A chosen path

Daniya pulls out stacks of clothes from her almirah—a blue sequined kurta,a white lehenga,and a bright green silk kameez. Daniya’s father Anwar Nafees,a tailor,had stitched all of them for the wedding. Among them is a white kameez he had stitched for Daniya’s first day in college. But that was before the “offer” came. “She had to get married one day. The offer came and we said yes. I have faith in the boy,” Daniya’s mother Ruby Anwar says.

Daniya says she likes rock climbing,was a kabbadi champion in school,and participates in street theatre and mushairas. Her first poem,she says,was on her mother,praising her for the hope she gave her daughters.

But today,as Daniya sat beside her grandmother Asifa Alvi,she was unlikely to have any hope to hold on to. “Girls in our family don’t study beyond Class XII. Daniya has learned her letters. The role of a woman is to attend to her house. What is the point of collecting degrees when you ultimately have to cook and look after your children,” says the 75-year-old matriarch.

Daniya’s grandmother,draped in her white dupatta,is the one who decreed that the granddaughter be married off. After all,the groom was known to the family and had a “good job” as a travel agent. This seemed like a good prospect for the family that had fallen on bad times after Daniya’s father Nafees lost his job and later suffered a heart surgery,after which he had to wind up the food stall he ran near their house and begin tailoring at home.

These days,Nafees spends most of his afternoons bent over a sewing machine,the fan whirring,and the television blaring news. He says he wanted Daniya to become a news anchor. Nafees’s eldest daughter Arisha too had been married off after her Class XII examinations. Nafees has more clothes to stitch before the November wedding—a green satin churidar with sequins,a blue brocade kurta with frills,and a white salwar with pleats.

Daniya hasn’t seen the prospective groom’s photographs. “I can’t ask for it,” she says.

Though she says she was disappointed with her results,Daniya knows it wasn’t easy. Two of her relatives died while her examinations were on and the house was always full of mourners and visitors. While the family slept in the adjoining room,she stayed up late in the little kitchenette,cramming from textbooks,translating notes from Hindi to Urdu. She took tuitions until the day her examinations began. The Rs 1,500 she brought home every month supplemented her father’s modest earnings. Two of her siblings are still in school.

Daniya says she filled up admission forms for B.El.Ed.—a BA in elementary education,a vocational course in DU. She had hoped her family would have let her take up a teaching job. At Jamia Millia Islamia,she didn’t get through. Daniya was not in town when DU colleges put out their admission list and her mother says she forgot to check—“slipped my mind”. And now,it doesn’t matter,says Daniya’s grandmother.