Happily ever after

Forced into child marriage, a young tribal girl finds love as well as independence.

From L to R: Santana Murmu and Gobin Hemram.

When Santana Murmu first met Gobin Hemram, she was 13. He was a strapping young man of 20. He visited her house with a matchmaker. She liked him immediately, he was soft-spoken and good looking. “Like a hero from a Bengali film,” says Murmu, giggling. This was four years ago. Her village Kushmandi (South Dinajpur district in West Bengal) was yet to receive a proper electricity line. She had to walk 6 km to attend the nearest school at Manikore. Their next meeting was a bit confusing for Santana, who loved going to school. “It was not as if I was the brightest girl in my class, but I liked going to school. Gobin arrived with his parents and they gave me Rs 50. They said I will be married to him and I was quite happy about it really,” says Murmu. Slowly, she realised that her life was about to change forever. Her parents told her that her schooling would be stopped. “That really upset me but my father insisted that Gobin is a suitable groom,” she says.

For a young girl brought up in a Santhali village, everything leads to just one thing, marriage. Murmu was conflicted. She liked the idea of wearing pretty clothes and being the centre of attention. But she was reluctant to give up on education. She was also apprehensive about the man who had inflicted this new life on her. Her in-laws, however, treated her well, and let her be. “I would play all day and they wouldn’t complain as long as I did my chores,” says Murmu.

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Hemram was bent on winning over his new bride. “I knew she is the person for me the moment I met her. She had that spark in her eyes,” says Hemram, who works as a daily labourer. To make her happy, he started helping her out with household work, much to the chagrin of his parents. “They felt I was dominating him. Slowly, I started seeing him as a companion. I felt upset when he left home for work,” says Murmu.

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Soon enough, Murmu had her first daughter. It was a difficult pregnancy. Later, Phulmoni, a friend from the village and a volunteer with the child rights NGO, Child in Need Institute, CINI, told her that she should have had trained health staff deliver her child instead of a dai in a government hospital. “I felt bad. I felt I let her down,” says Hemram. Within a week of that conversation, Phulmoni took Murmu and Hemram to the local office of the CINI. “There I got to know that life would have been better for her had we not married early,” says Hemram, a Class V dropout.

The interaction changed her life. Murmu decided to become a volunteer with CINI and create awareness against child marriage in her village and many others in the district. Her work has won her recognition from UNICEF and has won her a civilian award from the West Bengal government. She has the full support of Hemram, who skips work for days to accompany his wife on tours. Last year in September, when Mormu got an opportunity to visit New York as a representative at the 70th United Nation General Assembly, her parents opposed her. “They were afraid that I would be sold off. They hid my voter ID card to stop police verification for my passport,” she says. During her stay in New York, Mormu would call up Hemram thrice a day. “Talking to him calmed me, it made me feel that I can do this,” she says.

In the two weeks that they spent apart, Hemram realised how his wife had changed his life. “Had I not met her, I would have led a life without meaning. Eat, sleep, work, raise kids and then die. We belong to the lower caste. Many people didn’t even let us enter their house. But today, thanks to Santana, people respect us,” he says.

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