Ganga Powell sends in a story by her mother Srimati Jayalakshmi Kumar, that, 80 years later, is still relevant.

When I was a teenager growing up in Adyar, then the southernmost suburb of Chennai, I had a special ‘hidey hole’ where I could read uninterrupted.

Our home, Nanda Kuti, was on Elliot’s Beach Road. It was a sprawling, two-storied, flat-roofed house with barred windows and brightly’ coloured wooden shutters in a large garden. It had a courtyard and an assortment of rooms that became bedrooms, dormitories or family rooms according to the needs of young and old or expanding and contracting families.

The house had an external staircase to the first floor – presumably so that the two levels could be separated for rental and independent living. The stairs were on one side, secluded and hardly used. From the landing half-way up, I could step over the balustrade and make myself comfortable atop a window shade – wide, flat, hidden, cosy with a cushion, a drink, an apple or chilli roasted peanuts, perfect for a girl and her book.

Here I read a story written by my mother. It had been published in Triveni, the literary journal in 1939, a year before I was born. I had found a copy of the story in an almirah – that repository of forgotten memorabilia – that all homes seemed to have had in those days. I read it many times in my eyrie because it had seemed so ‘romantic’. I knew it wasn’t her story as in autobiographical. But even 20-odd years after it was written I could sense that it was pushing the envelope of convention; and it thrilled me, made my skin tingle with pride, that this had been written by my mother! Sadly the almirah has long since disappeared, the loose leaves of story seemed to have been lost, debris blown away by the winds of time.

Until I was able to read it again in the digitised archived, copies of Triveni on Google. The date makes it an early Indian short story in English. And almost eighty years later the theme seems, sadly, as relevant today as it was then.

THE STORY

I shall tell you why I have no relations visiting me, even though my parents and brothers and sisters are all alive and well-to-do. I am the eldest among the daughters, and so was to be sacrificed on the altar of neighbours’ gossip. How? Well, by attempting to marry me to someone when everybody knew I loved another who also loved me. If the man I loved was in any way unworthy, then, of course, I might have bowed down to the dictates of my parents. But he was educated, cultured, and able to support a wife and family. The only objection my parents had to him was that he was not of my own sub-sect. As if that could in any way detract from his worth! Religion no doubt must pervade our daily life; but these differences that exist only in the bigoted pedant’s mind – how could they mar our life or make us less religious?

I had graduated and felt an added responsibility and tried not to go against the wishes of my parents. Because then the neighbours with uneducated daughters would have pointed at me, and said, “That is the result of educating girls!” As if education that makes us live more fully, and enables us to enjoy and suffer with equal intensity, should doom us to a face with a perpetual mask in the household of a man we did not love! Some might have preferred the mask, but I did not, and so here I am, cut off from all the family, as a rotten branch is cut off and the trunk tarred to resist further corruption. Only, I did not fall down and dry up, but have sprouted amidst newer and freer surroundings, and can hold my head high amongst the best of people. I have my self-respect, without which life would have been a burden too heavy to bear, for my life might have ended as so many end it by drowning or by setting fire to oneself. And the papers would have published an account of how so-and-so, in the best of health and spirits, slipped by accident into the well while drawing water, or how, while cooking, the saree caught fire, and, before she could be rescued, she was so badly burnt that she died a few hours later! You read of such things daily, but do you ever question the statements? Who knows how many of them  are real accidents and how many are staged to end a life that is bereft of every ray of happiness – a life that is trained to cling to an un-understanding man and so cannot get out of its tangles.

Well, so there it was. I wanted to marry one and my parents wanted me to marry anyone else, but belonging to our sect. All my pleadings were of no avail. I even said that I would, if they did not like the man of my choice, forever remain un-married, earn a living and help in maintaining the family as any bachelor might do. No, they would not listen. “Our eldest daughter to remain unmarried! How can the others be married before you? People will ask us why you are not married, and how can we tell them that you want to marry outside our caste? The shame of it! And what other reason can we give? No, no, the very telling will ruin the chances of the other girls getting married. And who will give their daughters in marriage to our sons hereafter? No, you are the eldest, and you must be married, and married so very respectably that no one can point his finger at us or put obstacles in the way of the others getting decently married.”

I heard such arguments day after day from my mother, my father, and mostly from my grandmother. She would sit basking in the sunshine during the cold months, knotting the fringes of the bedsheets, gently remonstrating, scolding or threatening according to her mood. Can you wonder that my resistance was slowly and steadily being worn out? I stopped trying to argue, and that was enough to start the preparations for a speedy wedding. All the eligible young men were sought out, and their education and our means were balanced, and a bargain was struck to satisfy both. I with my B.A. and Rs. 10,000 was acceptable to the chosen bridegroom’s parents. When I heard this I felt ashamed – not as we feel in our girlhood when we have to meet strangers or be conspicuous in any way, but with shame that was heart-breaking. Here I was wanting to marry a man who wanted nothing but me, and here were my parents thrusting me into another man’s arms and bribing him to accept me with Rs.  10,000! And all for my own good and the good of the family! How could I consent? I once more started entreating my parents to let me be. But they were adamant.

