Putul Singh
12 June 1980
Putul: My father only negotiated for five days. He
didn’t find out what anybody in Madhepur could have
told him about the family: that I never could be happy
there. My father-in-law never wanted the marriage. I
think the negotiations were done by my husband.
My father-in-law is not well respected because of his
mistress. At my marriage when I first arrived in
Madhepur, there was a big scene (tamashya) at the feast
(bhoj). My father-in-law sent his mistress’s
son-in-law to fetch pan for the guests. When he did this,
he used a special form of Maithili reserved for use with
in-laws. All ninety Srotriyas immediately stood up as
if to leave, since if this man was the relative of that
son-in-law, it implied that he [the son-in-law]
was also their relative. The disaster was averted at the
last minute when my father-in-law locked himself in a
closet for the rest of the feast.
CB: Tell me more about this son-in-law.
Putul: This man is wealthy, and he had run off with
the daughter of my father-in-law’s mistress. People
said, "The daughter is just like her mother"—that
is, she married once and was widowed, and at a Dussehra
festival she met this man, probably a Jaibar, and ran off
with him. She is very beautiful, so probably my
father-in-law’s mistress was once beautiful. She
claims that she is even now more beautiful than me!
Because of all this, my father-in-law is on shaky ground
with his relatives, as the trouble at the feast
demonstrated.