Someone Else's Garden by Dipika Rai Read Free Book Online

I remember how you hit me on the head, and pulled my veil lower over my eyes, and pushed my head down so that my eyes pointed to the floor, all the time smiling at Mamta’s father and his brother. Hai, I was so scared that I thought I would drop the pots on their toes. Ha, ha, ha . . .’ Lata Bai laughs with that special relief that comes with the memory of averted disaster.
    ‘I remember we ate one sweet semolina ball cut into eight. That was my wedding.’
    ‘But yours will be different, Mamta, yours will be very different. Now, enough of stories, go make some the tea,’ says the grandmother. ‘What about Mamta’s dowry? What have you given her? Is it more than what we gave you?’ Both mother and grandmother regard the bride-to-be, who smiles at them from the stove out of earshot. ‘Her dowry better be enough. I mean, look at her. That ungodly birthmark has snatched away her beauty. You’d better give her a decent dowry, otherwise she might come back to you charred,’ hisses the grandmother.
    ‘Mamta’s father has taken a loan from the Big House for her dowry,’ the mother drops her voice too, ‘we had to, otherwise we would never have managed to get a proposal for her. We thought Singh Sahib would be kind to us, because of how much he loved his own wife Bibiji, and because we took the loan for a marriage . . . you could say to . . . to sanctify the act of love . . . but not a chance. Singh Sahib is sick. He can’t be bothered with us. It’s his son Ram Singh or his pet dog Babulal who come for the interest every month. Now Prem goes there to work every day, paying it off. Slavery is what it is.’ Her voice is thick with disappointment. ‘We took a loan and managed to buy nothing. No gold. No cows or goats either, just a bicycle, some pans, and a few clothes . . . I gave her Lucky Sister’s gold earrings, they were the only jewellery I had.’ Days before her own wedding, Lucky Sister had sent her a pair of earrings. They had arrived secretly at night in the hands of one of her customers, the person Lucky Sister most trusted.
    ‘Now we are like the rest of Mamta’s father’s hookah-sucking friends – all debtors of the Big House. But there is some glamour in it, I suppose. They invite you that one and only time to the Big House veranda and give you tea. They said they would come for the wedding. I think that’s really what made Mamta’s father do it. You know how he is, he loves show.
    ‘Remember when Ragini got married,’ Lata Bai drops her voice even lower to spare Mamta the anguish of her ensuing words, ‘how excited he was? How much show we put on. He gave Ragini enough dowry for three girls. How rich they were. We nearly passed out when the groom arrived on a horse. Hai, for this wedding we will be paying for the rest of our lives. Better to have been robbed by bandits.’
    ‘It’s the same anyway, robbed by bandits or the Big House. It’s just the same,’ says the old woman. ‘I don’t envy you. After Mamta and Sneha, you will still have another one to marry off,’ she says, looking at the baby in Lata Bai’s arms. Then she plucks a betel-leaf off her vine, quickly slaps some lime on it and carefully places half in the corner of her mouth. She pops the other half into her husband’s.
    ‘And now those damned bandits are surrendering.’
    *  *  *
    Showing remarkable prescience, Lata Bai has saved last season’s daal for the wedding, trimming her family’s rations by one spoon each day. Daal and chapattis, that’s what she’ll serve, and mustard greens. She will steal some mustard greens from her own field. Why steal? Because, except for a few plants, minutely calculated as sustenance for the family, the crop belongs to Singh Sahib, and the labour of her son too. That was the deal. He gave them money for Mamta’s dowry, they are to give him all their produce in return. All their produce, even the vegetables they grow, go with Prem to the Big House. Why are girls born at all?