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Shashi Deshpande writes about a dressing table that has been with her family for three generations

Scroll | February 16, 2026 2:40 PM CST

A Hindu marriage is considered a sacrament. Ironically, however, an arranged Hindu marriage is often preceded by most business-like negotiations, the marriage being regarded as finalised only when the two parties, the bride’s family and the groom’s, reach a satisfactory agreement. In all matters the groom’s family has the upper hand; the bride’s family has but to concur with their wishes. This is how it was and, in many cases, still how it is.

By the standards of arranged marriages of the time, my parents’ wedding, which took place nearly 90 years back, has to be looked at as an oddity. In spite of having heard the story of their marriage and of having read about it in the book my mother wrote on her life with her husband, for me, the mystery still remains: why did her family, a very well-to-do family, get her married to a man who had nothing but the salary he earned as a lecturer in a government college? Equally damning should have been the fact that he didn’t seem to have a family; he came for the wedding with just a few friends. That he had cut himself off from his family because he could not...