The child bride learns to read a story

Hiding under the bed
The child bride holds in her hands
A book of stories.

Next to her toys
The bride and groom
Draped in immaculate silk, in dreams of thatch and reed.

She tries to make out
Shapes of letters. The hiss of ‘sha’
The warmth of ‘ma’.

She finds patterns wherever she goes.
In the kitchen, in the dark of soot
While telling fish from bone.

Something flames in her, so fiery
An urge to learn, so deep
The unknown letters are all she knows.

They call her – from everywhere
From the bed and the dark trees outside.
Yet there’s no one to teach her.

One day, discovered in her crime
Reading under the bed, by a startled father-in-law
He wonders where she is headed.

It is only a book she is after
And letters fascinate her
More than anything the boys will ever learn.

She is quaking in fear.
He is leaning against the moment
That will shape her destiny.

He wonders what to do.
The moment passes.
He decides to teach her, to read and write.

He tells her about tools and meanings, journeys and meanderings.
He tells her she is free
To roam the world of letters.

Once begun, there’s no place she cannot reach.
The child bride becomes a mother
Learns her Homer and Shakespeare.

She writes long letters to her great granddaughters
Across the seven seas.
They become scholars and writers, poets and philosophers.

One of them tells her tale today
As another jogs past, in a sparkling tracksuit meant for morning
Confident as the future that arrives so early

Unaware of the rib tickling, the footsteps of those who listen.
Going beyond the life that only words can bring.
The child bride made all this happen, so carefully.

Note: Prof Radha Chakrabarty narrated a wonderful story about her great grandmother, Renuka Chakrabarti, one early spring in 2024 at IIC. This poem is inspired by her telling.