A letter to Sri Aildas Hemnani

To
Sri Aildas Hemnani,
Manju Sanskar Kendra,
Bhopal

Dear Sri Hemnani,

A thousand pranams. First of all, I'd like to apologize for taking the liberty to write to you - I understand that women are not supposed to know how to read or write unless its absolutely essential for the family, but I assure you that this is not my fault. My parents have no respect for our ancient culture and they sent me to an immoral school(can you believe that they had boys and girls in the same classroom?) where they taught me a number of useless subjects such as Science, History and English. I also understand that I am not supposed to write to a complete stranger, that too to a man, but again, its all my parents' fault. If they knew that I wanted to join your school, they would probably shut me up somewhere and never let me out.

My wedding has been set for December, the 5th of this year to a Bengali man who I will refer to as Bill. As I am a traditional bharateeya nari, I cannot bring myself to call my future husband by his given name and so I came up with Bill which sounded very respectful. I must tell you that I got the name from an English movie where Bill, the hero, assembles an assassination squad to kill the woman who crossed him (like any self-respecting Indian man). I hope you never see what happens next in the movie. I must also confess here that I have met my Bill mumerous times but mostly against my wishes. Both Bill and my parents have ganged up on me and they claim that the bride and groom should actually get to know each other before they get married. I know I am not even supposed to see his picture before the wedding but what am I to do? When we were in college in this strange land, I would take care not to look up at any man but Bill would force me to look up at him. What am I to do? How could I disobey a man's orders? Am I not a proper Indian woman? And when I started getting all bad, bad thoughts about Bill - I tried, I really tried to control myself but you must remember that I did not have the benefit of attending your school then - I confessed to my parents and told them that I deserve a good thrashing and they should have gotten me married off to a nice, Tamilian boy when I was 13 years old. But what did they do? They decided to get me married off to Bill. Can you believe that?

Anyway, I do not dare disobey my family and so I will marry Bill. But since I have not received any training on how to be a proper wife, I am really afraid that things will go wrong. I just heard about your school from Uma, who plans to attend your school though she is already married. She has realised the error of her ways and would like to reform. I would also like to join your school and I really hope you would consider me. However, I do have a question for you - Do you happen to have a branch of your school in Kolkata? Because you see, the Bong families have their own ways of doing things - for example, they might sing Rabindra sangeet rather than bhajans; they might have special pujas to appease Durga ma; they might want the bride to cook fish all the time; since they are quite lazy, they might have sex only once a week; and since they wake up late, the early morning puja time may be different. So if you have a localized Bong bride school in Kolkata, I'd definitely prefer that. Even if you don't have a school in Kolkata, I am atleast hoping that you can have a camp there maybe. I have heard there are thousands of clueless brides there just waiting for a school like this to happen.

Yours truly,
A soon-to-be Bride.