Quotation

“Oh, my house has not written to me,” Ramanujan replied, using a common South Indian idiom for “my wife.” “Well,” joked Chatterji, though familiar with the idiom, “houses don’t write.” === Komalatammal’s side of the conflict does not come down to us, except that, by some accounts, she blamed Janaki, on the basis of her horoscope, for Ramanujan’s ill health; had he married someone else, she was certain, he would not have gotten sick. === An Indian marriage was a mating— or a clash— of families. The wife, a newcomer to her husband’s family, was apt to be deemed an interloper, a threat to the household sway long held by her mother-in-law. Besides, she was just a child. Her mother-in-law, who had undergone the same trials when she was a bride, was there to shape her, just as the hard-bitten drill sergeant does new Marines. But here “boot camp,” as it were, extended over years— until the wife bore her own children and then, in the course of time, became a mother-in-law herself.