-Shrikrishna Gautam

There is a saying in Humla: “If a boy wants to make friends with a girl, it might take him a year, but if a girl sets her eyes on a boy, she can get him in a second.” Deserting a husband and living with the man of one’s own choice is not disapproved of and frowned upon in there. A girl is free to make her own decision about who she is going to marry if she dislikes the groom of her parent’s choice. She may change as many husbands (a Hindu mythological story) as she likes while she is young and desirable, so for Chhetri women in Humla, there is a great deal of freedom.

Thus, in Humla, the husband of a young and pretty wife has to be very watchful, the more if his wife is a flirt. He dares not displease her lest she desert him. A man whose wife has eloped with some other man is looked down upon by his kin and friends, and a man with whom a woman of many husbands has been staying steady will be boastful of his own powers. “I am the man with whom, Draupadi, who has deserted five husbands, is staying content, not like you whose wife has eloped with another man,” he might say.

Enmity between two families is known to have gone on for years due to wife stealing. The wife stealer is known as jar, illicit lover, and the ex-husband as sadhu, the innocent. Some sadhus will never accept jari as it hints that the sadhu has conceded defeat, and desertion by a wife may cause wounds that do not heal in a lifetime.

Feeling deeply wronged, some sadhus go on to seek the assistance of demigods or demons like the vayu, the ethereal being, and Asura demons. They make goat sacrifices and implore the sprits that the woman and her lover may have no children. Before the demigods are asked to intervene, the dispute may be settled by the families, and no help is sought from outsiders. But after the spirits and demons are evoked, kin may panic and go to the nearest police station or the district adminstration.

Since I was officiated by the government to Humala for some time, I had to play judge in one such case. A young man had eloped with the wife of an influential shaman: they had been married for five years and looked like a happy couple. Aggrieved that no proper jari had been fixed, the shaman went to the temple of the Gura demon who is believed to have the powers to cause instant death. He asked the chief priest of Gura that the lovers be made barren. When they came to know of this, the lovers were scared and rushed to the District Police office and asked the officer-in-charge to intervene. The police summoned all the parties concerned. Both husbands, their kin, the wife, and her parents came in , and negotiations began.

The wronged husband said several times that he would neither consent to receive jari nor agree to take the curse back. Socially, both the families were important, and it was undesirable that they harbor animosity. When police efforts bore no fruit, I was asked to intervene. My sympathies lay with the wronged husband, but I could not force him to accept a jari as the wrath of Gura might fall upon me too. I assured him he had the right to demand that his villainous rival be punished.

I wanted him to tell me what it was that would make him feel he had been given justice. He demanded to virgins was wives to compensate for the loss, and the chief priest of Gura nodded approval. This demand was very unusual. I turned to the present husband. “How can I give him two virgins?” he asked pitifully. Then I turned towards the girl. “I have no sisters. How can I get him two brides?” she protested.

“Only when I receive the wives can I pray to Gura to take the curse back, “ said the wronged husband. This time, too, the chief priest nodded. There seemed no way out. But I did not yet know why the wife had deserted her husband, who looked healthy and well built. Why had she opted for a boy instead?

For the first time I rested my eyes on the girl. She was healthy, beautiful, appealing, and rather shy. She didn’t look like a woman who would change her husband for a trivial cause. She rather looked like one of those who are attached to their husbands for life. Why would such a women desert her husband?

“What was it that made you take another husband?” She did not speak for a long time, as if she had not heard me. Then, very slowly, in bits and pieces, she narrated her story. For all the five years of their marriage, he had always avoided her. So many times she had approached him, but every time he had an excuse to go somewhere else or do something else. Yes somehow I had sensed something amiss all along.

“Do you have anything to say about this?” I now demanded of the husband. With bowed head and downcast eyes, he had to swallow this most bitter pill. The woman had made it clear to everybody present that it was not she who was guilty. It was the former husband who was not a man.

He was still demanding a replacement for his lost wife, though his ego had been punctured. His obstinacy forced me to say something not too polite and not too civil, but it served him right.

“I give you one more day to consummate your marriage with this wife of yours. I assure you, I will send her with you if you prove your virility to her.”

To make the long story short, the husband finally agreed to receive jari from his rival. The chief priest, too, had to admit that justice had been done-and so the curse of Gura was redeemed.