Dulhans Before Daughters

Friday

16^th May, 2024

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Dear Poonam, 

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It is strange for me to even write you a letter in the first place, in a language you never learned to speak, through a technological medium you were never allowed to even come near to. After all, wouldn’t they look at you with suspicious eyes and call you a thief under their breaths if they ever saw you move even an inch away from the corner near the doorsteps that they’d make you sit in? 

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Yet, I’m desperate to write you this letter, both out of crippling shame and of reckless despair. The former, because I feel solely responsible for what ended up being your ultimate fate.    The latter, because I know that I could have done nothing to prevent it.

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Today happens to be the day you would have celebrated your eighteenth birthday, just like how I got to a week prior. Today would have marked your transition from a girl to a woman.

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Except, I can’t fathom ever picturing you as one. 

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Granted, with how much of a resemblance you bore to your mother, it shouldn’t be a herculean task for me to picture you in her place. Yet, it feels almost like a crime to think of you as anything other than the lanky, impish girl, the one whose blood was filled to the brim with fire, that I knew you as. 

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I still remember the first time you’d stepped into my house, rushing immediately to settle yourself into a dusty corner near my house’s entrance out of habit without so much as a glance towards the rest of my family present there. My mother, however, took the initiative of guiding you out of your usual sitting spot and gently nudged you to sit next to me, asking us to introduce ourselves to each other. 

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‘Arre, iski kya zarurat hai? Woh baith jaayegi kone main akele.’ Your mother would later ask mine, out of a sense of guilt only the lower economic strata of our country are taught to foster, 'What is the need for all this? She'll sit in her corner alone.'

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She would then rush out of the kitchen, leaving the dishes she was amidst cleaning behind, motioning you back to the doorstep. But by this point, I’d hold your hand and force you to sit next to me on my playmat, going as far as to throw a tantrum as best as my six-year-old self physically could. 

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Seeing that I, having always been an extremely gregarious child, had found another prey to subject to my incessant games of make-believe and playing house, my mom would persuade yours to let us play together; Whether she did so out of her kindness or out of utter relief of being spared of my childish musings, I am yet to find an answer to.

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From then on, however, your evening arrivals became the most treasured part of my daily routines: I used to drag my playmat out of my bedroom into our drawing room, waiting ardently since four in the afternoon for you to enter through our front door so that we wouldn’t have to waste another moment being apart. 

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We were the same age at that time, with you also having become an elder sister exactly a year ago like me. These similarities between us, along with you being an unfailing sport every time we played together, were what made you one of my closest friends. Be it pretending to be the man of the house, or the prime minister of a country, you were always up to play pretend to a limitless degree with me.

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You were also an incredibly sharp, curious child — I was no stranger to your gaze straying away into the distance, towards where my father’s work desktop used to be kept, every so often in the middle of our playdates. Sometimes, you’d even ask me occasional questions about it, carefully measuring your voice and your words so as not to appear desirous; I'd often hear your mother scold you in hushed tones about how you ought not to get used to the luxuries my family allowed you to indulge in, for one could never know when we’d accuse them of trying to siphon off these very things away from our households. 

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Eavesdropping on these warnings of your mother used to leave me rather perplexed, dare I even say a little bitter, about her perception of my family. For all my young self knew, why would one ever accuse another falsely of a crime they did not commit?

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Looking back at it now, however, more than a decade later – I understand. 

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Your mother, being our family's house help, was in a position of absolute vulnerability during her shift at any of the scores of houses she worked at throughout the day. If any move of hers was deemed even slightly contemptuous by her employers, she would face not only the risk of losing her employment but also of sustaining a blot on her pride that she’d be carrying with herself every day while she went door-to-door trying to find more shifts to regain her income with.

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Even when your mother, after a long five-year association with my family, would get more frank around my mother and my grandmother, she'd still always maintain around herself a thin, invisible guard that was impermeable to us simply by the virtue of our economic and caste differences. 

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It took me nearly a decade more of life to finally understand why you’d often turn from a young mafioso as gifted as the likes of Mumbai’s very own Dawood Ibrahim to a coy, frazzled girl the moment I’d beg my father to play some songs for us on his computer. It took me nearly a decade more of life to finally understand why you always declined, even after my and my grandmother's multiple insistences, to indulge in any evening meal we’d offer you. 

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It took me nearly a decade more of life to finally understand you, the way you deserved to be seen and understood.

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Being their eldest, and the only other child they had apart from your newborn sister, you were always a great deal of pride to your family. I still remember so clearly how your mother would often brag about you to my grandmother, beaming with unwavering joy as she'd tell her how well-versed you already were at household chores like cooking, sweeping, and taking care of babies. She was always so incredibly proud of you, not because of what a clever and dexterous girl you had always proved yourself to be, but solely because you would make a good Dulhan, a good bride someday.

