THE CURSED ‘BRIDE'

In Budhini, Sarah Joseph gives voice to the woman who paid the price for garlanding Nehru

- MINI P. THOMAS

Budhini

By Sarah Joseph

Translated by Sangeetha Sreenivasan

Published by Penguin Random House

Everyone called her ‘Nehru’s bride’. She was the one chosen to garland Jawaharlal Nehru, the then prime minister, and place a tikka on his forehead when he visited Jharkhand in 1959 to inaugurate the Panchet Dam built across the Damodar river.

Garlanding Nehru was considered a violation of the Santhal tribe’s traditions. The whispered conversation among the villagers became louder, and the 15-year-old was ostracised from her community. Being ‘Nehru’s wife’ even cost Budhini her job—she used to work for the Damodar Valley Corporation, carrying bricks for the construction of the Panchet Dam.

In her novel Budhini, Malayalam writer Sarah Joseph captures the travails of the Santhal girl. When Joseph set out on a journey to Panchet, little did she know that Budhini was still alive. For her, the trip was a pilgrimage of sorts. All she hoped for was to meet Budhini’s relatives and gather information about how she lived and died. But during a stopover in Dhanbad, she came to know that Budhini lived at the Damodar Valley Corporation Staff Quarters, or the D.V.C. Colony. “I got to meet her and it was amazing. She is now in her seventies. She is my age,” says Joseph.

It was Rajiv Gandhi who reinstated Budhini at the D.V.C after she lost her job. “Budhini now receives a pension from the D.V.C. She lives with her daughter,” adds Joseph who first heard about the tribal woman from Civic Chandran, a poet and political activist.