Young men and women died early in the past century. Rabindranath Tagore’s stories are full of the suffering and deprivation the young women suffered. In my family the young girls died young also. They were married young, lived a restricted and un healthy lives with the in-laws and died of tuberculosis, childbirth  and many other undiagnosed diseases. My father’s three uncles had lost their young wives and remarried. Their daughters were married young and died. My Munni Bua and janaki Bua were child widows. Munni Bua was lucky to have her sister’s son look after her but Janaki Bua suffered a lot. Her husband’s nephew mistreated her all her life. She visited her extended family when she could not take it anymore but she had to go back to her brother-in-law and his children ultimately. As a young teenager, I understood her pain and felt anguished but by the time when I could have helped her she had died. Besides she would not have taken my help, I was a niece, a woman. You only took help and money from men in the family. Teasingly I told her I was as good as her nephew, but she was not convinced.

Bitti Bua, my father’s only sister died after she gave birth to a  stillborn son.She fell into a deep depression and the family declared her to be mad. She died soon after and her husband remarried. Punni Bua was also married young, she developed tuberculosis but her strict in-laws would not have her treated. She also died. Another Munni Bua died in childbirth and her husband remarried.

The family did not talk about how these women died, it was the way of life.  Once I asked my mother how Punni Bua died. She told me that her in-laws were very strict and even when she became ill, they made her take cold baths in the morning and do all household chores, grinding lentils, cooking. I didn’t ask why her father didn’t bring her back. That was a moot question. You were married and you had to go through what life dealt you. Besides her own mother had died and her father had married a very young and rather simple woman who was busy having children of her own. The family had fulfilled its responsibility by marrying her off and the rest was her destiny. Punni Bua could not come back. She had to live out her tortured life. From my mother’s account she was the livelier sister amongst Nanni and Banni As a young girl, she was full of mischief. She also loved reading Hindi novels of her time. The girls were banned to read novels because they were bad influence on young minds. My own grandmother  Parvati,would sit in the courtyard and ask Punni to read the Hindi newspaper aloud to her. When my grandmother dozed off, Punni would start reading from her current book, BhootNath. Grandmother would wake up and say, “ Why did you stop reading? Continue.”

Punni Bua would read aloud the portion of Bhootnath and after a while my grandmother would say in wonder. ‘ What kind of news is this? These newspapermen, what stories they print.” All the other women would double up with laughter. My grandmother never found out the truth.

Much later when I read these early novels by Devakinandan Khatri I remembered the story about Punni Bua. I felt an affinity with that long gone relative.

It is my guess that once my Nanaji died my Nani’s position slipped in the family. She became dependent on her eldest son. I think she must have always been a quiet person. She lived confined to her windowless small room and rarely came out to join the family. I had never seen her participating in the family conversation or be a part of it. Every year my Uncle would take a piece of jewelry from her because according to him, there was never any money to pay lagaan on the landed property.  One year it was my grandfather’s fat gold chain ,another year his multi colored precious gems armband. My mother never said this to anyone but she believed that it was a ploy on the part of my Aunt to take possession of my Nani’s leftover jewelry, because Mother saw her father’s fat gold chain years later in my Aunt’s jewelrybox. She mentioned it to me. But at twelve or thirteen years of age, this family lore was of no interest to me. It mattered to my Mother. She reminisced how she remembered her father with his arm band and fat gold chain.

But she kept quiet. It was not her habit to be confrontational.