When I would ask her to describe her wedding or her husband, she’d shrug me off with “What is there to say?” Hers was a traditional village event, planned and executed by her relatives, and she had been too young to remember much about it. She doesn’t know her age at the time, because like most people in rural India, her parents didn’t keep track of birthdays. She did tell me that her family had had to compromise on the match. They didn’t have the means to offer a substantial dowry, which most families require if they are to bring a bride into their fold. To try to get the price down, Radha’s parents opted for “a boy with faults.” This narrowed the field of potential grooms to lower-caste boys, the disabled or mentally slow, widowers, and much older men. Of these unappealing options, Radha’s family chose the last: a poor Brahmin, never married, named Bhaneshwar Jha, who was twenty years her senior. Radha’s parents considered it “watering somebody else’s garden”
What do You think about Sideways On A Scooter (2011)?