After that, I avoided meeting people, shut myself up, reading books and papers and brooding on what to do to shape my life to my own liking.

The thought of leaving home came to me, but the very idea frightened me. Where could I go? And where could I live? I who had never left the shelter of my parents’ roof! I had not even stayed in a boarding house. Listlessly I sat and tried to read novels, but they were too full of romance to cheer me now, and so I turned to the newspapers, and there staring me in the face was an advertisement: “Wanted a lady graduate in English for D. V. School. State age, experience, and pay expected. Write to Secretary, Delhi.” On the spur of the moment I took up paper and pen and answered the advertisement, stating my age, my inexperience, and my terms – that I would accept any pay. In the excitement of the moment I dressed to go out, and posted the letter with my own hand. The sound of the falling envelope in the pillar-post brought me with a start to the realities of life. What had I done? How could I get back my letter? Suppose they accepted me, how could I join my duties when I was getting married in a month’s time? I stood helplessly staring at the pillar box, and finally went home more worried than before. I began to hope that the letter would get lost on the way, or that the advertisers would take no notice of it. They had wanted an experienced graduate; I had no experience and had said so. So, after all, they may not consider my application at all! That consoled me a little.

The day of the marriage was getting nearer, and I was feverishly busy going out to parties – bhajans, talkies – anything to keep me from thinking too much of the marriage. Then came the talkie Achut Kanya, to which I went, of course in my daily hunt for forgetfulness. Here, however, I did not get forgetfulness but such poignant memories that I suffered as I had never suffered before or, thank God, since.

Perhaps you have not seen the film. It is about an outcast girl and a Brahmin boy loving each other, being forbidden to marry each other, and each in time marrying within his or her caste to please the parents. But, try as they would, they could not love their respective mates and, consequently, brought unhappiness not only on themselves but on their parents also. Seeing the picture showed me what my life would be like – loving one and marrying another. It was not fair to the man I was marrying. I remembered the advertisement that I had answered. If I got that job, could I leave my parents and get away? Why not? I was bound to suffer in the beginning, but so would I, if I married to please my parents. I could not choose between the two. Both were new experiences and I had no one to guide me.

The days that followed were very difficult ones. The love-song of the film had caught the public fancy. Young children were singing it, older girls were revelling in the record, and the matrons were humming it too. To escape the sad haunting melody of it at home, I would take a walk, and there the music would steal round the corners of the wall from somebody’s house, and even in the gardens the children stopped their play to listen to one of them singing it.

Meanwhile the day of the marriage was very near. Two days more! Letters of congratulation were already pouring in. Why do people always congratulate you on these occasions? Can they guarantee happiness? But among these was a letter from the school offering me Rs. 50 and free board and lodging. And they said my frankness in admitting my inexperience was what attracted me to them! Now what was I to do? Perhaps nothing. I must go through with the marriage. It was too late to back out. So I tore the letter.

I was expected to leave for my husband’s place immediately after the marriage, and so my mother worried me to pack my things and keep them ready. So I started packing. I put all the most necessary things in one small box, and put all the other paraphernalia in bigger boxes. While seated resting, I was turning over the pages of the Railway Guide that had been left there by my father after looking up the train for my departure with my husband. Idly I looked up the train-timings for Delhi – the place where I was offered a post and could not accept. There was a train starting at 6.30 p.m! The bridegroom’s party was to arrive at 6 p.m.

It was now 5.30 p.m. A gorgeously decorated car with a band had gone to fetch the bridegroom. I was dressed ordinarily at the moment as there was still a lot of time for the actual marriage ceremony, which was to be preceded by a garden party. All the people were gathered in front of the house waiting to receive the marriage procession as soon as it turned into our street. And as I sat there with a sorrow too deep for tears, I heard the band strike up the same tune of the love-song that had hurt me most. The bridegroom’s party had evidently turned the corner. And in a panic I decided to run away. Where to? Yes... Why not? I would take the job offered me. I took my small box and cautiously went out by the backdoor to the carriage stand, and getting into one, went to the station, and buying a 3rd class ticket started for Delhi.

No one missed me in the house till I was wanted when I had to be dressed for the marriage ceremony. And by that time I was far away. When I reached Delhi, I wrote home, and the reply I got from my mother was in such language as no mother ever wrote to a daughter.

And that is why no one visits me. But I am happy.