After I was born, my uncle thought of partitioning the joint property. Thus it was done. I was ten years old. Partition impoverished us. Poverty, as though, wedded us thence.
My father taught me alphabet, arithmetic, etc. Should I take a government job? But my father and uncle thought otherwise. I started reading Vedas. A couple of years later I got married. My father had to take out a loan. My brother, sister too got married, and everytime we had to borrow money. Our women were from good families. All the women in the household got along fine, an outsider wouldn't guess which of the young women had married into the family.
I and my brother were like Ram and Bharat. When we were kids, we would share water-jar when going out to discharge night soil. Nothing could spoil the love between the brothers.
At night we would talk about the loan: we saw no way out, barring the providence's intervention. Once we went to Pune, to conduct a ritual. Somebody said in my hearing: Her highness Bayaja-baee Shinde is going to organise Sarvato-mukhi Yagna at Mathura, in the North. Rupees eight lakh would be given away, learned ones have been invited. I, and my younger uncle -- Ram -- decided to travel there.
The father didn't approve. He said: There in the North, men drink cannabis, and their women enchant and enslave men with their cunning; so I have heard. You wont' return, I fear.
I said: Do not worry yourself. I do not go to delight in pleasures of flesh. I swear on oath - I won't, probably, succumb to glances of women. Nor would I eat cannabis. Uncle is with me, all I need is your blessings, and rupees ten. Thus the night passed, and it was decided by the day-break that we would go.
Sirji to me it comes across as too literal a translation. Am getting the feeling that whatever poetry is there in the actual statements is getting lost due to a very literal translation. I think you can take the freedom of modifying the sentences in order to retain its sense of monologue and descriptive nature.
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