Free Difficult Daughters by Manju Kapur Page B

Child marriage is evil. Suppose her husband dies – her life will be over before she knows anything. Their Swami Dayanandji had said that marriage was a union between rational, consenting adults. This was the only way its sanctity could be preserved, and the misery of multiple marriages and child widows avoided. He understood his sister-in-law was upset – praying to a picture of Christ was no small matter, he agreed, it was exactly in this way that the British sought dominion over their minds – but what kind of example would they set the community? All the things the family stood for would be suspect; Dayanandji’s convictions must go on living despite the great sage’s death twenty-one years ago, otherwise the Arya reform movement would have no life in it.
    ‘That’s all very well,’ said the irate mother. ‘But this witch sitting at home will have nothing better to do than think she is a Christian. Who will marry her then, I would like to know?’
    ‘Sixteen, and the best bridegroom in the Punjab,’ said Kasturi’s uncle, flapping the advertisements in the Arya Patrika , advertisements of educated boys wanting educated girls. ‘Till then, she must go to school. I started one for our boys, I will do the same for the girls. Had I done so sooner, there would have been no question of exposing our daughter to Christian schools.’

    And he began, transforming the fistfuls of flour housewives donated for the Samaj cause into bricks and letters for his niece, arranging for grants, teachers, students, space, and facilities.
    Kasturi never forgot that evening. Over the sound of beds being dragged into the centre of the angan for the night, and the clatter of poles being inserted for mosquito nets, Praji, his eyes on the children’s kites that were darkening against the red evening sky, told her that soon she would soar like those very kites. Once she had gained a proper education, she would be on her way to becoming one of the finest flowers of Hindu womanhood.
    So the school came about, and Kasturi became the first girl in her family to postpone the arrival of the wedding guests by a tentative assault on learning. Her father, uncle and teacher made sure that this step into modernity was prudent and innocuous. Her head remained modestly bent over her work. No questions, no assertion. She learned reading, writing, balancing household accounts and sewing. Above all, the school ground the rituals of Arya Samaj havan, sandhya and meditation so deeply within her that for the rest of her life she had to start and end the day with them. After five years of this education, it was considered that Kasturi had acquired all that it was ever going to be useful for her to know. She appeared for her first and last outside exam, performed creditably, and graduated at the age of twelve, to stay at home until she married.
    *
     
    During Kasturi’s formal schooling it was never forgotten that marriage was her destiny. After she graduated, her education continued in the home. Her mother tried to ensure her future happiness by the impeccable nature of her daughter’s qualifications. She was going to please her in-laws.
    How?
    Let me count the ways.
    With all the breads she could make, puris with spicy gram inside, luchis big as plates, kulchas, white and long, tandoori rotis, layers of flaky flour, paranthas, crisp and stuffed. With morrabas, never soggy, and dripping juicy sweet. With seasonal pickles of lemon, mango, carrot, cauliflower, turnip, red chillies, dates, ginger, and raisins. With sherbets of khas, roses, and almonds, with hot and cold spiced milk, with sour black carrot kanji, with lassi, thin, cool and salty, or thick and sweet. With barfis made of nuts and grains soaked overnight, and ground fine between two heavy stones. With sweets made of thickened milk. With papad, the sweet ones made out of ripe mango, the sour ones with raw mango, the ones to be fried with dal and potato. With thread spun, with cloth woven, with