GIRL-LIFE IN INDIA.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 52, 26 December 1891, Page 721

GIRL-LIFE IN INDIA.

ON the day of her marriage, the East Indian girl is put into a palanquin, shut up tight, anti carried to her husband’s house. Hitherto she has been the spoiled pet of her mother-in-law, upon whom she is to wait, whose commands she is implicitly to obey, and who teaches her what she is to do to please her husband—what dishes he likes best and how to cook them. If the mother-in-law is kind, she will let the girl go home occasionally to visit her mother. Of her husband she sees little or nothing. She is of no more account to him than a little cat or dog would be. There is seldom or never any love between them, and, no matter how cruelly she may be treated, she can never complain to her husband of anything his mother may do, for he would never take his wife's part. Her husband sends to her daily the portion of food that is to be cooked for her, himself and the children. When it is prepared, she places it on one large brass platter, and it is sent to her'husband’s room. He eats what he wishes, and then the platter is sent back with what is left tor her and her children. They sit together on the ground and eat the remainder, having neither knives, forks, nor spoons. While she is young, she is never allowed to go anywhere. The little girls are married as young as three years of age ; and should the boy to whom such a child is married die the next day, she is called a widow, and is from henceforth doomed to perpetual widowhood; she can never marry again. As a widow, she must never wear any jewellery, never dress her hair, never sleep on a bed—nothing but a piece ot matting spread on the hard brick floor, and sometimes, in tact, not even that between her and the cold bricks ; and, no matter how cold the night might be, she must have no other covering than the thin garment she has worn in the day. She must eat but one meal a day, and that of the coarsest kind of food, and once in two weeks she must fast twentyfour hours ; then not a bit of food nor a drop of water or medicine must pass her lips, not even if she were dying. She must never sit down nor speak in the presence of her mother-in-law, unless commanded to do so. Her food must be cooked and eaten apart from the other women’s. She is a disgraced and degraded woman. She may never even look on at any of the marriage ceremonies or festivals. It would be an evil omen for her to do so.

She may have been a high-caste Brahminic woman, but on her becoming a widow, any, even the lowest servants may order her to do what they would not like to do. No woman in the house must ever speak one word of love or pity to her, for it is supposed that if a woman shows the slightest commiseration to a widow she will immediately become a widow herself.