Published in the Canadabdnews on February 24, 2012
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[My grandchildren who were born in North America and are now growing up here are very much interested in hearing stories from the land of their grandparents: Bangladesh. I tell them stories of historical and cultural events, weddings, agricultural work, fishing and the like. I have decided to write down some of these stories that may be interesting to other second generation Bangladeshis living in North America. I encourage my first generation compatriots to narrate their stories to their own young relatives.]
I always enjoy hearing and reading stories of marriage. Methods of finding partners and entering into wedlock are different in different cultures. In the 1940’s and 1950’s, when I grew up in a village in southern Bangladesh, almost all marriages were arranged by parents and other relatives and friends. In many cases the man and the woman saw each other only after they were actually married. In the present article I shall describe some interesting events relating to marriage in Bangladeshi villages which I either attended or heard about. The readers must not think that these events took place in all marriages in Bangladeshi villages. I shall narrate only those events that I consider unusual and interesting. I shall conclude the article with an account of my own marriage.
Hajera Begum of Hajji bari (a cluster of houses with a courtyard at the middle) was considered to be the most beautiful girl of our village in the early 1940’s. Her skin was also fair. Someone with fair skin was considered very beautiful. She was also the Muslim girl with the highest education in the entire Kasipur Union of which our village Chahatha is a part. She had completed grade four! Naturally, then, many parents wanted to have their sons take her hand in marriage. A rich and very influential family of another village of Kashipur Union had a marriageable son whom we shall call Atif. They wanted Atif to marry Hajera. As usual, the father of the young man and some of his male relatives came to Hajji bari with a proposal of Atif’s marriage to Hajera, but Hajera’s family were not interested in giving her in marriage to that young man. As a result, the meeting of the two parties did not go well. Actually, when the boy’s party insisted on getting Atif married to Hajera, the girl’s family used insulting words with the visitors. The latter then left Hajji bari with a threat to take Hajera away by force. They also declared the date on which they would be coming to kidnap Hajera.
It was a dark night. The people of our village came to know that 100 to 150 people would be coming to invade the village. All the men of our village, young and old, prepared themselves to face the enemies. They armed themselves with lances, knives, long and hard sticks, and whatever else they could lay their hands on. Their plan was to defend the narrow wooden bridge over the canal that the boy’s party had to cross in order to enter the village. I saw some women weeping. They were afraid that many of their men would be killed that night. As a boy of ten, I was trembling in fear of an impending massacre.
The men of our village gathered at the muddy road and rice fields on our side of the bridge. The enemies came to the other side of the bridge in a large number. They saw that the bridge was very well defended by our people. Hence they decided not to engage themselves in a battle with our men. They all retreated and returned to their homes with a sense of humiliation. All of us—men, women, and children—heaved a sigh of relief. We thanked Allah that no blood was shed that night.
Hajera Begum was later married to Joynal Abedin of our bari. A first cousin of Hajera, Mr. Abedin was the man with the highest education among Muslims of our area. He had completed grade 12 at B. M. College, Barisal. He later became the chief of Fire Brigade of the entire East Pakistan. He came to visit his relatives in the village once a year. Dozens of us, mostly children, went to receive him on the main road a mile-and-a-half away. We all followed him back to the village. He brought toffees that he distributed among the children. Naturally we always looked forward to his visit to our village.
The second incident took place in a village called Koromja which is adjacent to ours. There was a Talukdar bari in that village. In the British system of collecting revenues, Talukdars were landlords who collected taxes from the peasants. Their position of being landlords not only made them wealthy, it also gave them honour and prestige in the village. Nasir Talukdar of Koromja Talukdar bari was not a humble man. One could understand from his expressions and actions that he considered himself superior to the peasants of the village. Yet he took me as his friend because I was getting an education at B. M. College, Barisal. I visited his house many times in the early 1950’s.
