Page:Indira and Other Stories.pdf/11



last I was being conveyed to my husband's home. My nineteenth birthday was past, and yet, contrary to Hindu customs, I had never left the home of my childhood. Why? The explanation is simple. My father was wealthy, my father-in-law poor. A few days after the wedding—I was only a child at the time—my father-in-law, in accordance with custom, sent people to fetch me away, but my father refused to part with me. "Let my son-in-law", he said, "first learn how to earn his own living. How can he maintain a wife under existing circumstances?" When this message was conveyed to my husband, he was much hurt and offended, (he was then only twenty years old), and he made a vow that he would set to work to earn a livelihood for us both. He set off for Western India. In those days there was no railway, and travel was difficult and dangerous.