Introduction

In north India, there are many occasions when special happiness is marked by women singing in groups of varying sizes, usually with one of their number taking the lead by beating out the rhythm on a drum. Often, women’s songs touch ironically on important aspects of women’s lives. ¹ This wedding song—reflecting the bride’s point of view—would be sung by women at the bride’s house before a bride departed for her husband’s house. The rural economy throughout the region is so dominated by agriculture that being married to a “man who plows” would be precisely what happened to most women, however. For many brides, indeed, the plowman would be just an agricultural laborer and not an independent farmer, as only the fortunate could hope to be married into a family that owned enough land to keep it in comfort. In the north Indian villages that figure in this book, then, very few women could seriously expect to be married to a man in “service,” the local 2term for secure and preferably urban, white-collar employment. And even marriage to a man in service would not guarantee urban residence for his wife and family. Further, the singers’ raucous and assertive demands are far from what the typical village bride would express: She would neither have been consulted nor have made suggestions about how her parents would settle her in marriage for fear that her family would be dishonored by her brazenness or that allegations would begin circulating that she was having a clandestine affair. The appeal to the mother provides another layer of irony. Although some mothers were indeed central in the decisions about their daughters’ marriages, many were not consulted any more than their daughters were.