narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

exchanges of glances was a feeling of temporarily breaking away from all
bindings and I imagined that we were actually a union of two souls. A lot was left
to the imagination which was a place of my own, my dream home outside all
societal rules and limits. I imagined our romance would materialize into a happy
married life, with him as the dear son-in-law of my parents and me, the dear
daughter-in-law of his parents.”
Life for Pushpa has been a constant struggle and she paid heavy price for exerting her
independent choice to marry Bimal, the person of her love. The two families never
agreed to this marriage primarily because it had threatened familial patriarchal authority
over individual desire and wish. As Pushpa says,
“Even he (Bimal) had to struggle with his father who thought his son wanted to
marry a girl who had no feminine modesty and whose selfish desire was the
cause of two family’s destruction. Of all this I was the most maligned. My father
was more concerned about how shameful it was for me to get married just next
door and about what the neighbours would think about his daughter’s
unrestrained, disrespectful and bold sexual desire and its expression. Apparently
I had brought bad name to the family’s reputation in the community and I
wondered how insignificant individual happiness was! I always felt sad thinking
that our fathers were less concerned about our happiness than matters of status,
class, caste and neighbourhood. I cried a lot feeling guilty that I was a burden to
them and bought in bad name to the family but my prem (romantic love) was
pobitra (pure) and how I wish they would understand this. We married without
their consent in a temple without any social gathering or festivity. I had big
dreams of how I would look like a bride and how much fun there would be in my
marriage! (Sighs and keeps silent for a while). We lived separately and our
parents rarely visited us. The relation between the two families had also broken
and I always felt responsible for all this which in retrospect I feel I should not
have felt (expresses firmness). I sometimes doubted if I was really very selfcentric
as I had affected so many relations especially his (Bimal’s) relation with
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