The Dowry

Author's note:
This piece is an excerpt from a much larger memoir. The entire account is about the struggles of my paternal grandmother and how she overcame tragedy in order to help raise me.

India 1932

She was pulled out of school because her parents died. She would have had older sisters to take care of her, but they had only lived until their late teens and then they too joined the rest. All their ashes were probably sprinkled at the family temple. In the end it was only Amani and her slightly older brother, Subramanam. Their uncle took them in after selling their house and everything in it.

Amani and her brother had nothing for their new family, no inheritance, no jewelry, just the hope that their uncle would love them as their parents did. Subramanam was allowed to go school. He needed to get a good job and send money back to the family.

Amani stayed home and tended to her younger cousins. She did all the laundry and most of the cleaning. The family did have Vasudev, but he only did the cooking and left the rest of the chores for Amani. At the tender age of twelve, Amani did not have many clothes, nobody really did because of the loss after the Great War. India was not involved, but since Mother England was, everyone suffered. Amani did not really care about worldly things, she had a roof over her head and food in her belly. She was alive- which was better off than the rest of her family.

She truly hoped that her mother had the left the cycle of reincarnation and finally found the divine place of all the gods. Her mother had prayed with the coral and gold rosary necklace everyday of her life and now maybe all the effort paid off. Amani held the necklace tightly as she prayed with it every night in private.

Though her beads helped her remember; her routines helped her forget. Amani would get up in the darkness of five a.m. to take a quick bucket bath. She never used more than one bucket, so not to waste the water that her family needed for their bathing. After cleaning her body, she spent one hour reciting slokas and praying to Lord Krishna to give her a long meaningful life in the future. Amani would then light the oil lamp with hope of seeing the spirits of her family in some form or another during her lifetime. "Maybe their souls will be in my children" she hoped as she knelt prostrate.

Before the sun got too hot Amani would take the dirty clothes to the river to bang them against the rocks to wash and scrub them. On her way back to the house she tried to walk slow to avoid seeing her cousins get ready for school. It was too painful because most of her cousins were girls yet they were allowed education.

She always made sure to keep her eyes focused on the back veranda as she entered her uncle's courtyard. She knew that if she saw Manesh, the outhouse collector, she would have to take another bath so not to contaminate her Brahmin blood. Safe within the house she continued with the rest of her rituals by sweeping every corner, careful to lift every bed and to move every dresser.

Eating lunch was her only true entertainment of the day. As she poured milk over her rice and black beans, she would try to imagine her future husband's house. She dreamt of having a large house with servants and cooks. She thought of all the saris she would have and the house filled with three perfect sons. The images faded as she remembered that nothing hung around her neck, she had no dowry to offer. Her uncle may give her a dowry but his best dowry would go to his own Aruna.

The afternoon was more of the same. Amani ironed the slightly damp clothes and placed them back into teak wood dressers. She washed stainless steel dishes and watched as her family started finishing their days and come home for naps. Amani only allowed herself to sleep for half the time because she had to prepare her uncle's evening tea for when he awoke.

In the evening Amani would serve her cousins and watch them eat. She always knew who needed water and who needed more rice. When they were done, she did the same for her own brother and uncle. She would save to the best vegetables and freshest chapattis for them. When all the rest were fed, she and her aunt would share what was left with Vasudev. The dishes were then scraped for the birds to feast.

She retired around eight by washing her feet and then saying ten minutes of prayers on her mother's rosary. Amani could almost feel her mother as she slept with the rosary beads clenched in her fist. She held them tightly because she knew that one day her uncle would find her little treasure and take the memory of her mother away.

The day came exactly four years after she arrived. Amani reached her bony hand under her pillow and the necklace was gone. She went to her uncle crying saying that someone had robbed her late into the night, knowing all along that he was the thief.

"Don't worry Amani. You were not robbed. I noticed the broken clasp and took it to get fixed, you are my daughter after all"

Amani ran and hugged her uncle, knowing in her heart that he had changed. He was different from the stingy uncle who had sold everything in their house to make extra money. He was no longer the same man who had made her give the birthday bangle, given to her by his own wife, to Aruna. She knew that he felt guilty about pulling her out of school. By now, Amani was too old for school anyways. In the past few weeks her uncle had started to talk to her and to tell her jokes. She had enjoyed his company more than she ever had in the past. Amani was so happy that her uncle spent money on her to fix her rosary bead necklace.

Amani knew her uncle's true intentions when the necklace came back from Sangeetha Jewelers on the following Wednesday. He blessed the beads and placed it into her right hand. She looked at it and noticed that her precious gold was replaced with copper. He smiled as he placed a brand new gold necklace on Aruna's neck. Amani's uncle had taken her gold to give his own a dowry.