| I've had the worst possible luck with women," the old carpenter declared with a hacking cough, "marry the wrong woman and your peace of mind is gone! I know ... I've been through it." His colleagues, who were persuading a young friend to get married, didn't agree. "Bad luck with women doesn't exist," said one, "only bad judgement". But the old carpenter averred that he'd suffered greatly in women's hands. Did his wife not keep him happy? His curious friends asked. "This one does," he replied, eliciting admiring catcalls. She was his third wife, he told his envious audience, but sampling the pleasures of matrimony so many times wasn't all fun and games. |
| "I married the first one when I was 16, she even younger," he said, "I thought, like most villagers did, that the sign of a successful marriage was not one, but many children." But when his wife did not conceive even after one year of marriage, he got impatient. He'd badger her morning, noon and night. "Finally she got fed up with my badgering, and returned to her father's home," he said lugubriously. "So your marriage fell apart after just a year?" asked a colleague. "No, 10," replied the old fellow, "I'd have quietly kept trying for longer, but she said she'd had enough!" |
| The old carpenter's next marriage was to a beauty. "I was sure she'd show me the face of my son and heir, but in spite of my best efforts, that didn't happen," he recounted. She too left him after 10 years "" but unlike the first one who returned virtuously to her father's home, this one ran off with a young lover. |
| The old carpenter's status in his village in Bihar remained undiminished in spite of his matrimonial misadventures. Instead, if possible, it grew. For now there were two families who gave him all the deference due to a son-in-law "" even though their daughters had given him the boot. |
| "The villagers knew that on both occasions, I was not the one at fault. After all, both the women left me ... and by not bearing me children, they'd wronged me anyway," he said. Since in the village, marriage, divorce and re-marriage were implemented by social sanctions not courts, the marriages were broken by the simple expedient of his entering into a new alliance. |
| The young fellow whose leg was being pulled when the carpenter began his tale shuffled uncomfortably. Finally, he asked, "how did you know it was your wives who couldn't bear children ... maybe the problem lay with you?" he said, "you need two hands to clap after all!" The old fellow glared at him. "I now have three children from my third, a comely lass two decades younger than me!" |
| How could he say he was unlucky in love then, his audience demanded to know? Not many men as old as him could boast of going home to a pretty young wife. "My quest for the right wife and an heir lost me many years of my life. Others my age are today being supported by their sons, whereas mine's barely eight," he rued, "and while my wife is full of beans, I'm old and pretty close to being taken to the ghat!" Everyone groaned sympathetically, and the young man said, "to have two wives leave you when you're young and able is bad. But to finally get a nice young wife only to discover you're too old to enjoy her is the worst luck ever!" There was another twist in his hard luck tale, the old carpenter said. |
| "Now the first one wants me to take her back ...." |
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