The other day, my new cook Ranjana asked me for the day off on Independence Day. "My married daughter is coming home with her husband and child," she said. "It is the first time in months that she is going to visit us, so I want to make it special." I asked her what she was planning to do. "I'll probably make some spicy mutton curry," she said, "and her favourite halwa." She'd already bought gifts for her son-in-law and grandson, and wanted to get a sari for her daughter. "My son is also taking time off from his job as a security guard," she told me excitedly. "We'll be together after a long time." As she continued to chatter and cook, somewhere along the way, I realised that she had another daughter as well, one that she seldom brought into the conversation. "Oh her! Yes, I do have another daughter," she said when I quizzed her. "But she's not married." Were all her children not the same in her eyes, I asked. Ranjana shrugged: "All three are my children. But how can I think of them in the same way? My son is my hope for my old age. No daughter can equal him."
It caused me to flashback to the time, 20 years ago, when I'd moved to Mirzapur, a small town in the boondocks of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Most villagers I met there, told me they had one or two children, making me wonder why demographers decried the large family sizes in rural UP. Once in a while, however, there would be an afterthought. They'd add that they also had a couple of daughters. There were many reasons for this misogynistic attitude to their own daughters - the preference for sons as heirs and support during old age, being the main one. As Ranjana said, no daughter could ever hope to equal this. But what interested me about her testimony was that not only was she differentiating between her son and daughters, she was doing the same between her married and single daughters.
"We found it very hard to find a groom for our elder daughter. Since we moved to Delhi from our village in Bihar, our daughter was unmarried even at 17, something which is unheard of in the village," Ranjana explained. "Also, since she had been to school, we were forced to look for an educated groom. And as you know, the demands for dowry rise with education levels." Eventually, she and her husband took a loan of Rs 2 lakh when they finally found a suitable boy for her. "Her marriage was a huge relief," Ranjana said. "Keeping a grown-up daughter in the house, protecting her and finally finding a good family for her had been so hard. She had a child in the first year of marriage and told us she was quite contented in her new home." Listening to Ranjana, I realised that it was when she'd morphed into the 'happily married' daughter, that her elder daughter acquired a larger place in their hearts.¦
What about the younger daughter, I asked, my heart going out to the poor creature so nonchalantly placed at the bottom of the family heap. "She's a good girl who studies in class 9 and helps me with the housework," said Ranjana. "We'll start looking for prospective grooms for her when she's about 16."
She left, making plans to buy the mutton that she would cook in ghee as a special treat for her daughter and son-in-law. I realised with a pang that maybe one day, when her younger daughter too was 'happily married', Ranjana would cook the same celebratory feast for her as well. Meanwhile, as an unmarried second daughter, she'd just have to remain unseen, unheard and utterly insignificant.
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