I had another friend from a neighbouring village. I shall call him Rahman. He was a classmate of mine at the same college. A few times Rahman accompanied me to the house of Mr. Talukdar. Soon Rahman developed a fascination for Mr. Talukdar’s younger sister Rabia. Rahman requested that I present to Mr. Talukdar a proposal of his marriage to Rabia.
When I communicated the proposal to Mr. Talukdar, he said the following: “In order to marry my sister, Rahman will have to fulfil two conditions. First, he will have to visit the Dorshona border between Pakistan and India, get his head tied up with the Pakistani train and his feet with the Indian train, and thus get himself stretched a little.” What did Mr. Talukdar mean? In the 1950’s Pakistani trains could not enter India, nor could Indian trains enter Pakistan. The passengers had to get off one train, walk through the no-man’s land between the two countries, and then board the train on the other side of the border. Rahman was a man of short stature. Mr. Talukdar could not give his sister in marriage to a short man. Hence he suggested that Rahman had his head and feet tied between two trains departing in opposite directions simultaneously so that his body would be stretched to make him a taller man.
“The second condition is that Rahman will have to travel to Paris to have him whitewashed.” It is believed that some rich Indians during the British period had their clothes washed and ironed in Paris. Rahman’s colour of skin was dark. Mr. Talukdar could not give his sister in marriage to a dark-skinned man. Hence he wanted Rahman to go to Paris, throw himself in a washing machine, and get his body bleached to make his skin white.
It goes without saying that Rahman was unable to marry Mr. Talukdar’s sister. Later Mr. Talukdar wanted to marry his own uncle’s daughter, but his uncle refused to give his daughter in marriage to his nephew. Mr. Talukdar then eloped with her cousin.
I had a classmate and good friend in the Philosophy Department of the University of Dhaka. I shall call him Hasan Zaman. In 1958 we were both very busy preparing for the impending final examination of our Master’s program. It is during that time that Hasan received an urgent telegram that said, “Father very sick. Come home sharp.” Many people used this method of sending urgent telegrams to bring someone home. If someone received this kind of telegram, he or she could not but go home.
Hasan came from a far-away district of Bangladesh. I saw him off at the train station. On his arrival at home in the evening he found that all the men of his bari including his father were missing. His mother said to him, “Your father is at the house of the chairman of the Union. He has asked you to go to the chairman’s house.”
Hasan hurried to the chairman’s house. He was shocked by what he saw at the courtyard of that house. Some three hundred people were waiting for him there. His father said to him that all the people were waiting to attend Hasan’s wedding to the daughter of the chairman. Hasan was now thunder-struck. He vehemently opposed the father’s plan for his marriage. Then his uncle and other elders tried to persuade him to marry the chairman’s daughter. They explained to him the consequences of his refusal to accept that marriage. They said that the rejection of the girl would be a black mark in her life so that she would have difficulty getting married to another man in the future. Further, Hasan’s father and his family would be dishonoured and humiliated for their inability to keep the commitment that they had already made. The most important consequence would be that the powerful pchairman’s wrath would fall on Hasan’s family with the result that it might be difficult for them to live in that village. Hasan finally gave in to the pressures put on him from various quarters. The mawlavi shaheb was ready to perform the wedding. By the time the mawlavi shaheb completed the wedding ritual, it was late in the evening. The chairman and the entire gathering heaved a sigh of relief.
Hasan never saw or had heard about the girl that he had just married, before the actual wedding. After dinner Hasan was brought to the interior of the chairman’s house for what we call rusumat ceremony. At this ceremony the newly married couple, surrounded by dozens of women, see each other’s face for the first time in a mirror. The wife sits on the husband’s left. They look at their reflection in a mirror held in front of them. The wife’s eyes usually remain demurely closed. At the persuasion of her lady friends she finally opens her eyes to see her husband’s face in the mirror. The husband is usually asked by the women, “What have you seen?” As far as I know, the usual answer is, “I have seen the moon.” In the olden days, the moon was supposed to be very beautiful. Now, after man has gone to the moon we know that it is not as beautiful as we thought in the past. I do not know if modern husbands still give the same answer the way that the husbands did in the olden days.
