Marrying for lunch

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Most people assume I'm a film programmer, critic and journalist, and they're right. But in my non-filmi life, I've travelled extensively across India's rural interiors, working in development communications for over two decades. Let me share a few updates on the rapidly changing rural India - apna gaon 2.0 - I've seen in the last couple of years, that were a revelation to me. On the eastern outskirts of Mumbai, barely two hours from my home, I met a farmer couple, Maruti Babanrao Shinde and his wife Rajeshri. Hired to cultivate someone else's farmland, they grew several vegetables - tomatoes, brinjal (eggplant), lady finger (okra), karela (bitter gourd), chillies and more.

I like how, at least in Maharashtra, women farmers wear a saree to work, then a man's full sleeved shirt over the sari. It must be very hot slaving away in the sun like this, but, I guess the shirt keeps the pallu from getting entangled in plants, and dissuades slimeys from looking down one's cleavage when working the earth. After chatting amiably with the couple, I said, "Okay, let's meet tomorrow." They said they were taking the next day off for their son's sakharpuda (engagement; the charming Marathi phrase for it literally means ‘sugar packet'). Oho, it turned out that the farmers' son had done computer graphics. How wonderful, I thought. Then I wondered, if all our farmers' children abandon farming - especially when the powers that be are selling off farmers' interests in favour of big industrialists - it is worth reflecting on who will put food on our tables.

Anyway, said son was 25, and had a job earning Rs 20,000 a month, but had been jobless for months since COVID-19. Life mein koi bhi problem hai? Parents apply India's favourite solution for all problems: "Shaadi kar lo, sab theek ho jayega." In India, marriage is popularly believed to cure insanity, tuberculosis, deafness, poverty, disease, bad luck, poor business, poor examination marks, balding, misshapen teeth, anything.

I asked the happy parents, would it not be easier on the marriage if the son first found a job with a regular salary? Out of the question, they snorted; he will be married by June. Why the hurry, I asked. The husband explained, "We work hard on the farm from 8.30 am-12 noon. After getting home, my wife has to make lunch, only then we can eat. If we get a daughter-in-law, at least she can keep lunch ready for us."

It struck me that a lunch dabba service for prospective in-laws may be one possible, crucial way to delay marriage in India. Must discuss this with the Family Planning Association of India (FPAI) and other organisations working on gender issues. In the 1990s, when writing for the excellent FPAI, I had attended a mass tribal wedding in rural Maharashtra, where the charming main wedding ceremony involved piercing a lemon with a woman's hairpin. The FPAI would foot everyone's wedding bill, including the ceremony, wedding clothes and a feast for the villagers, provided they delayed the marriage until the couple was of legal marriageable age, the woman 18 and the man 21.

Elsewhere, in another semi-rural town, two hours south of Mumbai - I met Dinkar Tayade, Cowherd 2.0. He was nothing like Lord Krishna on our calendars. This guy, in a T-shirt, chased his buffalo herd on a motorbike, cradling a mobile phone with one shoulder. He phoned his cowherd buddy to ask if he had seen his missing buffalo. I was very disappointed that he didn't even know the names of his buffaloes.
Earlier, families would call their cows Lakshmi or Gauri or some such. These buffaloes had plastic numbered coupons punched into their ears, so they were just #426 or #129. Hard to imagine that if it's just #426, a biker cowherd would do a nice aarti of the buffaloes during the bailanchi pol (bull festival), put jaunty ribbons on their horns and feed them sweet puranpoli. Deep sigh!

'Names changed to protect identities

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com