The Bet

A Brief Introduction

The story Suchitra begins the story of women narrating with a slow pace about her husband life as mystery, and continues the story. A genre from moving from black to light started with ‘yes/no’ which I liked. A women nurtured in an economically affordable socio-cultural family is educated, holding a degree and having Father Support from the family. The woman is pride of her beauty and hence she desired to marry a pretty husband. The women, however, got married to an unappealing older and bald person. “The Bet” the story starts and ends here, every time the women wins the bet except the last one, where the result is unknown, according to me the women won the bet again proving the male is coward. The story plot has three moves, “the bet”, first the women restraints herself from her husband-she won. Second, the women wanted her writing to be published-she won. Third, her husband wanted a daughter in which he lost. Fourth, the mysterious conclusion which I stated early is that her husband won by absconding, “who dies first” was “the bet” in which the women lost. So, the agenda behind “the bet” is intentional.

Interpretation 

The story resembles more of biopic of the author Suchitra. The story line from the women’s perspective tries to fill in the emotion of the common household women filling with sadness, anger, eager, disgust, even lust and sundry. Intonation of the women voice along with her character in the story is obstinate, determined on the contrary to her husband. Her husband’s intonation for “the bet” gradually deteriorates from the first to last. Here I enjoyed because the strong voice of the male deteriorates, I laughed unconsciously when I thought of this incident, and it made me engage me more in the reading. The losing of bet and his anger after losing each bet, at last the wife again said “the bet”, at first his inner voice might have said “oh again this woman is asking for bet”, as he first kept quiet for a while, after his wife’s instigation he challenged for “the bet”.  

One of the story’s interpretation is the women’s expectation is wanted to have a good groom, wanted to live like a queen. She wants to live like a queen and her father says this to her, but her husband is not expecting her to be queen. If groom would have been good handsome guy, then the women would have been not determined and passive towards her husband. The women however here had always biased emotion towards the man right from the start since he was ugly. The reason for the women having a pride in her is since she is beautiful, educated, good socio-cultural from day one of marriage and also thought she is doing a favour to the male. Also the other incident, the man is intentionally hiding the published article and honorium inside the drawer, which the woman again dislikes the act of her husband keeping no words of promise. These are some common understanding about the story; however we had some critique about the incident and interpretation. For instance some critiques were the husband had the words which he kept after each bet, but when his wife’s article got published, he intentionally kept it secret unknowing to his wife, so he did not kept his word.

Some of the hidden issues are getting to known after the literary circle discussion. The lady doesn’t get out of the home to get any material, also she is not protesting, she is used to the society “not to go out”. The husband wanted the girl child since he wanted a beautiful daughter like his wife. Throughout the story the man had a soft corner for the woman which is implied. Did the Husband and wife hate the child? Was one of the questions raised while discussion, but the answer had different interpretation and in the end of the story a common understanding was “No” to the question? Then if the case was if the women would have given birth to a daughter, then the situation would have the women may hate her daughter. Thus the discussion gave me the basic understanding about the story.

“The bet” by the women is affected both their life. By having the literary circle discussion then a more about the story can be interpreted, development of critical thinking, now the thinking must be that how the essence should be carried to children, also make them a read aloud, and engage them in literary circle.