Premchand – The Second Wife
“When Nirmala wanted to set him down, still sleeping, on the cot, the child in his state of somnolence threw his two tender arms around her neck and clung to her a though there were some abyss beneath him.”
This excerpt from The Second Wife depicts a pure moment of love and tenderness, a moment that was a result of negligence and the yearning for care. After the child, Siyaram had gotten disciplined by his father (the book indicates this is a rare incident) his step mother comforts him. After his birth mother had passed the child had not felt maternal love, and its sudden presence from this woman he had regarded an intruder to his domain, shocked him.  Siyaram is the youngest child of the three boys in the family, a question that arose as I read through this was, how would this scene have changed if it was any of the other children? Siyaram, being the youngest provides the most innocence, and thus the one who is most capable of accepting and holding onto this new source of love. Him being the first to feel and accept Nirmala as his mother is no coincidence. When one goes to sleep (state of somnolence) , the unconsciousness is influenced by our conscious reality. It can be inferred that his life, up to this point, was full of harshness, sadness, and materialistic ‘love’. This was the nightmare that he had felt, so in his sleep he held on to the only hand that had stuck out to save him. Nirmala protected him from facing the darkness of reality, the abyss ready to grab him,already on the corner patiently waiting for the right moment to tarnish his innocent soul.
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