Dear Follower,
Hello. I will take off from where I stopped my narration yesterday. I was writing of the period preceding my birth in Kashmir. As I mentioned in my previous post, the money supply was very low and the jobs were sparse. Somehow people were making their ends meet. In such a scenario, parents of very young girls would be always on the lookout for boys from families which would be more prosperous than them. When the boy and the girl would be very young, marriages were fixed, and solemnized. The boy and the girl would play with each other. There would be frequent occasions that the boy groom and the girl bride would be sitting on the laps of their parents and the marriage vows be spoken by the pandit jee. After the marriage would be over, the bride would go to her parents home. Years later, the bride would be sent to her in law's place.
The modern medical facilities were non existent that time. Thus there would be lot of death of women during childbirth. Also almost 30 percent of new born children would not survive beyond the first year of their lives. These facts defined the life that time. There would be many many cases when young man would become widowers. The widowers would go for a second and third marriage. I remember my grandfather would observe shradh of three mothers. This used to be common occurrence that time. The age of the second or third wife of the man would be lower than the age of his daughter or son born to his first wife. This was normal and accepted in the society. Being a second wife would mean lesser dowry and being a third wife even mean money for the parents of the girl - reverse dowry. And then there would be unlimited children because a man would never be sure about how many of them would survive. For parents, the son was insurance for their old age. Daughters were always considered liabilities. Also it was commonly held that a son lighting the pyre of his parents would ensure that the dead person would go to heaven. There were many cases that a person would get daughter on daughter waiting for a son to take birth. He would reach a dozen and would even remarry a second wife just to get a son.
When evaluating a person for marriage, the land holding of the boy's family would be a major factor. The number of walnut trees on the land would also be counted as a favourable item to determine the worth of the boy's family. There would be a norm for some girls also to be given a piece of land as dowry.
My grandfather on my mother's side had married twice. He had two children - my mother and her elder brother by first marriage. My mother's mother had inherited a piece of farming land. Upon her death, this land rights were taken over by her son (my mamajee) - my mother's brother. (Those days the inheritance would only be a son's right) Now unfortunately, my mama jee did not have a child of his own. This caused him worries. So that the land rights remain with the family, my mother gave me in adoption to her brother. This adoption was not looked at kindly by my father and the big joint family. If there would have been a mean streak in our family, we could have got ownership of land in my name because, on the records, I was his son. By the way, I remember having gone to the village once with my Mama Jee. I must have been five or six years old then. It was located in Ganderbal Tehsil. The land was non irrigated and the farmers (tillers called Kashtikaar in local language) would grow maize on the land. As per arrangement, the farmers would till the land, we would pay the government taxes for the land and also the cost of seeds and fertilizers. In exchange, we would be given half the produce. The tillers would be mean. They would hide around three fourth of the produce and show only one fourth to the owners. Then they would give half of that. Thus the owners would get one eighth of the total produce. In most cases, the input cost for the owner would far exceed the cost of the produce received. In short it would be a scam through and through for all the Hindu landlords. The case of Hindu landlords living in villages and adjacent to the land owned by them,would be different. They would be doing the tilling , sowing and harvesting by themselves. They would need helping hands which they would hire on daily basis. All their ladyfolk would also be working actively in the fields.
The arrangement about land as described above got a drastic change in 1950's when the government of the day introduced land reform. Most of the land of absentee landlords was taken over and distributed among the tillers without compensation. I would be writing a separate blog on this in coming days.
All Hindu ladies would get two "dejhors" on marriage. The two dejhors would be hanging from the two ears. The dejhors were made of gold. In earlier times these would be supported by a thread called "aath". In later days, the "aath" which was a cotton thread initially got replaced by golden chains. All married women would use it in Kashmir. (Much later the practice was discarded by the working ladies in Kashmir and rest of the country because there would be ruffians who would snatch it on lonely roads and crowded market place.) The snatching would cause bleeding and damage to the ear lobes of the lady wearing the dejhor. The dejhor would be used by poor families to be deposited with money lenders for money in difficult times.
Bye for today. Tomorrow I will cover the social gatherings and marriage functions and so on.
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