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For your family, just like many other ones in our country, you were only a financial liability; Having a daughter meant that they’d have to not only spend years working odd jobs to fund her education, if they were willing to allow her to pursue one in the first place, but to also gather enough money to be able to pay a good dowry for her when she would get married. 

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And with you and your younger sister Asha, the financial burden was doubled on your parents. 

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Despite you being academically bright, and being the first girl in your family to ever attend school, you were only the apple of your mother’s eyes for your value as another man’s wife. 

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About four years after the first time we met,  our life too began to gradually move into its separate directions — your family had decided by then to return to your village, as you explained to me, because your father had secured himself a job there as the security guard of a local government office. 

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I was very happy for you, because I hoped this would mean a better financial state for your family that’d perhaps even allow you to have a chance at higher education. By now, I knew how incredible it was that you had made it to 5^th grade that year, a level of education even your father had not managed to complete, and how well you were thriving when compared to the cards you had been dealt.

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That is until I found out from your mother the real reason behind your family’s sudden relocation to your ancestral land. 

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‘Uske mahine shuru ho gaye. Toh abb… bas aur kya? Abhi jaa rahe hai hum unke baba ki zameen bechne. Jo paisa milega, dahej main de denge.’  Whispered your mother to mine, ever so nonchalantly while chopping up vegetables in the kitchen for that night’s supper. Meanwhile, I sat nearby on the dining table with my textbooks spread in front of me, paying close attention to nothing else but your mother’s accidental exposé.

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She revealed how you had started your menstrual cycle earlier this year, having finally marked your transition in your family’s eyes from their daughter to a stranger, one who was merely a guest in the very courtyards she was born in. Thus, your family had decided to put an end to your educational journey, forcing you to abandon it in favour of a marital one. Their primary aim for shifting back to your village was to sell the little land your father had inherited from your grandfather, in hopes of it fetching enough money to pay off your dowry and wedding expenses.  

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‘Chalo, abb jaldi se Asha bhi badi ho jaaye. Phir uski bhi kahin shaadi karake, hum dono Kaashi ki or.’

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Your younger sister Asha, who was merely five during the course of this conversation, had now been immediately promoted to the coveted status of a potential bride in your mother’s mind. All she dreamt of now, as per her own words, was to marry the two of you as fast as they could so that they could transition to the next stages of their adult lives by going on religious pilgrimages. 

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She said all this with an ease so mechanical, that it felt as though I had stumbled upon a conversation involving an exchange of cattle amongst their breeders, and not of two lives that had just as much importance as a young boy’s would have had at an age similar to yours.

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‘Phone karungi tujhe.’

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This was the very last thing you ever said to me, as now they shall forever remain so, and you waved me goodbye with a cheery smile as you left me with a promise to keep in touch; A promise neither of us kept, until through this letter. 

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At least, that’s what I am leading myself to believe.

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The week following your family's departure, our house was thrown into a frenzy, to say the least — Your mother had been the very backbone of our household on which the very functioning of our daily routines depended, and due to the perpetual struggle of finding a new house help in our country, my mother had summoned her best networking skills within her circle of friends to find someone who could take your mother's place.

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Eventually, one of our neighbors helped arrange with our household the services of Meena, someone who still takes utmost care of all of us nearly eight years after your departure. And thus, with time, our family became just as used to Meena's daily analyses of local gossip as we were to your mother’s, while you transitioned from someone who’d accompany me in flesh to my classmates’ birthday parties to a mythical legend I’d often evoke when looking back on my childhood with my friends.

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That is until the beginning of this year, however, when our city was busy embracing the cold that had finally graced us all after the previous few years of strangely warm winters; I had just received the results of my law school entrance, having made it to one of my dream colleges with hopes in my eyes of finally kick-starting a career in law that I had been dreaming of for years up to that point. Fourteen wonderful years spent within the walls of my school were slowly coming to an end, with our final exams scheduled on a national scale to be conducted in March, signifying for us our novel steps into our adult lives. 

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During one such day that I was cooped up in my room, neck-deep amidst my 12^th standard books, I was hurriedly called by my grandmother to our veranda. With her voice immediately making me snap out of my daydreams concerning my upcoming university days, I rushed to the front of the house only to be greeted by a face I hadn’t seen the sight of for nearly a decade.

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Her thick, onyx-dark hair had now been swept under a vast sea of grey, no longer as vibrant as she once proudly claimed it to be. Her face was now gaunt in an extreme, almost-gothic fashion that for a moment made me doubt whether I was even correctly identifying this saree-clad woman that stood in front of me.

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‘Pehchaana?’ The woman asked, her voice far hoarser than I recalled it being, ‘Did you recognize me?’

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‘Seema auntie?’ 

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She gleefully nodded, giving my grandmother a sly, toothy smile, as if to brag how I still recognized her at one go. She proceeded to ask me about how my schooling was going, what degree I was planning to pursue, and how much I was expecting to score in my upcoming exams, with occasionally throwing into the mix her comments about how grown up I was and how I was looking more like my mother with every passing day. 

