Almond Eyes, Lotus Feet: Indian Traditions in Beauty and Health

1.

Marriage Mantra

I was born in Rajasthan in a small princely state. My father was its ruler, the Maharaja, and so I was a royal princess. When my five brothers were born before me, there was great rejoicing and beating of gongs. But when I was born, there was silence.

Rajasthan lies in the west Indian desert. It is a land of forbidding forts and great chivalry, but it does not welcome the birth of a girl any more than the rest of this land. I have heard that in Rajasthan, many newborn daughters were put in earthen pots and buried in the sands. That was before my time, but those were my people nonetheless: warrior caste Rajputs, sons of kings, sons of the sun and moon, according to legend. We are a race that takes the greatest pride in upholding honor.

I grew up hearing tales of Rajput women committing sati to avoid dishonor, burning themselves on their husband’s pyres to fulfill dictates of honor. That part did not appeal to me although we were supposed to esteem such dedication to husbands. I did question sati, but somehow I never questioned my status as a female, a creature of quiet submission. Everyone I knew took it for granted that women were under some male’s protection: their fathers and brothers until their marriage, their husbands after marriage, and their sons in their old age. It was understood that those men might do as they liked—short of fleeing from a battle—without incurring dishonor.

A Rajput’s ideal woman was Padmini. Padmini was a legendary princess of Rajasthan whose husband was captured in battle when she was still a young woman. Rather than submit to the desire of the conquering king, Padmini threw herself into the fire. She was brave and she was also exceedingly lovely. So my father, with great hope, named me Padmini.

Poor father! I didn’t live up to his expectations, I’m afraid. I was never very brave nor the least bit beautiful, but my mother always said that didn’t matter. A woman’s beauty, she said, was not just in her face, but also in her demeanor, in the goodness of her thoughts and her heart. My name means lovely lotus flower.

There was talk of my marriage from the time I was a child. A daughter and a bullock are always in bondage is one of our proverbs. Another says, Daughters: their coming makes you weep and so does their going. No one rejoices when females are born, but how everyone wails when the wedding is over and the bride departs with her husband to take up her new, married life. According to our customs, once a daughter is married, she no longer belongs to her father’s household. She is gone! She belongs to her husband and to his parents, and she must honor and obey them forever. A common saying is An unmarried daughter in the house is like an elephant. Marriage is not an option with us; it is an obligation. In their old age poor parents do not want another adult mouth to feed, nor do any parents want the shame of a spinster daughter, for it means they have failed in their duties to her. Sons on the other hand are very useful. They earn, support their elderly parents, and, when the time comes, perform their parents’ death rites—something a daughter cannot do, according to our customs and traditions.

Daughters are expected to leave. So for many reasons the status of married women—we call them suhagan—is much coveted. That is why we Hindu women very proudly wear our tilak, the spot on our foreheads, which shows that our husbands are still living. Even unmarried young girls wear the tilak spots because we believe that though she may not yet be married, every young woman’s future husband has already been born and awaits her somewhere. At all cost women must show the world that they are not widows! They wear their bangles and their mangalsutra necklaces (our form of wedding rings) proudly and conspicuously. Even if her marriage is unhappy, she wears them, because the worst fate that can befall a woman is widowhood. As a widow so many things are forbidden. Not just the tilak or tikka, the mangalsutra and the bangles, but also the wearing of colored clothes, the eating of spicy foods, and, in the olden days the company of others. A woman without a husband is like a field without an owner. Long ago it was considered unlucky to look upon a widow’s face because doing so could spoil your whole day!

So my granddaughter says I did well to come away from Madanpur and the palace when Grandfather died. Bombay is a much freer place. I do not think of myself as a widow living here. I even wear a small tikka, though I haven’t the right, because the memory of my husband is with me still and he would have wanted it thus—just as he wanted me to give up purdah when we married.

Purdah is something Miss Blake never approved of, though I think she may have come to enjoy it. Purdah means curtain. Indian women lived as though behind a curtain, sheltered from the eyes of the world. Purdah was not originally an Indian tradition. It came several centuries ago with the Muslim invasion of this country. Muslims kept their women in a zenana—a women’s quarter. Miss Blake used to call it a harem. Technically our faces, not to mention our bodies, were not to be seen by any but our husbands. In our day, the rules were not so strictly enforced, but there was a time in Indian history when the rules were so extreme that a woman would boast that not even the eye of the sun had ever seen her sheltered face. In Madanpur we never took things that far! We kept our heads covered with the ends of our saris or long scarves called odhnas or dupattas that we wore with long skirts and tight-fitting blouses.