Hasan left for the train station immediately after the rusumat ceremony. He was going to write his final examination in a few days. Hence he had to come to Dhaka without delay. He told me all that had happened in the village when I met him at the residence of the University. I asked him how his wife looked. He said, “The colour of her face is rouge.” I was a little suspicious of the rouge colour of her face. How could the skin of a Bengali girl be rouge?
We completed our examinations. Hasan went home after the examination and met his wife. On his return to Dhaka a few days later I asked him again, “How does your wife look?” This time he started weeping. He found his wife not beautiful at all. The rouge colour was the make-up with which she was decorated on the rusumat night, and he saw her face in a dim light of an open kerosene lamp. He also found his wife to be illiterate and not very intelligent. Hasan wept all his life for having to live with the woman whom he never liked. He is now a great-grandfather; yet even today he expresses his sadness to me when he talks about his wife.
Hasan is a man of patience. Hence he somehow managed to spend more than fifty years of his life with the woman whom he never wanted to marry. The case of another man whom we shall call Abul Kalam of our bari was different. He completed grade four at the elementary school of the village. His work at the Water Supply Department of the Barisal city offered him plenty of time to read. He read many books on Bengali drama and watched many movies in the cinema Halls of Barisal town. He dreamt of marrying someone as beautiful, intelligent and loving as the characters in the movies that he watched. However, his reality proved to be very different. As usual his father and other relatives arranged his marriage with a girl of our neighbouring village. His father sent me to the place of Abul’s work to inform him of his impending marriage. I said to him, “Your marriage has been arranged. The wedding will take place tomorrow night. Please come home before sunset tomorrow.”
Abul came home the next day. In the evening the bridal party of which I was a part took him to the house of the girl two-and-a-half miles from our home. The mawlavi shaheb performed the wedding. After dinner we returned home with the newly-wed couple that night. I was 13 years old at that time.
Abul soon found out that his wife was not as beautiful as his dream movie actresses, nor was she very intelligent. Within a short time he lost his mind. He was completely unconscious of his surroundings. He spoke nonsense all the time. He refused to eat or drink. Some of us young men pulled him down on the ground, opened his teeth with a large spoon and pushed food and drink in his throat. We also kept him tied to a tree with an iron chain. We were afraid that he would jump in the ponds and drown himself. It was very hard for us to keep him alive for one full year. Finally we heard that someone near Calcutta in West Bengal found in a dream a medicine that cured ‘madness’. In those days the relationship of Pakistan with India was so bad that it was almost impossible for us to go to West Bengal to fetch that medicine. However, we were lucky. We could bring the medicine from West Bengal with the help of a generous Hindu friend. The medicine consisted of the roots of a particular tree. A young friend of mine and I ground those roots on pata-puta (stones used for grinding spices) to produce a paste. We fed Abul with that paste. A miracle happened. Soon after we pushed the paste into his throat, he fell asleep. He was in deep sleep for two days and two nights. We kept on feeding him in his sleep as we did in the past. On the third day he woke up and said, “Where am I? What has happened to me?” He had no memory of what had happened to him during the last one year.
Abul got back his job with the city. I went to his place of work during my visit to Barisal a few years ago. He had eight to ten children by then. A couple of his daughters had reached a marriageable age. It was time for Abul to give those daughters in marriage. I saw him in a state of desperation. He told me that with his meagre income it was impossible for him to feed and clothe the large family. I found him especially worried about the expenses that he was required to incur in connection with the marriage of his daughters.
I came back to Montreal. A short time later I received a letter from someone saying that Abul committed suicide.
