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Translator’s Note

This translation follows the original Dogri prose closely, preserving Ram Nath Shastri’s characteristic compression and dry irony. Shastri writes with restraint—he lets social cruelty speak for itself, and the silences between his sentences carry as much weight as the words. This translation aims to honour that economy rather than expand upon it.

The story is prose fiction, not a play, and is presented as such. Dogri terms and names are transliterated for accessibility. Where the original leaves something unsaid, the translation does the same.

Principal characters: Baamdev Pandit, a widower priest living on village charity, burdened with marrying off his daughter; Uma, his daughter, beautiful and sharp of mind; Gangadeyi and Kesar’s Aunt, village gossips; Debu Pant, a widower to whom Uma is married; Dhanno, a maidservant.

Baamdev Pandit came home from his morning bath at the river, a rite he kept whatever the season. He changed into his clean but threadbare clothes and set to scrubbing the household pots, his lips moving all the while in a low, unbroken chant. As he scoured, the jagged edge of an old brass vessel bit into his palm, and blood gathered in the creases of his hand.

The sting vexed him; but the sight of the pot carried him elsewhere. These vessels were part of the dowry his wife had brought to this house nearly thirty years ago. A hazy image of her rose in his mind—of a home once full of warmth and laughter. She had washed these same pots every day, had cut her own hands on them more than once, and had never once said a word of it.

Since her death, the one light left in his life was their daughter, Uma. He might long ago have retired to Haridwar or Rishikesh, but his duty to Uma held him here. Until he could place her hand in some worthy one, this crumbling house was his Haridwar, and his daily struggle his only pilgrimage. In a corner of the courtyard stood a Tulsi plant that Uma had decked in bright colours and small fluttering pennants—a touch of beauty set against their poverty. He glanced at the string-bed where Uma lay deep in sleep, her quilt slipped half to the floor. She was the living image of her mother: fair, healthy, untouched by the world’s cares. With a heavy heart he finished his work and went to the prayer-corner for his morning devotions.

The ringing of the prayer-bell woke Uma. She sat up, smoothed her crumpled clothes, gathered her hair with her fingers, and sat on the edge of the bed. She rubbed her palms together and pressed them to her eyes. In the village everyone spoke of Uma’s eyes—her friends most of all. A widow of the Shah family had once told her, “Uma, beauty like this wants guarding. Eyes such as yours, God shaped with special care. You’ve landed in this poor priest’s house by some accident—your true place is a house of gold and pearls.”

A young village girl had said, “Auntie, I know how to braid hair—but set beside Uma’s hair, every woman’s braiding looks the same. My fingers fairly itch to dress her hair for her wedding. Only wait and see my handiwork!”

There was truth in what the women said, and Baamdev felt it keenly. But what troubled him more was Uma’s sharp, questioning mind. Whenever they sat together over the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, Uma would ask questions that left the old priest dumbstruck.

Once, after reading a passage of the Mahabharata, she said: “Father, Draupadi had five husbands. And the men themselves—three and four marriages apiece. If the gods themselves lived so, why do the people of this village behave as though a woman’s soul is stained forever the moment she so much as looks at another man?”

Baamdev pressed his head between both palms. “Daughter, those are tales of the Puranas, of another age. Every age has its own ways. How are mortals to weigh the conduct of gods?”

“Then why are these scriptures still so revered today? Why must people read what they are forbidden to understand?”

“Then what should a person read, daughter?”

“Their own present. It lies right before them. Why do they keep hiding away in things already gone? The time they are alive in—why will they not reckon with that?” Baamdev, casting about for an answer, fell silent.

“Father! I’m off to the pond.” Without waiting for a reply, she took up a clay pot and went.

Baamdev settled to his prayers, but his mind was a tangle of worry and memory. The burden of finding Uma a match never once left him. When his body tired of the chase, his mind took it up. Fate, he thought, is a powerful thing. Somewhere there must be a match for Uma too. But how was he to know where to look? It had to exist. It had to.

He remembered that Uma would not even accept food from the well-to-do families he served as priest. Such pride—where had it come from, in this house? She had said to him once, “Better to beg outright, Father, than this. Eating these handouts at people’s doors—what self-respect will be left of you?”

He understood that in this age there was little honour in living on charity. But what else was there? No land, no post, no trade, no wealthy kin by marriage. And if they forsook scripture and ritual to earn their bread by labour, what would become of the ancient tradition?