We were certainly modest in the presence of our elders or any of the men in our house, and only went out in cars with elaborate curtains and rail carriages with tinted windows. Whenever we went from the palace to the car, we were screened by a small mobile tent! It seems absurd now, sitting here in Bombay and moving, as I do, quite freely. But I know women of my age who long for purdah and miss covering their heads and faces like they did when we were royal zenana ladies.

Young bride from Hyderabad

HEMLATA JAIN: Raja Deen Dayal

I’ve made a point of all this because then it is clear why we made so much fuss over our brides and why a girl’s whole youth was devoted to learning how to be an excellent wife. As young girls we had little time for formal education; we were taught as much as the women around us knew. I was lucky—I had Miss Blake to teach me because both my father and father-in-law agreed that I should be educated. Most women learned only by example. Village girls learned their mother’s tasks very quickly: sweeping, cooking, caring for the smaller children, and observing the many religious rituals, however elaborate or simple.

Palace women, however, knew little of such things. Work was left to our servants and maids. We very rarely did physical work or any form of exercise, first because it was considered beneath our dignity, and second because of purdah. Our education had much more to do with etiquette and demeanor. We learned respect for our elders, modest speech and action, and perfect execution of all the pujas or religious rituals. These seemed to fill up the whole year.

We also had to learn the sola sringar, the sixteen arts of beauty and adornment that every accomplished woman should know. I can’t remember them all now, but they included bathing with various earths and unguents, anointing oneself with different oils, braiding the hair in a variety of styles, and rubbing scented essence into the body. We were also taught the art of adorning oneself and one’s garments with jewels, how to wear caste marks correctly, and the appropriate dress for every season and occasion. Further, we learned to decorate our hands and feet with henna designs, to weave various types of flower garlands, and even the art of preparing and eating paan. Paan is the betel leaf into which we package spices and pastes and pop into our mouths throughout the day, like other cultures smoke cigarettes or take snuff.

We were taught all these things, but we were never taught about matters like menstruation! I find that hard to imagine now, because I grew up surrounded by women. I was engaged to be married at the ripe age of six, but nobody thought to tell me so much as one fact of life, not even my maids or my beloved aunties! They also betrayed me in this respect although I had always thought we shared everything like sisters.

Now that I have met so many other women throughout the country and have had a chance to talk to them, I realize I was not alone in my ignorance in thinking, when my first periods came, that I was suffering from some sort of shameful disease. I’m sure village girls knew much more about the birds and the bees than palace women did, though my maids still protest that they don’t know much.

In any case, it was a favorite aunt who enlightened me when at last I gathered enough courage to tell her that I had been bleeding for three days and was surely dying. After she had reassured me and explained everything, I finally understood so many incidents which until then had totally mystified me.

You see, Hindus consider a menstruating woman to be unclean. She must remove herself to a special room for three days and can have no physical contact with anyone, because her very touch would be polluting. According to our traditions, she cannot bathe for those three days and she must eat out of separate dishes. There is no question of her going into the puja room or kitchen. To this day, people will swear that a menstruating woman can spoil certain foods and make them unfit for eating, just by touching them with her hand!

As soon as my aunt explained about menstruation, then the whole thing began to make sense. Finally I understood the mystery of those poor women huddled into that small room. The maids forbade me to go there, telling me all those women had to sit apart from us because they’d been polluted by the touch of a crow. Imagine!

The crow is always the culprit in India! People blame crows for all sorts of things. When I was a little girl, I listened to the story but I refused to accept it. Once I went into the forbidden room in defiance of everybody. I hugged my favorite aunt who was sitting there and, to my great shock, she pushed me away. Before I knew what had happened, she’d stripped off my clothes and sent me off with the maid for a bath.

I wept with humiliation but never understood her action until my time came to sit in that room. You sat for three days and on the fourth, had a bath, washed your hair and performed a little ritual puja. After that you could do anything you liked. It was the same for every Hindu woman, whether princess or a peasant. The custom is still followed in many rural areas. The whole thing became a little less offensive to me when I realized that those three days of isolation were probably precious to hard-working women as the only respite they ever got from their unending succession of household tasks.

Still, I have a grudge against crows!

In the wisdom of old age, I have come to understand—if not to accept—the rationale behind so-called child marriage. Our society sets much store by virginity. Parents were naturally anxious to see that they delivered their daughter intact to her groom, so the sooner, the better, they felt. And perhaps they were right. The code of ethics was so strict that a bride could be rejected, a new marriage broken, if there were any reason at all to question that bride’s virginity.

Muslims are particularly strict in these matters. In some parts of India, members of the groom’s family actually stand outside the bedroom door on the wedding night, waiting to be shown a fresh stain on a white handkerchief, which is kept under the bride’s pillow especially for that purpose. If it is not stained, God help the bride’s family. That is ground for instant annulment and the girl will have no second