My nani (maternal grandmother) was a very beautiful woman. The colour of her skin was unusually fair. My mother and all her brothers and sister were also fair-skinned. My nana (maternal grandfather) told me that he wanted his sons to be married to very fair-skinned women so that he could see his ‘grandchildren glittering like solid gold when they played in the courtyard’ of his house. He succeeded in getting his first and second son married to fair-skinned ladies, and their children were born with fair skin. The marriage of his third son was much different. This time my nana found a woman in an out-of-the-way village some ten miles from his house. She belonged to a matubbar (village leader) family. Her skin was not that fair, but the children born to her later were fair-skinned because their father had fair skin. I was part of the bridal party that went to the house of the bride at the time of their marriage.
We rented a few small rowboats with canopies. In villages it was normal for a bridal party to start the journey a few hours late. Some people might not have returned from the town where they went to buy a pair of shoes. To get the entire group of people to gather at one place in order to start the journey was a difficult job. We travelled in the boats on the river the whole night through and arrived at the canal near the bride’s house by sunrise. We could see the matubbar house across the field. As usual the match-maker informed the matubbar family of the arrival of the bridal party. We expected that we would be received by the hosts and given breakfast. Nothing like that happened. Nobody came to see us. Noon came. We were still waiting to be received by the hosts. According to our tradition we could go to the host’s house only if they invited us formally. Many of us were almost dying of hunger. We had not eaten anything since we left home the previous evening. There was no store in the village from which we could buy food. We were then forced to ask some people of the village for some food. We were quite a few people. How could the villagers give a large quantity of food to so many people? We were lucky that the house of the famous Araj Ali Matubbar was nearby. His cousin’s wife was my father’s aunt. It is these relatives of mine who came to our rescue. They gave us muri (p uffed rice) and cocoanut. We somehow survived until we were finally taken by our hosts to their house late in the afternoon. After the wedding ceremony was completed we were served with foods. I can say that the dinner to which we were treated that day tasted especially delicious.
We had to take the long boat journey back to the house of the groom. By the time we arrived at his home, the muazzin recited azan for the fajr (dawn) prayer of that day.
I read the following incidents in the writing of my friend from Barisal Prof. Abul Alam who lives in Montreal. I heard villagers saying, “If nobody’s skull fractures or legs break in a wedding, what kind of a wedding is it?” Normally a fight broke out when, after dinner, the bridal party gave to the hosts all the gifts that the bridal party brought for the bride. If someone from the hosts’ side made a bad comment about the jewellery or clothes that were brought for the bride, there would be a harsh reaction from someone of the bridal party. One thing would lead to another, and the result would be a big fight between the two parties. Prof. Alam narrated stories of such fights.
Once in a wedding reception in the Uzirpur area of Barisal the bridal party was being served dinner. Usually the guests sat in rows on a long piece of cloth placed on the floor and a few relatives or friends of the host served foods to the guests. One member of the host family was serving some kind of food to a member of the bridal party. According to our tradition we are expected to receive something from another person by the right hand. Yet the guest received the food by his left hand. This behaviour infuriated the man serving the food and so he said something insulting to the guest. The guest retaliated and said that the food was so bad that it did not deserve to be received by the right hand. Now other members of each party started hurling insults at the people of the opposite group. As the situation was getting out of hand, the guest who received food by the left hand pulled up the slip of the shirt of his right hand. Lo and behold, he did not have a right hand. Once, while he was giving a bath to his cow in the river, a crocodile caught him by his right hand. As he was being taken into deep water of the river, he poked an eye of the crocodile very hard with the thumb of his left hand. Having been hurt in one eye, the crocodile released the man and swam away. However, he had bitten off the man’s hand and took it for its dinner.
Needless to say the people at the dinner party calmed down and completed the dinner peacefully.
The second incident reported by Prof. Alam is somewhat similar to the one I have just described. Again, there was a fight between two parties in a wedding. Suddenly a man of the host’s side fainted and fell on the ground. Now the people of both parties shifted their attention from their fight to the man in distress. Everybody was concerned about the well-being of this man. A short time later the man opened his eyes and smiled. He had feigned fainting to stop the people from fighting. All the people who gathered for the wedding had a good laugh.