He remembered how, whenever he so much as uttered “ancient tradition,” an angry colour would rise in Uma’s eyes and her voice would sharpen.

“Father, has the whole burden of saving this ‘ancient tradition’ truly fallen, in all this country, on helpless, stubborn men like you? This same tradition has never brought this house a single day of plenty! Bread, clothing, a roof to trust—these your tradition cannot give. Like the she-monkey clutching her dead young, how long will you carry it pressed to your breast? I am a girl—one day I’ll leave for my husband’s house. But had there been sons here, would you have fed them these same scraps and stamped the brand of this useless tradition on their soft foreheads too? Be thankful you were spared that sin.”

His prayers finished—or rather, having finished him—Baamdev began to pace. Burning questions flickered before his eyes like sparks. What was Uma thinking? Were the values he had bred in her worthless? Was this ancient tradition truly no more than an illusion? Were wealth and worldly ease in fact greater than religious duty? Had people really changed so far? Were the old ideals, the old faiths, genuinely going out?

“Once this girl’s hands are yellowed”—he thought, using the old phrase for marriage—“I shall not stay here two days. Her mother scraped and saved a little toward the wedding. Her own jewels will go to the ceremony, with whatever the Dogra community gives. Where else am I to find money? But someone must take her. The respectable will not say yes—they look at us and see beggars. And caste and lineage we cannot set aside either. God alone must lift this worry from me. O Shiva, drinker of poison! Take this venom too from my heart.”

He remembered another evening. He had told Uma the tale of Sita’s Swayamvar from the Tulsi Ramayana, and Uma, lying on her cot, had said:

“Father!”

“What is it, daughter?”

“They say a match is not found for a daughter—it is sought. The poor mother and father search and search, and whoever consents then lays down his own conditions! Take King Janak’s condition—to break Lord Shiva’s ancient bow. What if Ravana had met it?”

“How could he have, daughter?”

“By force, Father! He who lifted Mount Kailash—how heavy could one bow be to him? He must have snapped many a bow in his time. But this foolish, stubborn game of conditions—it becomes a kind of prison for the girl. They call it ‘Swayamvar’—the self’s own choosing—yet the conditions are all laid down by others. Who ever asked the girl? You say those were pure and righteous times. But in the Mahabharata it was the same. When Karna stepped up to take his aim, an uproar broke out. Had Kunti not cast him to the river, would he have suffered such disgrace? What had caste and lineage to do with the meeting of a condition, Father?”

Baamdev grew uneasy at such talk. “What a strange turn her thinking takes.” He was surprised that Uma had been gone so long. Restless, he rose and went out.

Uma had only just come back with her water-pot when Gangadeyi and Kesar’s Aunt arrived. They had been whispering of something, but the instant they saw Uma their tongues froze and they fell quiet.

Gangadeyi came near and said in a honeyed voice: “Daughter, we hear your father has fixed a match for you at last. God keep you happy. We were thrilled to hear it. The very sight of you brings your mother to mind—God grant her a place in heaven. So clever and so handsome she was, and God gave her looks to match. Poor soul—were she alive to see this day! And Baamdev Pandit, bless him, what does he know of arranging such affairs? The poor man has had no end of trouble even finding a match.”

“The Mangotras of Chagana,” Kesar’s Aunt put in, narrowing her eyes, “came to Baamdev themselves, they say, and asked for the girl.”

Gangadeyi took up the thread: “They did—but the great Mangotras keep a second wife, don’t they. The boy’s already married. The Pandit says he’ll not give his daughter into that kind of arrangement.”

“So where has the Pandit settled the match, then?” asked the Aunt, throwing Gangadeyi a loaded glance.

“With Debu Pant, they say. From the next village.”

“Debu? Has Debu any family left at all? Didn’t his wife die four or five years back?” the Aunt asked, laying a finger to her cheek with exaggerated innocence.

Uma watched the performance, set her pot on the ledge, and walked into the house. Gangadeyi called after her, “Don’t take all that to heart, dear—Debu isn’t so very old! How old can he be, Auntie?”

Uma heard no more; she had vanished into the corridor. The two women broke into toothless laughter. Then they noticed that Uma had gone through the corridor in silence—as though something had slipped from her hands. They heard a pot break, looked at each other, and laughed again.

