Srikanta; by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya.

Over the years when I read it, and reread it, baffled about the mystique surrounding it and the sparse nature of the book, it took some reflection about the time and space this came from and depicts and belongs to, to realise its height compared to the ground it rose from. Although that time was not short of people of great stature in the world and in the nation this came from, still, this was a shocking read for the age for the common reader, all the more so since here was a male writer depicting women of his own culture as all too human, deserving of the same consideration and respect as given men under similar circumstances. And he was perhaps saying they were greater in many ways, without saying it in so many words.

What sticks in memory when other details are forgotten is the small side story of the Burmese wife of the man from Bengal who not only leaves her with no intentions of returning to her, every intention of going back to his family and accepting the arranged marriage (with dowry, no doubt) and the society that would then embrace him - but cheats her, the Burmese wife he is leaving behind without informing her of this intention, of the money and jewellery, openly, declaring all this in his language so his compatriots comprehend and hers do not, and he has made of his wife of many years a public spectacle just so his own people might forgive him of his betrayal in taking a wife not of their own circle.

Such behaviour has been engaged in by others, of many other nations and of course few other continents, and certainly many of other faiths.

In fact one city has been known in decades past for selling its own little daughters with the traffic very very thinly veiled with a marriage contract which usually favours the rich - foreign - buyers.

It takes a writer of courage, however, to expose one of his own social circle, to subject the whole culture to a shame that they may not have wished to own or admit.