72. the life cycle
The next winter, her grandfather was stricken by pneumonia and died. This
tragic event deprived the family of its patriarch and Hirabai of her husband. As she
wept beside her husband ’s bier, her glass bangles were broken, never to be replaced.
After the cremation, relatives arrived to pay their condolences and to take part in rit-
ual gift exchanges and a large death feast. Munni joined the visiting women in weep-
ing and singing sad songs.
The following year she went with her parents, uncle, and a large group of vil-
lagers by train on a pilgrimage to Varanasi and Allahabad, where they bathed in the
sacred river Ganges. Her father’s older brother carried with him a small packet of
his father’s charred bones, which he threw into the river. The trip was exciting and
eye-opening. Although it was expensive, the journey allowed the pilgrims to carry
out important religious and family obligations and was therefore considered more
a necessity than a luxury.
Munni knew that her idyll among her natal kin would not last much longer. Many
of her friends had already been sent to their husbands’ homes, and Munni too would
soon go. Her gauna(consummation ceremony) was set for March. The night before
her gauna, Munni’s bhabhitook her aside and told her about sex and what to expect
from her husband. Munni had heard some stories from her friends but was shocked
to hear the details. (Parents and children never discuss sex.) Her mother reminded
her that she was going among critical strangers and that she should do whatever
work was asked of her without complaint.
Beating drums and blaring trumpets soon announced the arrival of Amar Singh
and a group of his male kinsmen. Munni sat passively as her mother and the barber
woman dressed her in finery and ornamented her with silver. She was truly agitated:
now she would meet her husband and her in-laws and see Khetpur, the village in
which she would spend her adulthood. Her life would be forever changed.
Her departure from her parents, grandmother, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
and cousins was heartrending. Clinging to each in turn, she sobbed piteously and
pleaded not to be sent away. They, too, cried as they put her in a small, covered
palanquin and saw her borne away by her in-laws. With her went baskets of food
and clothes and a little cousin to act as intermediary.
Heavily veiled, she was transferred to a bus and sat miserable and silent for the
entire journey. At Khetpur she was put into a palanquin again and carried to her new
home. Women’s voices all around were talking about her, referring to her as dulhan
(bride), bahu(daughter-in-law), and nimkheravali(the woman from Nimkhera).
Here in her husband ’s home she would never be known as Munni. There were some
“games” she had to play with her husband before a group of village women who had