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She had been like an aunt to me for many pivotal years of my childhood, so her never-ending trove of questions was of no bother to me. Except soon, I began to realise how all my attempts to interject her conversation and ask about you were futile; Every time I’d ask how you were, she’d miss not a beat in reverting it to my life. 

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I continued to listen patiently as she slowly updated us on her life and the reason behind her sudden return to our city after nearly ten years of being away — She had come here to meet Asha, your younger sister, who was now the mother of a toddler herself at the mere age of thirteen. She and her husband had settled in a nearby locality a few years back, while Seema and her husband had continued to stay in their ancestral village. 

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Her sunken eyes glistened as she spoke of Asha’s son, her first grandchild, and your nephew, and the aspirations that she fostered for him. 

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‘I’ll make him a lawyer just like you when he grows up.’ She remarked, uninhibitedly sharing a dream she wouldn't have ever dared to have for her daughters.

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Eventually, as she too started to run out of questions to ask about our affairs from the past decade, my grandmother too took up the task of backing my inquisitiveness up and began prodding your mother as well about what you were up to.

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Silence was all we were met with for a few minutes, with the little joy that had managed to freshen up your mother’s face having evaporated the moment she realised she had no choice but to answer us. 

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So, she spoke.

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She spoke of how it had been seven years since your passing.

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She spoke of how, even after selling all of their ancestral land, the dowry they had managed to arrange for your in-laws was not enough. You’d call her day and night, telling her of the inhumane treatment they’d put you through every day, pleading with your parents for refuge within your own home which they denied to you in the name of custom.  

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I wish to ask, to myself and to this world today, how good are their customs and traditions if the fire they teach us to worship is the very fire burning our daughters' future to fine char?

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She spoke, with her voice unusually low and eyes never fixing themselves at the same point twice, of how one day she received a call from your mother-in-law informing her that you had died in a freak accident — A kitchen fire, they said.

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She also spoke, however, of how she knew perfectly well that it was no accidental death but a daylight theft of the life of an eleven-year-old girl married to a man thrice her age and half her strength. 

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She spoke, between occasional sips of the glass of water we offered her, how she wished she had been able to arrange more dowry for your marriage or been able to marry you off to a better family as they had eventually been able to for Asha. 

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But nowhere did she speak of wishing that she had let you continue your education, or let you be a child before decking you in bridal attire and sharing the same bed as an adult man.

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And now with her soul unravelled in front of my grandmother and I, she hastily folded her palms in a namaste and left, promising to come back another time with her grandson in tow. Before she left, my grandmother gave her a few old sarees and some money as a parting gift which she very reluctantly accepted. Thus, through the grief-stricken retelling of the final years of your life, I got to meet you once again.

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Since then, my dear Poonam, you have not left my mind at all. And now, desperate to allow myself a few words with you, I write you this letter. 

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It’s been a few months since that day I saw your mother, and I know not if or when I’ll ever get to meet her or your younger sister again; But what I absolutely loathe myself for, is how certain I am that you and I shall never get another evening to ourselves that we could spend laughing together on the cold tiles of my drawing room floor. 

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And all of it, because your worth to our society has only ever been tied to your body for what it could offer them.

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They loved your hands, not for the many exams they successfully helped write or the art they would create laced with whimsical joy, but for the food they could prepare to feed their future in-laws. They loved your eyes, not for the dreams they held within themselves, but for the kohl they would carry on your wedding day. They loved you as the mother you were supposed to become, as the wife you were one day destined to be, and not as their daughter that you had been till the very day you died. 

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And you were a great daughter, indeed. 

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There are many more girls like you, who are killed in the name of greed, lust, and pride, whose lives are just as worthy to those around them as of a doll bought for cheap from a local fair after intense haggling with the shopkeeper. Despite the many laws in place in our country that prevent the custom of dowry or the ire of the in-laws on the lack of it, not one iota of shame or fear has been instilled in the minds of these ravenous folks. And now, with you as my witness, I say enough. In your name, and the names of all those women that have been victims to such brutes, I stand tall and make you immortal by saying your name out loud.

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Tucked far away into a corner of my mind, placed alongside my most cherished childhood memories of lazy summer evenings and my grandmother’s succulent meals, I keep you safe. 

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There, I see you grow up into a beautiful young woman, who I get to see complete her graduation with the highest merit.                                                                                          

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There, I see you planning Asha’s wedding with utmost joy, thinking of it as a celebration of love and not as an auction of a woman’s existence.                                                                                               

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There, I see us, two sisters related not by blood but by the virtue of having seen each other at our most innocent.                                                                                                                        

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There, I see you alive and breathing, no longer shackled by your misfortune of being born a woman in a society like ours.

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Till we meet again, in a place far beyond.

Your beloved friend.

Ananya