Gangadeyi’s eye fell on the clay pot left on the upper step by the pond. “Uma went off without it,” she said.

Kesar’s Aunt replied, “She’ll come back for it. That temper, that pride—all of it straight from her mother. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but her nature was just so sharp. She carries herself as though she stood above everyone. And dreadfully vain about her beauty.”

Gangadeyi said, “Oh, Auntie, say a hundred things if you like, but she is sensible and clever. At sewing and needlework the girl has no match! Only, in her speech she’s sharper than her mother. And that face—but the father is about to lay this jasmine bud on the altar of some old, worn-out shrine. Where is Debu, and where this tender flower!”

“What is poor Baamdev to do? A simple soul of the old stamp. How is a pauper like him to arrange a fitting match? People no longer look at the person—they look at the price. And they want it told out in silver and gold. Has Baamdev the means to buy such a groom?”

On the appointed day in the month of Phagun, Baamdev’s house was whitewashed and scoured clean within and without. The wedding was upon them. Debu Pant was coming as the groom. That evening the village women gathered and sang the old wedding songs. Baamdev could scarcely bring himself to meet his daughter’s eye. The women looked for Uma to weep, to refuse her food, to make some show of the bride’s customary grief. But nothing of the kind happened. Everything went off smoothly. The rite was performed; Uma left with the wedding party. She had not played the weeping bride. The women, having coaxed and counselled her to no purpose, gave up in vexation.

When she reached the house and stepped down from the palanquin, the maidservant Dhanno took her arm to steady her. Uma gently worked free of her grip and said, “Dhanno, she who walked the rounds of the fire on her own two feet needs no arm to lean on now. Does anyone enter her own house on a borrowed crutch?”

Debu Pant’s house was roomy, its great hall full of village girls and young women. Uma came in quietly and sat. A playful girl lifted her veil—and at once the laughter stopped. The women turned to stare. One young woman, seated by an older one, whispered: “Look at the old man’s luck, Auntie! Look at that beauty—every feature as though chiselled by hand. This moonlight, made to bloom in a garden of flowers, has been flung instead onto a cremation ground. What a mismatch, Auntie! How is this burning youth of hers to live on in that cold desert? I’d sooner have married this girl into my own widowed daughter’s house. And her father is meant to be a man of learning? Come, Auntie—I cannot sit here any longer.”

Other women caught the murmuring and craned to look, but the two had already slipped outside.

The next day Debu completed the remaining rites. In the morning the maidservant and the young village girl came to take their leave of Uma. Uma smiled at them and said, “So you’re off, then? Go on—gather your gifts and take them.”

The two were bewildered. They rose, touched Uma’s feet, and went.

Night came—Uma’s wedding night. She had changed, eaten, and gone into the bridal chamber. Two beds were laid out; she sat down on the floor between them. A new kerosene lamp burned in the room, and the air hung heavy with incense. From the headboard of Debu Pant’s bed hung a garland of bead-flowers; new calendars dangled from a nail on the wall.

Footsteps outside. Debu Pant entered slowly. He wore a clean white shirt and a fine cotton dhoti. His face was on the long side; his nose did not quite suit it, and his round, rather small eyes gave him an unassuming look. A tilak marked his brow; a red thread was knotted at his right wrist; gold studs glinted in his ears. With his coming, more fragrance filled the room—until Uma felt the perfume thicken the air past breathing.

Debu sat down on his bed, near Uma. She was studying the henna patterns on her toes; she neither looked up nor touched her veil.

“Uma!” Debu called softly.

“Yes?”

“Why do you sit on the floor? Sit on the bed.” Was it a command or a plea? Uma nearly laughed, and bit her lip to keep it in.

“Uma, I’m asking you—please, sit on the bed.” His voice seemed to waver.

“Sit on the bed? But if I must rise again so soon—what use is sitting?” Uma said it in a tinkling, bell-clear tone. Debu did not follow. The words unsettled him further. Rise from the bed? Why? He groped for her meaning, then stammered, “Rise? Why? I don’t understand. This house is yours. From today you are its mistress. Who would make you leave?”

