The Hindu Business Line : A fairytale wedding

`Ruff!' said the dog I was feeding. I looked up at the cackle of women's voices and excited children walking through the front gate. "Grandpa, I'm going," said Minu, smiling nervously. Early morning gossip had floated in about how Minu had been quickly married the previous night. So, instead of heading for work at six in the morning like she did every day, Minu was going to her husband's house.

Wearing a shining blue sari and lipstick, Minu looked prettier than the prettiest Hindi film actress. There was vermilion on her forehead and wistful expectation in her eyes. "Wait a minute," I said as she pranam-ed me, and rushed into the house to fetch the twenty-rupee note in my wallet. Now her husband touched my feet. "Take care of her," I told the young man.

Everyone was happy for Minu. Her first wedding had been to a man twice her age, with two children almost as old as she was. She'd run away after being beaten and harassed. She had come back to their mud house in the Muslim bustee near my house.

This time, Minu's was a fairytale wedding. Her prince did not come on horseback; he came on a bulldozer that had been engaged to do some clearing and levelling of the tank bund in the village. Minu had gone there like every other day, to collect wood and leaves for the chulha. That day, their hearts caught fire.

"Where are you off to?" I asked Minu's mother one morning. "Now that Minu's gone, I'm doing her work. She used to work in two houses," she said. Minu had been her very own. She would inform me every time they heard about Minu on the phone, which her father received somewhere. No, she did not know to which village Minu's husband belonged. No one seemed to know but it was near Tarakeswar, 50 km away. All she knew was that the groom belonged to the cobbler caste and was a Hindu.

One afternoon, Minu's mother was rushing past all excited. "Where to?" I asked. People from her son-in-law's family had suddenly turned up in a hired car. She was running to buy tea and biscuits. "Wait," I said, and gave her the tea and biscuits I'd bought that morning. It would save her the trouble of walking all the way to the shop and back. "Babu, are you going to your family?" she asked me one day. "Get me some old sarees." "Okay," I said and asked about Minu. There was no smile on her cheerful face that day. She spoke slowly: "They are asking for a gold chain and earrings."

Karunamoy