An Old Man and His Young Wife

Chapter 3

A moderately beautiful girl of twenty-five, Anuradha from the city of Jorhat had a tragic life on personal front. Her mother died when Anuradha was only two years, when her mother was to deliver her second baby. Both mother and the newly born baby died simultaneously leaving Anuradha as an orphan as her father did not wait for even a year to tie the nuptial knot for the second time with another village spinster.

Anuradha’s father was a clerk in the Jorhat Deputy Commissioner’s office and was an influential official in the father’s locality situated about thirty KM from Jorhat. Therefore, getting a spinster as his second wife was not a problem for him. After his marriage to his second wife Pranati, Anuradha was sent to her maternal uncle’s place. At that time, her grandparents were alive and therefore she was properly taken care of for the next five years till his grandfather expired.

After death of his grandfather, she started to feel the heat of an orphan. As at the death of her grandfather, her grandmother had to lose the prime position of the family matters to the wife of her eldest son, her protective cover for Anuradha started waning. Within a year, Anuradha became an unwanted person in her maternal uncle’s place. Finally, she was bundled out of the grandmother’s place and was sent back to the unwilling father’s residence, when her grandmother also expired after two years of the death of her grandfather.

Hardly, she was kept in her father’s place for a month or so, then she was again shuttled to her father’s native place, Teok some thirty KM away from her father’s official residence. Her grandmother from her paternal side kept the eight-year-old granddaughter for the next seven years till she passed her matriculation examination. Then she was again bundled out from her grandmother’s place and forced into her father’s place, Jorhat.

From that day onwards, she was staying in her father’s place, a virtual hell for her. She could not pass even a single day without a fight with her stepmother, stepbrother and stepsister. Her father never stood on her side during the entire period of her stay in that hell. She wanted to leave her father’s place every day, but had to stay back, as she had no alternative place to go. After passing out of degree course, she wanted to go to Guwahati or Dibrugarh to pursue her masters. But her father refused to bear the cost of further education and having no alternative she had to stay back. Then she started taking tuitions of school children to meet the expenditure on her bare minimum needs.

Anuradha is a moderately beautiful girl and therefore, there was no dearth of suitors for her. But she was not interested in those unemployed and underemployed youths. She did not want to go from a frying pan to a fire-place. In other words, she did not want to change her postal address from Hell No-1 to Hell No-2.

When she saw the advertisement for seeking an alliance for Bitopan, she was more than interested to jump into the bandwagon of girls interested to marry Bitopan.

There were many reasons why Anuradha was interested to marry Bitopan. First and foremost was that he had a decent job by any standards. Second most important factor was that he did not have a mother and therefore wife of Bitopan would be free from the expected atrocities of a mother-in-law. Third, they would be living in Delhi which might be a dream place for a girl living at a small district headquarters of a district of Assam. Fourth, she would be out of reach of her father’s family.

When, Bitopan out rightly rejected her because of her educational background, she was hurt. She thought to contact, Bitopan directly, but she did not have his phone number or email address. Therefore, she telephoned Himangshu Barua to request him to reconsider her case. But she did not get any assurance from Himangshu Barua also to reconsider her case by his son. Then she sent an email to Himangshu Barua.

‘Dear Sir,

In response to your advertisement for your son’s marriage, I just want to inform you that I am interested with the profile of your son. But you have already informed me that he is not interested in me. But I am writing this email with a request to reconsider my case.’

Anuradha was not figured in the original short list of five willing girls for his son. Therefore, Himangshu Barua did not want to respond to the girl as his son has already told him that he was interested to marry a girl having an engineering degree so that both of them could work in some similar environment. Even if the girl would not be from engineering background, at least she should be from science background. So naturally, Anuradha did not fulfil the essential criteria laid down by Bitopan and Himangshu knew that Bitopan would not change his minimum qualification criteria for an unknown girl.

‘Dear Anuradha, I am really sorry to inform you that my son is not interested to marry a girl from arts background. I do not want to hurt your sentiment. I am sure you will get a suitable boy for you in due course of time.’ Himangshu replied back. Himangshu’s reply was not at all diplomatic in nature.

After a day, to Himangshu’s surprise Anuradha emailed again.

‘I am habituated to get such type of replies for the last few years from the employers where I have applied for jobs or from the guardians of possible grooms having good jobs and good family backgrounds. My step mother always makes fun of me at every refusal I have to face in my life. My life will go on like this. Do not feel bad, I am not hurt.’

The email actually hurt Himangshu Barua instead. He wrote back, ‘I lost my wife more than ten years back. I did not marry again, anticipating that, my son would also suffer like you, had I brought a step mother for him at that time. Your father should have avoided a second marriage at that time at least.’ He concluded.

‘Everyone cannot sacrifice own comfort for others.’ Anuradha replied instantly.

Initially, Himangshu Barua thought Anuradha was a shameless girl who blatantly advocated her case for marriage. But reading her second and subsequent emails, he understood the justification of her desperateness to come out of the hell she was living.

Their exchange of email becomes frequent and both of them liked each other’s email more than anybody else’s. Then one day she telephoned him again. After few rounds of telephonic talks, Himangshu became so sympathetic to the girl, he decided to meet the girl at her home town.

This continued for a month and Himangshu stopped thinking about the marriage of his son for the time being. Bitopan also became happy as his father reduced the pressure on him to marry a girl soon; though he was unaware of the latest development in his father’s life.

Himangshu realized that he started to sympathize Anuradha. But he did not know why he sympathizes Anuradha, was it only because his son rejected her unceremoniously or due to some other reasons? After some days, he realized not only he had sympathy for her but he had also a liking for her.

Himangshu Barua finally decided to meet Anuradha in person in her district HQs.