I attended a wedding yesterday, a beautiful nikah at the Unionville Jamatkhana. The bride, a young friend from grad school looked lovely and was very happy to be getting married. Everything was lovely. I took in the simplicity, the serenity and the soulful rendition of the nikaahnama. I prayed with my palms upwards, seeking all that is good for this lovely girl, the bride, so young.
Afterwards at the reception, I mingled. I was by myself and I introduced myself to people I knew were close family and congratulated them: Mubaraki, I said and we talked a little.
I saw the bride's grandmother a distance away, her mother's mother. She was sitting with her son and we talked about roots and routes, Dadar and Bandra. Then she said: May everyone's daughter's be happy. That is all I wish for always at weddings. I cry at all weddings. I cry a little just glad that this child is ready to move onto the next phase of their life. You can't keep them with you forever. They have to do what they are supposed to do, get married, start a family, be happy. May your daughter be happy too, she blessed.
Then she said something even more meaningful to me at this stage of my life as I wait for my pension to be valued before the final step asked for by my co-parent.
"Agar gareebi hai, toh jyaada kaam karkey kamaa saktey hain" (If there is less money in a marriage, you can work one more job and make some more money). Lekin zulm kaise sahegi koi kisiki beti? (But how can someone's daughter suffer oppression).
And in that moment, another layer of doubt fell from my soul, as I realised that I had indeed, no questions asked, no regret in my mind, started out my married life in one room of a chawl in a dirty street in South Mumbai, just for the love of a man who was my friend. I put up with the daily indignities of his mother's hammerings on the partition when I slept, the nightly and drunken swearing of his father with the most horrific of words. and the behind the scenes pot stirring of his sisters who insisted on keeping their parent's suspicious of my presence always. That was the 'zulm', the oppression that I lived through. That was the oppression that had metastasized over the Atlantic, through phone wires and WhatsApp, like a deadly basilisk to infect the mind of the man who never learned how to be a husband and father. He stayed a son and brother and a very good one at that, you could forge medals. To this day, the puppet strings like under water cables are alive and well. That's their life.
So I sat there, with Nani's hand in mine, freeing myself from the burden that he had placed on me: that I deserved this 'fate' of being 'left'.
I breathed deeply and smiled. I HAD lived through the lack of money in those days. But I had been freed from the zulm by a man who did not think I was worth it.
Thank you, co-parent. You did open up some space for me to breathe again.
(c) 2014
