marriage. 69
tions. She pretended not to hear but was secretly excited and frightened. No one
spoke directly to her of the wedding, but nothing was deliberately kept from her.
For Munni as for other villagers, her wedding was the most important event in her
life. For days she was the center of attention, although her own role was merely to
accept passively what happened to her. She was rubbed with purifying turmeric,
dressed in fine clothes, and taken in procession to worship the Mother Goddess. Her
relatives came from far and near, and the house was full of laughter and good food.
Then excited messengers brought news of the arrival of her groom’s all-male en-
tourage from Khetpur, and fireworks heralding their advent lit the night sky. Munni
was covered with a white sari, so that only her hands and feet protruded, and amid
a wild din of drumming, singing, and the blaring of a brass band, she was taken out
to throw a handful of dust at her groom.
The next day was a rush of events, the most exciting of which was the ceremony
in which she was presented with an array of silver jewelry and silken clothing by her
father-in-law and his kinsmen. Under her layers of drapery, the bride could neither
see nor be seen but could hear the music and talking all around her. Many of the
songs, sung by the Nimkhera women and female guests, hilariously insulted the
groom and his relatives. Later, at night, in the darkest recesses of the house, her
mother and bhabhidressed Munni in her new finery. These valuable and glistening
ornaments were hers, a wonderful treasure. Bright rings were put on her toes, a
mark of her impending married state. Munni’s little sister watched every ritual with
wide eyes, realizing that one day she too would be a bride.
The wedding ceremony itself was conducted quietly at the astrological auspi-
cious hour of 4 a.m. by a Brahman priest, before whom the couple sat. Amar Singh
looked handsome in his turban and red wedding smock, but Munni was only a hud-
dled white lump beside him. The priest chanted and offered sacrifices to the divine,
and then, in a moving ritual, Rambai and Tej Singh symbolically gave Munni away
to Amar Singh. As women sang softly, the garments of the couple were tied to-
gether, and the bridal pair were guided around a small sacrificial fire seven times.
With these acts, Munni and Amar Singh were wed, and Munni officially became a
bahu, a daughter-in-law and member of her husband ’s lineage.
As a bahu, she became a symbol of fertility, of promise for the continuation of
her husband ’s family line. She also became an auspicious suhagin, a woman with a
living husband. The word suhagin emphasizes the concept that neither man nor
woman is complete as an individual but only in their union. Traditionally, no
woman except a prostitute remains unmarried, and villagers believe that men who