Narayan Mukherjee’s death and the inheritance settlement

Narayan Mukherjee’s death brings the family together for the last rites, but grief does not make its members respond alike. In the days that follow, the practical question of how to use the dead man’s money becomes a test of responsibility: Devdas Mukherjee and Dwijodas must decide what to spend on the rites, what their mother will receive, and how the inheritance will be divided. The episode moves from public mourning to private accounting, placing the family’s emotional loss beside the obligations that survive it.

Funeral and Unequal Grief

Villagers and the two brothers return home after performing Narayan Mukherjee’s last rites. Dwijodas breaks down so completely that several men have to restrain him. Devdas, by contrast, sits beside a pillar without speaking or weeping. The contrast is not simply between a grieving brother and an unfeeling one: the people around them respond to Dwijodas’s distress, while no one approaches Devdas or tries to console him.

When Madhusudan Ghosh begins to offer Devdas words of comfort, Devdas gestures toward his elder brother instead. Ghosh withdraws, embarrassed, and the attempt at consolation ends. The gesture redirects attention to the grief that is visible and socially legible. Devdas’s silence leaves those present without an obvious way to reach him, even as his father’s death has brought him into the same bereaved household.

Past noon, Devdas goes to his mother, who lies faint among the women gathered around her. At another woman’s prompting, she opens her eyes when he calls her Mother and answers him as her son. Tears then run from her tightly shut eyes, and the women around her begin wailing aloud. Devdas lays his face at her feet before rising and walking away. In the sequence, recognition between mother and son breaks through the surrounding silence, but it does not become a conversation: their brief exchange is followed by tears and departure.

The Brothers’ Settlement

Two days later, as the household begins to resume its chores and the first intensity of mourning has eased, Dwijodas asks Devdas how much should be spent on their father’s last rites. Devdas initially leaves the decision to what is considered necessary. Dwijodas insists that it is no longer his decision alone because Devdas has grown up and his opinion matters. The discussion makes their changed standing explicit: the younger brother is now expected to share responsibility for the family’s affairs.

Devdas asks how much cash remains. Dwijodas says there is one and a half lakh in their father’s account and proposes ten thousand for the rites. He first describes the brothers’ shares as seventy thousand each after that expenditure. Devdas then advances a different arrangement: five thousand is to come from Dwijodas’s share and twenty-five thousand from his own; of the remaining fifty thousand in his name, half is to be put in their mother’s account and half given to him. The figures and allocations are presented in the conversation without a fully clarified accounting, so the scene’s emphasis falls less on a reconciled ledger than on Devdas’s stated priorities.

Dwijodas is initially embarrassed by the proposal, then accepts it. He explains that, as a man with a family, he has weddings and education to pay for. His response brings his household obligations into the negotiation without displacing Devdas’s concern for their mother. Devdas agrees to put the arrangement in writing, and he prepares the requisite papers that same day. The settlement thus turns a family discussion into a documented division of money, while making their mother’s provision part of the formal plan rather than leaving it to the brothers’ general promise to care for her.

Bereavement, Money, and Responsibility

The sequence gives practical form to a grief that Devdas cannot readily express. At the funeral he remains apart from communal consolation; beside his mother, he makes contact through a brief address and a physical gesture; in the inheritance discussion, he speaks at length about money and its allocation. The shift does not establish that the accounting resolves his bereavement. Instead, it shows him taking part in a concrete family duty after a period in which he has seemed inaccessible to those around him.

The settlement also distinguishes between being cared for and being financially secure. Dwijodas initially says their mother needs no cash because she is mistress of the house and her sons will look after her. Devdas’s proposal gives her a named share in an account. His insistence therefore modifies the terms of the discussion: a general assurance of household care is not the only provision he accepts. The money becomes a means of recording an obligation to their mother, even as the brothers negotiate their own shares and the costs associated with the funeral.

Immediate Aftermath

The paperwork is completed on the same day as the conversation. The next day, Devdas sees Parvati Chakravarty on the stairs; they are meeting after three years, and he asks when she arrived. This encounter belongs to the immediate aftermath rather than to the inheritance agreement itself, but its placement carries the narrative out of the closed business of mourning and money and into another consequential relationship. The episode ends its central transaction with a written settlement, while the household’s personal history continues to press in around it.