Parvati and Bhuvan Chowdhury's Marriage

Parvati and Bhuvan Chowdhury’s marriage transforms Parvati’s place in the world without resolving the love she had once been expected to share with Devdas Mukherjee. The match brings her from a comparatively modest family into a wealthy zamindar’s household, where she becomes a wife and stepmother, and eventually a source of practical care for the wider community. Bhuvan treats her with tenderness and grants her authority, but his own words acknowledge the mismatch between the life she inhabits and the one she might have deserved.

Background and Marriage

Parvati’s family was not wealthy, but her father, Nilkantha Chakravarty, rejected the custom of taking a bride-price for a daughter’s marriage. Even though his own father had accepted such a payment, Nilkantha had no intention of selling Parvati. Her mother, aware of his position, pressed him to arrange her daughter’s marriage. For a time, she privately imagined a match with Devdas: Parvati and Devdas had grown up together, and the family remembered how Parvati had cried when he left for Calcutta as a child and treasured letters from him. Devdas’s mother, however, described the pair as having grown up like brother and sister. The hoped-for marriage did not occur.

Bhuvan Chowdhury arrived at the Chakravarty home in Hatipota dressed for the wedding. A zamindar, he was well above forty, plump and solidly built, with a salt-and-pepper moustache and a receding hairline. The ceremony was deliberately simple: as this was his second marriage, he did not want a public spectacle. Some guests laughed privately, while others remained quiet; the women held back their usual teasing in the face of the groom’s grave expression. At the first-looks ritual, Parvati stared steadily at Bhuvan with a small smile, while he lowered his eyes with conspicuous modesty, prompting the neighbourhood women to giggle. The ceremony concluded peacefully, with Bhuvan’s experienced arrangements helping prevent any hitch.

The following morning Bhuvan gave Nilkantha a box of ornaments, which were soon placed on Parvati. Her mother quietly wiped her eyes at the sight. The jewels mark the material difference between the Chakravarty home and the world Parvati was entering, but the marriage is not presented simply as a transaction: Nilkantha had expressly refused to make money from his daughter’s wedding. The contrast is between the family’s limited means and Bhuvan’s wealth, not a bride-price accepted by her father.

A Wife and Stepmother in the Hatipota Household

Bhuvan’s house was a vast mansion built on old wealth, with courtyards, inner chambers, prayer rooms, guest apartments, offices, and many servants. Parvati had known that her husband was rich, but not the scale of his estate. Its abundance was accompanied by emptiness: the inner rooms seemed to echo, and apart from an old aunt, maids, and servants, few people welcomed the new bride. She was immediately recognized as the lady of the house, a title that placed responsibility on her as well as status.

That responsibility became concrete when Bhuvan’s eldest son, Mahendra, came to touch her feet. He addressed Parvati as his mother and asked for her blessing. She raised her veil and welcomed him without hesitation. Mahendra explained that his mother had died two years earlier and that the intervening period had been difficult; he hoped Parvati’s arrival would allow the family to be happy again. Rather than respond with reserve, she asked where the other children were. When she learned that Mahendra’s younger sister, Yashoda, was at her husband’s home, she wanted to know whether Yashoda could not come or simply did not wish to.

Parvati’s immediate assumption of maternal authority reflects how marriage reorganizes the household around her. Bhuvan’s children are not merely part of her husband’s past: he explicitly entrusts them to her, particularly Mahendra, whom he describes as a kind young man who has recently passed his BA. The new relationship is thus built through duties of welcome, blessing, and care, rather than through a long courtship between the spouses.

Affection, Distance, and Unequal Expectations

Bhuvan’s daily routine changes little after the wedding. He spends his days in charitable work, attending to guests—often hermits and saints—fasting, and performing the household deity’s worship himself. Some nights he comes indoors and others he does not; when he does, conversation is sparse. He tells Parvati to regard everything as her own and learn her way around the house. His words grant her possession and authority in the household, but the limited conversation and his established routine also mark the distance between them.

In a hesitant conversation, Bhuvan tells Parvati that the children are hers from then on, then asks her to take care of Mahendra. Parvati is amused by her husband’s nervousness. The scene shows both his awkwardness and his trust: he recognizes that she is being asked to take on a substantial family role, yet looks to her to provide the care that the house has lacked. His earlier marriage and the absence of the children’s mother shape the duties of this new one.

Bhuvan eventually speaks more directly about what he had wanted from marriage. He had hoped that Mahendra would marry, making the household less empty and restoring what he calls a woman’s presence and its lost spark. Instead, the marriage has brought Parvati into that empty house. He takes her face in his hands and looks at her with pride and respectful affection, then sighs that she did not deserve this and does not belong there. Parvati asks what he means and laughs off the suggestion that she has no place in the household, saying she could hardly have hoped for anything else. Bhuvan insists that she will be happy and that God will look after her. His tenderness does not erase the painful recognition that the marriage has not given her the life she might have wanted.

The Household Becomes Parvati’s Work

A month after Parvati’s arrival, Nilkantha comes to take his daughter home. She sends him away, saying that the house is in disorder and that she will visit later. Her father interprets her response as a woman’s attachment to her new home. Parvati then asks Mahendra to bring Yashoda back. Although he doubts his sister will agree, he travels alone, and Yashoda arrives four days later.

Parvati receives her stepson’s sister wearing the costly jewels Bhuvan had obtained in Calcutta. Yashoda has prepared accusations and angry words for the new bride, but the sight of Parvati leaves her momentarily speechless. Parvati takes her by the hand, seats her in her own room, and gently fans her while asking whether Yashoda is angry with her. Then, one by one, she removes her jewellery and puts it on Yashoda. The gesture answers anticipated hostility not with a claim to rank but with welcome and generosity. The relationship between the women begins to be remade through Parvati’s practical care.

Five years into the marriage, Parvati has no children of her own and feels drawn to the children of nearby families. She pays expenses for children from both very poor and less impoverished households, serves the ill and elderly, attends to guests, and spends time in the prayer room. She also persuades Bhuvan to open additional guest rooms where homeless people may stay and receive care from the zamindar’s household. These acts extend her role beyond the immediate family: the authority she receives as mistress of the house becomes a means of supporting people who lack shelter or resources.

Parvati also secretly gives financial help to poor but respectable families, using the monthly money Bhuvan provides for her personal upkeep. Her charity is not known to her husband, though estate clerks and officers discuss it, and servants whisper that household expenses have nearly doubled and savings are gone. The episode shows the limits as well as the reach of her position: Parvati has resources and discretion, but her private use of them becomes a source of concern within the estate. Her marriage gives her a household from which to act, while the full extent of her actions remains outside Bhuvan’s knowledge.

Significance

The marriage binds Parvati to Bhuvan’s family through the work of care. She becomes Mahendra’s mother by welcome and conduct, seeks to bring Yashoda back into the household, and uses the estate’s rooms and resources to assist guests, children, the sick, the elderly, and the homeless. Bhuvan’s own life is already organized around worship and charity, but Parvati expands that care into a sustained domestic and financial practice. Their union is therefore defined not only by the age difference and the circumstances of its solemnization, but by the responsibilities and relationships it creates.

At the same time, the narrative refuses to treat domestic authority as proof that Parvati has received the life she wanted. Bhuvan’s affectionate gaze and his assurance that she belongs in the house coexist with his admission that she did not deserve her situation. Parvati chooses to inhabit the role fully, turning an old and lonely mansion into a place of service; that choice demonstrates strength, not evidence that the loss behind the marriage has vanished. The relationship’s defining tension lies in this difference between what the marriage makes possible—status, a family, and the means to care for others—and what it cannot restore.