The marriage of Israil Mollah was very unusual. He was my classmate at the High School at Barisal town. He was married at the age of three. When his father was on his death bed, he called his younger brother to his bed side and pleaded that after his death he should take care of his son Israil. The brother assured him that he would take good care of his young nephew. The dying man then said, “If you really mean it, I would like that you give your newly born daughter in marriage to my son.” He actually wanted to see that the wedding took place before he closed his eyes forever. That would assure him that his brother would definitely take care of his nephew son-in-law. Israil was married to his cousin immediately thereafter and they grew up together. He lived with his cousin-wife all his life. I met him many times after we finished High School together. Whenever the matter of his marriage or wife arose in our discussion, I saw tears rolling down his cheeks. He never liked the woman whom he married.
I knew a man who worked as a member of the non-academic staff of the University of Dhaka. We shall call him Rahim Mian. He was also married to his first cousin when he was three years of age. The circumstances that led to his childhood marriage were similar to those of Israil Mollah. The way he handled his married life was different from that of Israil. In his later life he took a second wife with whom he lived in the city. He kept his cousin-wife in the village home which he visited from time to time.
The subject of this article is marriage in villages. Yet I am going to tell you two stories that took place in the city of Dhaka. I think that the reader will like these stories.
A young and handsome man whom we shall call Khayrul Basher did very well in both his Honours and M. A. examinations in the University of Dhaka. Immediately after the results of his M. A. Examinations were published, he was hired as an assistant professor (then called lecturer) at the same University. Because he had the highest grades among all the Master’s graduates of the Faculty of Arts, he was awarded a merit scholarship to go to England for his Ph. D. degree. In the meantime he developed fascination for a girl whom we shall call Rafat Ara. Because she was very beautiful, gentle and intelligent, many young men of the University dreamt of marrying her. A student of mine at the Philosophy Department, Rafat was very close to me and my wife. She used come to our house from time to time to play with our newly born son Hamid. Khayrul told me about his desire to marry Rafat and requested that I present a proposal to Rafat’s father for this purpose. I always loved to make matches. Actually I made a few matches in my life. According to a Jewish belief, making matches is an act of religious merit. According to their belief, since the day God completed the creation of the world, He has been busy making matches. Hence making matches is helping God in His work. God will reward match-makers for their work to help Him.
Since I was a young teacher of the University, I thought that a Rafat’s father might not take my proposal for his daughter’s marriage seriously. I therefore requested Professor Kazimuddin of the Philosophy Department and my father-in-law Professor Ashrafuddin to bring the proposal to Rafat’s father. My teacher and later colleague, Professor Kazimuddin was was a man of great wisdom. He was highly respected by all the people of the University. My father-in-law was also a man of great honour in the community. At Prof. Kazimuddi’s request we all—Rafatr’s father, my father-in-law, Khayrul and I—met at Prof. Kazimuddin’s house. Rafat’s father knew that Khayrul was a young professor at the University. He asked Khayrul, “What are your plans for the future?” Khayul answered saying that he received the University merit scholarship to do his Ph. D. and that he would soon leave for England for that purpose. Rafat’s father then made the following comment in Bangla: “পি এইচ. ডি., ঠি এইচ. ডি. দিয়ে আমার মেয়েকে বিয়ে করতে পারবেনা I আমার মেয়েকে বিয়ে করতে হলে তোমাকে সি এস পি হতে হবে I তুমি সি এস পি হয়ে এসে আমার সাথে কথা বলবে I (You will not be able to marry my daughter with something as insignificant as a Ph. D. degree. Be a CSP and then come to talk to me.) We all parted with a heavy heart. Kahyrul was very much hurt by the comment of Rafat’s father. Actually he took his comment as a challenge. Hence he completed both his Ph. D. and CSP in England in a record two years’ time. Later he worked as a secretary of several ministries of the government of Bangladesh. Rafat was married to a rich man. Later she became a very influential politician of Bngladesh. A few years ago I was terribly shocked by the news of her untimely death.
