Though Ilaa restrained herself on the social front from then on, lest she should occasion a schism in Sauviragram, in the domestic domain she was constrained to bear the burden of barrenness, notwithstanding thirteen years of cohabitation with her man. While the rest pestered her on that count, her father-in-law, though disappointed at the delay, was optimistic about an eventual fruition. Once when Ilaiah, as if in half jest, broached the topic of a co-wife for her, for him to procreate, she retorted by asking him to restore the ancient norm of niyoga for her, wherein a woman was allowed to spend time with her man’s brother or a relative for off-spring. And that put an end to the topic but not to his thirst for a fresh nuptial.
As if to break the uneasy impasse, when her father-in-law died of snake bite, Ilaa turned the Vedic heat on Ilaiah’s farmland by advocating her sister-in-law’s case for a share in it. And that ensured her conjugal relations with him had further soured. But aided by custom, even as Ilaiah retained the reins on the land, to the fair sex of Paithan and yonder, Ilaa’s self-less opposition to it made her the reigning queen of Sauviragram. While that completed the couple’s circle of discord, what with his becoming his own man after his father’s death, Ilaiah felt bold to steer his life on a bigamous course. As he found the bride, the purohit fixed the muhurat that was after the harvesting.
‘It’s not that I have to share his bed with another that hurts.’ Ilaa thought in bitterness. ‘As woman’s charms are prone to wane sooner than later, don’t I know it’s stupid to imagine that I could hold him till the very end. But isn’t it galling that branding me barren, he should sleep with another. What if he is incapable of impregnating woman? Who knows; so why shouldn’t niyoga be the first option for fruition? Oh, how man had managed to usurp woman’s rights to upset her life? Is it left for her to wail her ill-fate until the doom’s day? No way. Didn’t father-in-law say that reformation is a harbinger of change but revolution is the upheaval of old order? Yes I have to shake Sauviragram to wake it up to the old order so that it awakens Paithan, and through it the rest of Ilavarta. But how am I to achieve that?’
Ilaa racked her brains till they frayed at their ends.
‘Why not I set the crops afire and perish in the fields?’ she thought in the end. ‘That would singe dharti maata for sure but won’t she bear the ordeal for the sake of her hapless daughters.’