I first saw her at a distant cousin's wedding of whom she was a close relative. She was wearing a plain silk sari with a deep red border and appeared absorbed in the rituals.  Once in a while a concerned relative would ask if she'd had her lunch with the rest. Another would enquire about 'Manu da's' (her husband) health. Watching her solemn profile, I found myself thinking of what my mother had said of her many moons ago.

A generation older than my mother Meera mashi was among the first female graduates in the extended family, a title wrested subsequent to wars of attrition with her conservative father who wanted to marry her off after school. A passionate sportswoman, she could wield a stick as well as her fist as several roadside Romeos learnt to their utter discomfiture.

She was already teaching at a degree college when marriage proposals began avalanching. Meera mashi flatly refused to marry anyone who asked for dowry. Also anyone who was too fussy. My personal favorite is the anecdote in which a prospective groom's father asked her to sing to which she replied unflinchingly, "I will, provided you play the tabla with me..." The relatives predicted permanent spinsterhood and doom for someone so outspoken but she refused to give in to pressure. Career and an independent way of life, so common nowadays, was unthinkable in those conservative times when women were married off in their early teens and treated like chattel.

The pressure kept mounting but she would only marry someone who did not believe in ostentation. There should be no display of wealth in a wedding, was her contention. A Bengali professor hearing of her, dropped in one day. He would take away the bride in the very clothes she was wearing. He wouldn't hear of a dowry, and refused to accept any gifts from the bride's relatives. They were married in a simple ceremony and, from all accounts, lived happily ever after...