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“Would you hold me when my time is come? I am at peace. Do not grieve.”
“If I grieve,” I said, “it is not for you, but for myself, beloved, for how shall I endure to live without you, who are my love and my life?”
“You are not alone,” he said. “I live in my children. . . .”

This dialogue between Nathan and Rukmani as he is dying in Chapter 29 completes the circle of their life together. Reminiscent of a groom with his bride, Nathan asks Rukmani to hold him. On several occasions in the novel, Rukmani remembers the physicality of their love, reaffirmed in this request. In the first chapter, Rukmani recalls the sweetness of nights she went to her husband, not as a pained and awkward child bride, but as a woman. In Chapter 10, the Festival of Deepavali provides the setting for a night of joy and passion between them. In her reflection on married love in Chapter 20, Rukmani draws upon her life with Nathan to describe both the fire and the tenderness they shared. Now that Nathan prepares to leave his body, he seeks Rukmani’s encircling arms one last time. For Nathan and Rukmani, their physical love provides one of the sweetest aspects of their human existence and underscores the precious quality of life itself.

As Rukmani begins to grieve for her impending loss, Nathan reminds her of their important contribution to the continuation of life. She will not be alone, he says, because he lives on in his children. Throughout Rukmani’s story, she has celebrated life and its abundant fertility. The years of her barrenness were harder for her to bear than the years of privation and loss. While she endured hardship with quiet dignity, she cried out for help to conceive her sons. When Nathan assures Rukmani that he lives on in their children, he promises his continued care. She need not be alone or unloved because of the lives they created together from their separate selves. Nathan also assures his wife that he is at peace. His physical journey is over, but his enduring spirit has achieved the liberation and transcendence that are the great goals of a Hindu life.

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