressed elaborately at Chunilal’s insistence. Bou comes out to greet them. The welcome meets an immediate rebuff: Devdas, who has recently grown to hate the very shadow of women, asks Chunilal what hideous place he has brought him to. The contrast between her ordinary act of greeting and Devdas’s sharp contempt establishes the emotional imbalance that will mark their relationship.

Rejection and Its Afterlife

When she later speaks with Devdas, Bou recalls that his hatred was unusually forceful and that she remembers the day he first came to her house clearly. She says she had felt attracted to him then, not because he was the son of a wealthy man, but because she had not encountered such boldness in the other men who came and went. Her account gives the first meeting a second meaning: what Devdas experienced as repulsion became, for Bou, a moment of attraction and a memory that endured.

Bou approaches their later meeting with hesitation. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she tells Devdas that she had hoped to see him once before leaving and asks where she should go. She describes her wish to return as a whim, perhaps connected to having been rejected so fiercely by someone who had never before treated her that way. Her question about where to go makes the meeting more than a recollection of the past: she is preparing to leave, but first seeks a final encounter with the man whose rejection has remained important to her.

Care and Recognition

Their relationship changes as Devdas becomes seriously ill. Bou recognizes the caring manner of the person who has been tending him, even before she has fully recognized who it is. She explains that the ornaments she wears are fake and were bought in Calcutta, then jokes about spending money for his sake when he did not recognize her the previous day. Devdas answers that although he did not recognize her, he recognized the care, and thought that only his Chandramukhi could have shown it. The exchange turns care into a form of recognition that survives appearances and mistaken identity.

Bou asks whether Devdas hates her as much as he once did. He tells her that he does not, and that he loves her. This answer reverses the terms of their first encounter: the man who once recoiled from her now gives her the direct acknowledgment she had not received before. The recognition comes late, however, and does not resolve the practical uncertainty she had expressed about where she should go.

Devotion During Illness

When Bou notices flannel tied around Devdas’s stomach, she is frightened. A doctor examines him, prescribes medicine, and warns that he needs the utmost care or his condition may become fatal. Devdas and Bou understand the seriousness of the warning. After Dharmadas arrives and money is drawn from the bank for treatment, Devdas initially passes two days without incident, but develops a fever on the third. He tells Bou that she came at the right moment, or she might never have seen him again.

Bou wipes away her tears and begins tending to him in earnest, praying that he will recover and reflecting that she had never imagined she would be useful to him at such a crucial hour. Devdas remains bedridden for nearly a month before slowly recovering. Her role is not merely to witness his suffering: she responds to his need with practical attention and prayer, and he explicitly recognizes the importance of her arrival. Through this reversal, the rejection that defined their first meeting gives way to a bond expressed in care, even as the story leaves their future together unsettled.