In our tribe,
the gold standard for a bride
is 800 grams
of yellow metal.
Behind the rising
wedding songs, drum beats
and dances,
there are hushed bargains.
Bride, burning bright
in amber flames
and flowers by fire,
garlands the groom.
I turn the pages
of my mother’s wedding
album, she’s young and demure,
dripping gold.
Not quite the same
I make a quick mental note,
counting the bangles.
Weeks before
the wedding, the bridegroom’s uncle
asks me how much my dad
would give in dowry.
‘If not five lakhs,
at least a lakh, you can borrow it
from me and repay later,
no one needs to know’.
‘My parents spent five lakhs
on our wedding’,
boasts a friend’s wife,
‘ this, apart from the clothes
for a year’.
The dhobi doesn’t
turn up for ironing clothes.
Died of grief
after a daughter hung
harrowed by dowry.
A bride bedecked
in a sari of gold,
walks up the wedding mandap
of burning lamps.
How much
were you given,
800 grams of gold?
***
Madras Courier originally ran as a broadsheet with a poetry section. It was a time when readers felt comfortable sharing glimpses of their lives through verse. If you have a poem you’d like to submit, do email us at [email protected].
-30-
Copyright©Madras Courier, All Rights Reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from madrascourier.com and redistribute by email, post to the web, mobile phone or social media.Please send in your feed back and comments to [email protected]
