Our Mindset Episode 14
Grandmother arrived in Mangu’s cart, carrying bags from the market. My husband was walking behind, leading a pregnant goat. He couldn’t bring her in the cart, so he had to walk all the way.
After settling in, she had tea and then asked, “Sunanda, where do you go to relieve yourself?”
Right in front of our house stood a thick field of sugarcane, reaching up to my waist. I led her there. Realizing where I had brought her, she immediately understood that I must also be using the same place every day.
“Where do you bathe?” she asked.
“Right here, out in the open, early in the morning,” I replied.
“You’ve been living here for eight days, and he still hasn’t built a private space for you to bathe?” she asked, visibly upset.
My husband barely had time to talk to me. When would he ever get around to building me a shelter?
While I was in the sugarcane field, I plucked some grass for the goat. There was plenty of open space in front of the house and behind it as well. Seeing this, she advised, “Sunanda, raise goats and chickens. Your children will at least have eggs to eat. This is your livelihood. Don’t just depend on your husband. You’re living on rented land. The kids are growing up.”
I felt humiliated. Was my entire life supposed to revolve around goats and chickens?
Even after having two children, I had no say in my own life. She had found a well-off, salaried husband for her own daughter, someone respectable, while she had chosen a tractor driver for me.
It was my grandmother who had ruined my life. Because of her, I was married off too early. Both she and my mother were old-fashioned and uneducated. My mother never made a decision without consulting her.
My grandmother was strictly against my education. “She’s a girl,” she would say. “What’s the point of sending her to school?” Since I was in the fifth grade, the only discussion in my house was about my marriage.
She constantly fed thoughts into my mother’s head: “Sunanda is beautiful. What if someone kidnaps her? Your honor will be at stake. Stop sending her to school and get her married quickly.” My mother, in turn, pressured my father.
I was a bright student, and my father wanted me to continue my education. But then, Dadasaheb came to see me for marriage. My father said, “Not yet. I want her to study further.”
Dadasaheb reassured him, “She can continue school after marriage. You won’t have to pay a dowry. We’ll take care of the wedding expenses.”
That was all it took. My family had decided long ago that I would marry the first man who wouldn’t demand a dowry.
After my engagement, my father discovered that my husband wasn’t actually employed—he was just a tractor driver. My wedding was put on hold for six months. But my grandmother went back and fixed the match. Who knows what she saw in him?
He finally returned with the goat. Grandmother instructed him, “Dada, bring four wooden posts and tie a sari around them to give her some privacy for bathing. People are always passing by on the road. What if she wakes up late one day? How will she bathe out in the open?”
He simply said, “Yes.”
I lived there for eleven months. He never built me a shelter. Every single day, I bathed in the open.
Grandmother’s arrival had changed nothing. My husband had his own plans—cricket, playing cards, and watching videos on his phone. Since she was staying with me, he took the opportunity to spend the evening at his aunt’s house watching TV.
He finished his remaining chores and, when Mangu arrived to collect the milk, he left with him for the village. He didn’t return until six in the morning.