How I Met My Husband.......A long flash back (Part 1)

I wish to share with the rest of the world certain thoughts and memories that come back to me unfailingly every year on this month and on this day,  the 27th of Oct., the day I got married to my husband of 30 years.  In those days it was de rigueur for a girl to get married by the time she attained the age of 18.  It did not matter at all whether she wanted to get married or not.

I remember my college Professor admonishing us in one of his classes : “Girls”, he proclaimed in his Bengali accent dripping with sarcasm ,  “graduation is just a time- pass exercise for you all :  it is just a passport for you to hook a good husband”.  I was in City college in Calcutta those days and I confess, even I was amazed to see girls coming to college  soon after their marriage with Sindoor ( the mark of a married woman, usually a North Indian in Hinduism, applied at the beginning or completely along the parting line of a woman's hair),  and a big red Bindi ( dot) adorning their forehead,  coming ever so punctually to attend early morning classes (our college timing was 6.15 am to 11.30 am.). Now these girls were quite young, hardly 18 years of age and the boys they were married to must have been pretty tender of age as well.  After marriage, the boys would go off to complete their engineering, medicine, and accountancy  ( if they be of marwari origin)  while these young brides were left high and dry with nothing better to do than attend college just for “naam ke vasthe”  (to keep up appearances): serious study was the last thing on their minds.

The good Professor certainly could not be blamed for passing such gratuitous remarks.

 In those very same old days,  even I was not far behind in all this “chakar” of marriage. I had no other choice, because I had a father, whose only aim in life was to get all his three daughters married, at the right age. Well luckily the other two had got married at the right age, now it was my turn.
Being the youngest I was given certain liberties, but not without conditions. I can study all I want, but I should not entertain any ideas of taking up a career or something like that, because girls from respectable families should have only one aim in their life, that is to get married to a decent man selected by their parents. The only thing that one could look forward to was a life  filled with rosy pictures of making your husband happy, having his babies, and being good to his parents, being good in cooking, and other uninteresting things like tailoring, knitting, singing  etc. (please this is not to offend people who have made a successful career out of these very hobbies),  and in short putting one’s life on the back-burner.

Funniest thing was that, you were not supposed to be too choosey about his looks or colour, or height/built etc. You can’t refuse a boy because he had a moustache, he was slightly balding, he wore specs, and he wore bell-bottoms with wide ugly belts and so on. I am sure there are many of you out there who would agree with all my points (Women of my age or older than me). 


Girls were supposed to have no choice at all. If you dared to rebel the axe would immediately fall on the mother, she would get her quota of blasting, for bringing up a daughter with such crazy modern ideas. Though your mother might be supportive of you, but in front of the father she will support everything he says, for she had no other go, for all her life she had trained herself to saying only one thing: “yes dear, as you say”, having been married to this man at a very young age.  Most men were like that only, very bossy and dominating.

My situation was no better than hers. People would have only one question “Are you looking for some alliance for your daughter, I know a boy he is in America”. It was always either  some boy living in America, or was qualified from America. (The boy from the US was the craze at that time).

That was enough for my father,  he would be ready for anything. So you would see, that even before I had turned 19 my father had all the eligible boys lined up for me.

Did I get married as my father wanted me to get married ?

You would have to wait and see, how the story unfolds itself........

Ironically I was to see America only in the year 2010.