My own marriage also took place in Dhaka. I hope that you will enjoy reading the story of my marriage.
As I mentioned above, I grew up in a village. My father wanted me to complete a grade 10 education from a High School, work as a teacher in an elementary school, and marry a village girl who after marriage would stay at my father’s house. I would be expected to give him most of my salary which he would spend on the family, and I would visit my wife and family from time to time. Fortunately or unfortunately, I did not fulfil his wish. I continued my education beyond grade 10, did not marry a village girl, and my wife did not live in my father’s house in the village.
I completed my Master’s degree in Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Dhaka in 1958, and immediately after that joined the same University as an Assistant Professor. At that time my life in a small room above the fourth-class employees’ residence of the Dhaka Hall was not very exciting. By nature I am unable to live alone. I therefore thought that marriage would improve the quality of my life. At that period of our history most marriages were arranged by relatives and others. I had asked all my young colleagues, relatives and friends of Dhaka to look for a wife for me. I carefully avoided my father’s involvement in the selection of a bride for me. I was sure that his choice would not be to my liking.
Normally I make decisions instantly and execute them immediately. Soon I realized that I could not do that in finding a wife. The wife of my teacher and colleague Professor Fakhruzzaman said to me, “Finding a wife is like fishing for a carp fish with a fishing line. You drop the line with bait and wait patiently for the fish to bite so that you can pull that in. Similarly, you have told us about your desire to get married. Wait patiently. We shall find a wife for you sometime in the future.” Actually a friend of mine asked her if she would be willing to propose to the parents of a girl known to her for my marriage with that girl. Her answer was a categorical ‘No’. She said, “The parents of the girl are very rich. They would like to give their daughter in marriage to someone with a great deal of money, a big house, a car, and so on. Abdur Rabb may be a very good boy with a good degree and a job at the University, but he is not wealthy. They will never give their daughter in marriage to him.”
I kept on asking people to find a wife for me. Once in the evening I was waiting for a bus at the bus stop near the Dhaka Hall. A gentleman named Prof. Maksudur Rahman of Barisal who taught Philosophy at Quaid-e Azam College came to the same bus stop. As I was teaching Philosophy at the University, I met him during his visits to the Philosophy Department. While waiting for the bus I told him about my desire to get married. He asked, “What are your requirements?” He meant to ask what kind of woman I wanted to marry. I said, “I would like to marry a good woman. She should be reasonably beautiful. She should also be reasonably intelligent so that if she has not had an education I would be able to send her to school.” Prof. Rahman was surprised by what I said. Months after that he said to me, “Since you had a good education and a prestigious job in the University I expected you to say, ‘the woman should be a paragon of beauty with a University degree, her parents and relatives should be very wealthy and highly placed in life, and so on.”
Prof. Rahman said, “If this is all that you want in your wife, I know a person who has a marriageable daughter. He would also like to have his daughter married to a young man who is a good person. He does not expect anything more of his future son-in-law. This gentleman, Prof. Ashrafuddin, is a colleague of mine teaching Arabic and Islamic Studies at the college where I teach. He is a saintly man and respected by all. He started teaching at our institution after his retirement from his position as a Professor of the Dhaka Government College. I have heard people describe his daughter Aishah as a golden girl. She is an Honours student of Bengali Literature at your University.”
What he said was so exciting to me that I said, “Let us go to Prof. Ashrafuddin’s house now.” We did not take the bus any more. We took a rickshaw instead to travel to Prof. Ashrafuddin’s house near the Katabon mosque in South Dhanmandi. His house was located about 100 feet from the old railway. I sat on the rails while Prof. Rahman went to his colleague’s house alone. A young man could not go to his future father-in-law’s house to talk about his own marriage. Prof. Ashrafuddin said, “First let the young man see my daughter in the University. Her Roll No. is 10. If he likes my daughter, we shall take further steps in the matter.”
