CHENNAI: All my life I have been ambitious and before marrying I indulged in good works of every kind. Soon after I married, and largely because of my husband, I left all the petty wrangling of good works and plunged into politics with my whole heart. It was a much wider field of struggle and I enjoyed every minute of it, the ups and the downs, the intrigues and the jealousies. My husband was brilliant in his quiet way, and with my driving ambition we were always moving up. As we had no children, all my time and thought were given over to furthering my husband. We worked together splendidly,complementing each other in an extraordinary way.
Everything was going as we had planned, but I always had a gnawing fear that it was all going too well. Then one day, two years ago, when my husband was being examined for some minor trouble, the doctor said there was a growth which must be examined immediately. It was malignant. For some time we were able to keep the whole thing a dead secret; but six months ago it all began again, and it has been a pretty terrible ordeal. But unless one finds out what love is, there will always be pain and sad disappointments. And it is difficult to discover where love ends and confusion begins, is it not?
Did I love my husband because he gave me the means for the fulfilment of my ambition? It is partly this, and also the love of the man. Love is a mixture of so many things. Is it love when there is complete identification with another? And is not this identification a roundabout way of giving importance to oneself? Is it love when there is the sorrow of loneliness, the pain of being deprived of the things that seemingly gave significance to life? Only when the blow struck was there any real sorrow in my life. To have had no children was a big disappointment, but it was tempered by the fact that I had my husband and the work. There is a fearful finality about death.