Chapter 5: An unlikely escape route

For Nasreen, going to New Delhi after running away from her family and the engagement they had arranged for her was a daring feat. But surviving there tested her resolve.

In the summer the heat dropped like a steam iron. In winter, air pollution was among the worst in the world, sticking to the skin and choking the lungs. In her family’s apartment, she cooked on a stove that provided extra heat and smoke. When she was able to go outside, she had to walk through a group of men lurking along the sidewalks.

Still, she thought it was worth it. Delhi inspired her to dream of a bigger life and connected her with people who could help her achieve it.

Nasreen found a community at the BUDS Center, run by a nonprofit organization, where she studied for the exams she was determined to pass to become her family’s first high school graduate. Other students offered solidarity in the struggle of being young, poor and female in the city, and a teacher there named Bindu became a mentor and protector.

Nasreen’s father refused to pay for school after she completed 10th grade, but Bindu managed to find a charity to fund most of the remaining school fees. Nasreen cleaned houses to scrape together the rest.

“Bindu, she is my second mother,” Nasreen said. “She gave me everything.”

At BUDS, Nasreen discovered that she had a talent for writing poetry. Her work seethed with frustration over misogyny and patriarchal constraints.

I’m a girl, and if you think I can’t do it, let me show you that I canone started.

If you think I am weak, let my cries tell you my strength.

If you think I can’t fight for myself, please leave me and let me reach the heights.

If you think I am nothing without your support, please let me rise on my own.

Nasreen started sharing her poems publicly and gained local fame.

“If she had been born in a rich family, she would have had every opportunity because her intellect is very high,” said her mother, Jasmeen. Her eyes filled with tears. “I regret that I couldn’t offer Nasreen anything.”

But Nasreen still wanted more freedom than her family would allow. After one argument, she said, she was denied food for two days.

At those moments, Bindu’s support kept Nasreen going. “She said to me, ‘If you need food, come to the center, you don’t have to worry about that,'” Nasreen said. “Even if I call her and cry for an hour, she is there.”

Nasreen knew she needed a way out. But writing poetry could not provide her with a steady income, and she was not qualified for professional jobs. She once worked briefly at a call center, but found it so unpleasant and low-paid that she quit after a month.

So she focused her career goals on a field that seemed more practical to her: sewing and fashion design. She hoped to open a fashion boutique that would earn enough income to grant her the security of financial independence.

Then suddenly Nasreen saw an opportunity for another way out, through a path she never expected: romance.

***

Aarif was the son of a close friend of her father. He promised that if Nasreen married him and moved to his village in West Bengal, he would help her study and then start the fashion boutique she dreamed of.

Here was the paradox of womanhood in modern India: sometimes the most direct escape from the oppression of patriarchy was marriage to a man willing to help challenge that system. A woman could enjoy the freedom her husband granted her, but he could take that freedom away at any time.

Nasreen knew that the promises of young men were not necessarily affordable money. But in this case, Aarif’s was backed by a slightly more reliable guarantee: that of his mother, who had progressive views and also promised to support Nasreen’s dreams.

“She lived in Delhi, and it really changed her mentality,” Nasreen said of Aarif’s mother. “She really supports me.”

Nasreen added, “She told me that ‘if your mother doesn’t help you with a fashion designing course, I will help you after marriage.'”

Once again Nasreen went against tradition. Marriages where the bride chooses her partner remain extremely rare in many parts of India. A large-scale study found that less than four percent of brides in North India chose their husbands.

But the survey also shows that more and more brides said they choose their husbands along with their parents, sketching the contours of a world in which young women have gained enough freedom to stretch the traditional system, but not enough to break it. breaking through.

Nasreen and Aarif did not want to get married without their parents’ permission, but they put heavy pressure on their families to grant permission. Aarif’s parents immediately agreed.

However, Nasreen’s parents said no and tried to arrange another marriage for her. “They tried to set me up wherever they could,” she said, but refused to consider anyone other than Aarif.

To win them over, Aarif found a job in a cloth factory and persuaded his father, who owned two houses in their village, to sell one and buy a plot of land where Nasreen could one day open her boutique. (The name of the store, she said shyly, would be #Dreams.)

Eventually, Nasreen’s parents gave in and her life changed.

***

In December, Nasreen emerged from a metro station in the center of New Delhi, a strikingly different figure from the scared teenager of two years before.

The engagement had reassured her parents. And with the support of her fiancé’s family, Nasreen was once again given the freedom to dress and behave as she pleased.

Now, instead of her usual headscarf, her long, dark hair hung bare, framing the dark eye makeup and red lipstick. She wore sparkling earrings and a form-fitting black kurta over jeans with white sandals. In the past, she would have been accompanied by one of her brothers, but now she traveled alone, in an invisible bubble of permission from her distant fiancé.

She had warned Aarif not to try to restrict her freedom after marriage. “If it concerns my self-respect, I will leave you immediately,” she said to him. “Because I have seen a lot and through a lot of struggle I became Nasreen. I’m not going back.”

She was proud that Aarif’s parents had reserved the small plot of land for her as mahr, an Islamic symbol of a marriage bond. After the wedding, it would be her property, and Aarif and his family promised to support her studies and her dream of opening her shop there.

But a promise is not a guarantee. When Nasreen moves with her new husband to the West Bengal village where he and his family live after the wedding, she is isolated from her support network.

She had sustained herself through the support of other women, including the former landlady who offered her shelter when she fled to New Delhi to escape her violent first engagement, and her teacher Bindu, who encouraged her to complete high school and to find her voice as a voice. poet. But she starts over in an unknown village.

There she will not have the mobility of living in a big city. Her opportunities to connect with other young married women, away from the gaze of elders, will be limited by conservative village norms. And even if her future husband and his family keep their promises to support her career, every venture is risky. A village boutique will have a limited market.

In June, a fire destroyed her apartment building in Delhi. She and her family managed to escape, but their home and belongings were destroyed, including all the gifts and money her parents had raised for the wedding. With their lives in Delhi in ashes, her family plans to return to the village she fled years ago. If Nasreen is not married yet, they expect her to come with them.

But Nasreen, whose extraordinary ability to escape the demands and expectations of others has brought her this far, tries to remain optimistic about her future. She remains determined to marry Aarif early next year.

Her dreams continue to result in her poetry.

If you think you can stop me with your anger, please note that kindness is not my nature. I am soft but not weak.

And please stop imposing rules on my dreams. I was born to fly, not to stand next to you.

Dear world, I’m a girl. Your approval is not necessary.

I’m a girl, and if you think I can’t do it, let me show you that I can.