The next morning I asked my Barisali friend Shajahan, who worked at the counter of the University Library, to inform me of the arrival of a student with Roll No. 10 at the Library. I told him the reason for which I needed this information. Aishah had no idea about what was happening. As usual, she came to the Library that morning with her head covered with a part of her white sari. According to the practice of the University at that time, a clerk had to go to the book shelves of the Library to get a particular book. As soon as she asked for a particular book, the clerk said, “Please wait. We shall need a few minutes to find that book.” In the mean time my friend Shahjahan sent someone to give me the news of her arrival at the library. I hurried to the Library. I had a glance at her from a distance. I was shy. Hence I could not go close to her to have a good look at her. I had many female students in my classes, but the present situation was different. This time I was looking at a woman with the intention of making a decision to marry her. The same day I informed the match-maker Prof. Rahman that I liked her and that, therefore, I wanted to marry her.
Now it was the turn of my future father-in-law to see me. The next day he came to the University for that purpose. I met him face to face on the corridor near my office. I was going to my class with a student register in hand, and he was coming from the opposite direction. We looked at each other and went to our separate destinations. I had a hunch as to who he was and why he came to the area of the Philosophy Department. He went to the office of Prof. Kazimuddin whose name has been mentioned above. After I joined the Department as a teacher, he became my colleague. It so happened that he was also a teacher of Prof. Ashrafuddin. Prof. Ashrafuddin told him about the proposal of his daughter’s marriage to me, and asked him his opinion about me. I want to say a word before I say what Prof. Kazimuddin said. I have always been an ordinary man who only tried to be good. What Prof. Kazimuddin said about me was due to his sincere love for me. These are the exact words that he said: “Ashrafuddin, I have raised Abdur Rabb with my own hands during the last few years. He is an exceptionally good boy. It is Allah’s rahmat that you found a young man like him. Ask no more questions about him. Close your eyes and without any hesitation give your daughter in marriage to him.”
Prof. Ashrafuddin made up his mind about giving his daughter in marriage to me. Later in the evening the same day he told his sons about his decision. They all refused to accept his decision. His second son Ziauddin Ahmad who later became a professor of Islamic History said,“Sometimes the young people, although already married to someone in the village, get dazzled by the sight of modern women of the city and take a second wife. We have to go to his village to check if he already has a wife.” The next day they were all ready to leave for my village in Barisal by a steamer (a huge paddle boat with steam engines built by the British in the 1920’s). Just before they were leaving for the steamer station, their father said, “I shall not let you go. My Allah says that everything is all right.”
The same week my colleagues at the University, Mr. Joynal Abedin who married Hajera Begum, and some of my relatives, including my father, went to the house of Prof. Ashrafuddin for the engagement ceremony. I also came along with the group. I told Mr. Abedin ahead of time that there would be no discussion about who would give what as wedding gifts because neither party had any demand whatsoever. This made him very angry. He then decided not to attend the engagement ceremony. He felt that as someone belonging to the strong position of the groom’s side he had the right to demand many things from the father of the bride. I told him politely but forcefully that I was interested in marrying a human being and not somebody’s wealth. He finally agreed not to discuss the matters of give and take.
Prof. Kazimuddin had a strong practical sense. He said that since there was no disagreement about anything between the two parties, the wedding could take place right then. All the people of the gathering except Mrs. Akhtar Imam, the powerful provost of Rokeya Hall, agreed to accept Prof. Kazimuddin’s proposal. She said, “I vehemently oppose the idea of celebrating the wedding tonight. Marriage is a very important event in the life of a girl. She needs a great deal of psychological preparation for this event. You men just cannot come from the blue and tell a girl, ‘Hey girlie, you are going to be married right now.’ I am sure that if the girl’s mother were alive today, she would never have agreed to have her daughter married in that manner. You will hold the wedding tonight over my dead body.” Mrs. Imam was my teacher and colleague at the Philosophy Department. She had also been a close friend of Aishah’s late mother. Everyone present saw the logic and force of her argument. The date of the wedding was set two weeks from the day of the engagement.
