The Coming of Reason

How even the liberalising winds of change forgot the dark Dalit quarters of India

- Vijeta Kumar

IF TINDER CAME LATE to some homes, it didn’t come to mine at all. My cousins and extended family found it supremely normal to ignore because we are still learning how to negotiate love-marriage discussions with our Dalit parents. Girls in my immediate world continue to have sari-related troubles with love and relationships more than anything else. In 2013, a cousin was made to leave an ongoing conversation with a prospective groom to go wear a sari and ‘show’—she promptly went to her room, locked herself in, and watched Grey’s Anatomy on full volume for the next 30 minutes. Her embarrassed parents and his slightly angry ones spent the next 30 minutes nursing their teacups and smiling painfully at each other.

Or, like in 2018, when another cousin was almost engaged and the groom’s family made a request. “Please tell her to wear a sari next time?” Her family said of course. A week later when they met again, my cousin wore a beautiful silk sari and said “no, thank you”. It is a strange position to be in: the young women in these instances had an odd power to say no differently but they continue to be trapped in a world they cannot entirely say no to.

This year, after decades of being solidly against love marriage, my mother took me aside at a family function and whispered, “We will accept a Muslim or a Christian boy also.” This is the same mother who wanted me married at 18 (not to the Hindu boy I was then in love with) and now has to deal with the idea that her 31-year-old daughter might never want to get married.