Uma was silent a while. She ran a fingertip over the pink nail of her middle toe. Then, eyes still lowered, she spoke:

“The secret my father kept hidden—I have no wish to keep it hidden. He fretted over his own millstone, and now he’s struck it from his neck. A girl’s marriage—there are always a hundred concealments at such a time. How is one to blame the parents? They only want their duty discharged, and quickly. But that was the matter between you and them. From here on, the journey is yours and mine. Ours is a bond of a different kind. And in this bond, concealment is not right.”

Debu was growing more afraid. Uma’s beauty had already put him in the place of the miser handed a plate of gold, who feels more dread than joy—wondering however he is to keep it safe.

Debu looked into Uma’s bright eyes and asked, “What is it? What did Baamdev Pandit hide from me?” The words came out trembling.

Uma looked into his face and said, gravely:

“There are two things, not one. First: at the ceremony—I don’t know if you marked it, but everyone was in a hurry—six rounds were walked, not seven. I was counting. Your priest—why was he in such haste? He pronounced seven complete. How was I to object? And I thought—what does it matter, six or seven? Father too was in a hurry. He also said nothing.”

“Why?” Debu held his breath.

“So the rite would be over and done. He feared some truth might come out before the rounds were finished.”

“What truth?” Debu’s throat was going dry.

“That this is my second marriage—just as it is yours.”

“Second!” Debu stretched his round eyes as wide as they would go. His own voice, he felt, was too loud, too high.

“Yes. Your second marriage is real—both of yours are real. But my first was only a scriptural rite. I was seven or eight. Father took me to Purmandal. A wealthy, dying Brahmin had come there. By chance—or by design—he had never married; I don’t know the reason. The scriptures must say somewhere that a bachelor, an unmarried man, finds no peace in the next world. He wanted someone—some settled Brahmin—to arrange him a quiet marriage for a little money. It would be done in silence. The girl would stay on with her own parents. No one would know; no questions asked. Father took pity on him. I was with him. Whether money changed hands I cannot say, but from Purmandal Father took me on to Mansara, and there, in the bitter cold, married me to that wealthy Brahmin with the full Vedic rites.”

“The man, freed of his dread of dying unwed, sang the praises of Purmandal and went back to his own country. We too returned home after two or three days.”

“For a long while Father feared I would let something slip in my innocence. But to whom would I tell it? Mother was dead. He kept me busy with dolls and tales, read me the Ramayana, told me the Mahabharata. I was a child and hungry for all of it; he turned my mind that way. It was a childhood matter. I had all but forgotten it. But later, reading the scriptures, I came to feel that true union is a thing of the heart. Marriages can sometimes be hollow bonds. Look at Radha and Krishna. Think of Meera Bai’s story—you must know it. Draupadi and Kunti both kept their households with dignity. No one in the village knows any of this. When the talk of a match with you arose, I understood—Father is shrewd. You had a need; so had he. To my mind, the whole affair was done in the name of religion. Father needed money badly. He had pilgrimages to make.”

Whether Debu took in all of this or not, his whole body was shaking. “Ram, Ram!” he cried, and tried to rise. Uma caught his arm.

“Let go! Let go of me!” said Debu, his anger gone red-hot with humiliation.

He wrenched hard to free himself; Uma too was drawn a little upward. The arm came loose, and Debu stumbled back and struck the wall.

Uma said, “At least hear me out. What use is a scene now? What will people say, if they hear?”

“To hell with people! Baamdev has destroyed my faith! I’ll not let him get away with this!” Debu was sobbing now.

“But what can he do about it now?” said Uma, holding down something very near to laughter.

“Him? I’ll burn his house to the ground! I’ll show him up before everyone! I’ll wring his—” Debu’s teeth clenched shut.

“But think a moment—what is to become of me?” said Uma.

“You—you’ll suffer for it too. The sin of destroying Debu’s faith cannot go unpunished. It cannot.”

Uma looked at him, then said calmly: “There is nothing to fear. You are an educated man. Think of the coconuts at Vaishno Devi—offered, sold, and offered again by the next pilgrim. So long as no one actually breaks one open, the world goes on calling them holy. Am I any different from those coconuts?”

× × ×

The next day, Baamdev Pandit saw Uma standing alone at his front door.

He said, startled, “Alone! The custom is to come back the day after tomorrow, daughter!”

“Who waits for the day after tomorrow, Father?”

She looked at him, and at the house that had made her and unmade her, and asked the question that would follow her the rest of her life:

“Haur ke kardi?”

What else could I do?