In the 1950’s female students of the University waited in the corridor at the door of classrooms until the Professor had gone in, and sat on the front benches close to the teacher. They were afraid of teasing by male students if they entered the classroom in the teacher’s absence. Incidentally, in the olden days long before I joined the University if a student talked to another student of the opposite sex, he or she had to pay a fine of 10 rupees. This reminds me of the fine of $1.00 that we had to pay if we spoke English when I studied French at University of Montreal in 1965. During the two-week period between our engagement and wedding, Aishah’s female friends had fun hiding her from my view. While waiting in the hallway at the door of a classroom, they surrounded her in such a way that I could not see her while passing in the same corridor.
I had a student from Barisal named Harun Rashid. I brought him to the Philosophy Department and he remained close to me all his life. Later he received a degree of Doctor of Philosophy from an American University and taught as a professor in Montreal until his untimely death a few years ago. His death has been a great loss to his family, me and the Bangladeshi community of Montreal. Harun attended some classes that Aishah attended at the University of Dhaka. Once I asked him to talk to Aishah a little to find out the kind of person she was. The same day he stopped her after a class and had a little chat with her. On her arrival at home she told her big brother about what had happened at the University that day. The big brother Baharuddin Ahmad, then a student of English Literature at the University who later became a Joint Secretary in a few ministries of the Government of Bangladesh, was infuriated by what he heard from his sister. The next day he came to the University, found Harun Rashid, held him by the color of his shirt and was about to give him a good beating. Vey scared and shaking, Harun told him that he talked to his sister because Prof. Abdur Rabb asked him to do so. That statement actually saved his neck that day.
All the preparations of the wedding was made. Since I had meagre financial resources, I bought only a few items of wedding gifts for my wife: a red silk sari, a gold titli to wear on the partition of hair on her forehead, etc. Her father gave a lot of things in terms of jewellery and clothes to both of us.
In the evening before the day of wedding, that is, just a few hours before we actually got married, I went to my future in-law’s house. There I met Aishah’s brother Baharuddin Ahmad. I asked his permission to talk to his sister for a few minutes. My intention was to talk to her for mere five minutes so that I could tell my friends later that I actually spoke to my wife before I married her. Although he had studied Shakespeare, Milton and other English writers and thus had a good knowledge of western life, he said, “Boys can talk to our girls only after they are married.” I had to wait some 24 hours before I got a chance to talk to her.
Our wedding took place at the courtyard of Prof. Ashrafuddin’s house before Friday prayers of November 13, 1959. As was usual, Aishah was not present at the wedding. She gave her consent to marry me through her father who acted as her representative at the wedding. When the question of mahr (dowry) came, my father-in-law wanted to mention ten thousand rupees in the marriage document. My father on the other hand mentioned the figure five thousand. Finally the mahr was set at five thousand rupees. After our marriage I entered my father-in-law’s house as a ghorjamai (live-in son-in-law). The arrangement worked well both for me and my father-in-law’s family. My wife had lost her mother when she was eight. Her father never remarried. He lived with three sons and one daughter, my wife. It would have been very difficult for him to manage the family if there was no woman in the house. The arrangement worked very well for me too. As a young teacher who had to help his father financially, I had limited means at my disposal. The fact that I did not have to pay rent for an apartment for us at that time brought us tremendous financial relief. I also enjoyed the love, affection and extraordinary care of all the members of my father-law’s family.
My wife Aishah and I have had an excellent life together. It is because of her love, care and support that I have achieved whatever I have achieved during the last 52 years of our marriage. Our children inherited their mother’s intelligence. Her extraordinary love and care helped them to grow up as good and significant human beings. You remember that people called her a golden girl. Those people were slightly wrong. Actually I have found her to be a diamond girl.
