A March wedding was planned. It was decided that she would first marry the peepal tree by the river because of a planetary misalignment in her horoscope. The tree would bear the brunt of the astrological consequences otherwise promised upon her husband-to-be. A few blows would be landed on the tree’s trunk after the “marriage”, they had decided. The bride’s father had categorically declared they wouldn’t dream of destroying a whole peepal tree in these times. The “tree marriage” and its symbolic end would be a charade at best, something they had to do for their “daughter’s good”. The groom’s family had agreed to attend the ceremony and witness firsthand, this passing on of misfortune and malaise to the tree. After that, they could peacefully accept the beautiful bride and her ancestral wealth as their own and take her home.
The bride insisted on wearing her grandmother’s green and maroon heirloom sari that morning. “Just for the tree wedding,” she promised her mother, who had put together a trousseau worthy of a princess. She selected the silver jhumkas gifted years ago by a favorite aunt, now estranged from the family because she had eloped with a man from another caste. As she fastened the jhumkas, draped the sari, applied kajal in her eyes and plaited her hair, even she could see that she was glowing. The peepal by the river with a stone bund encircling her – containing all those stories in her majestic body, would be her first spouse, mused the bride. The tree’s beauty and wisdom had bewitched her through childhood, adolescence and early womanhood. She felt no aversion to the soft-spoken man introduced to her as her future husband, but lack of aversion was not attraction, was it?
It seemed like they actually knew how to give space to each other – the peepal tree by the river and she. Having spent many years sitting on the stone bund watching the river; having healed from a failed romance with her school sweetheart sitting by the steps near the tree; having courted other men and kissed fallen leaves – green, yellow, brown, gold – by the same stone bund, she could feel the tree’s breath close by her skin like a constant friend and companion. This marriage would make for a fun story told over generations of the family she would build with her groom, she decided, taking a final look at herself in the mirror.
The peepal by the river also seemed to be glowing in a special way that morning. Though the river reflected the sun just as it did daily, the tree shone a green and gold aura the bride had never seen before. The gentle breeze that filtered through the leaves caressed the bride’s face, neck, back, and midriff. The last traces of the morning mist floating on the river seemed suddenly to swirl wildly in her head. Her face felt warm as her fingers traced the furrows on the tree’s trunk. The silver bangles she’d chosen to wear looked so elegant on the tree’s majestic body, she observed. She placed her lips on some of the heart-shaped pink leaves – transparent and smooth. The bride closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against the tree’s cracked trunk.
The families were too busy with the rituals of the all-important “marriage” to notice anything odd about the bride’s changed color or stance. It was only when they reached the point when the tree had to be harmed with a blow or two – this was the purpose of the ceremony after all – that they froze. The bride had wrapped herself around the tree, quite like her grandmother’s green and maroon sari wrapped around her. They couldn’t strike the tree without first hurting her.
They were too shocked for loud arguments or dramatic standoffs.
“Stop! I’ve decided to stay married to the tree.” Wasn’t that exactly what she had said?
The groom’s family quickly accepted that they would need to find a bride with sound mental health, from another wealthy family. They were secretly relieved to have found out before the real wedding took place. They commiserated with the bride’s family, wringing their hands over an evil spirit that had seized their precious daughter. Preparations were being made for more planetary propitiations the next day, when the bride left home and moved closer to her peepal tree by the river.
When the bride’s distraught mother went to cajole her daughter to return home, she found her more radiant than before. In a flash of maternal wisdom, she saw the inordinately long, untroubled life her daughter would now lead. She returned home strangely happy for someone whose daughter had become the talk of the town, now infamously associated with “the woman who married a peepal tree”.
-An older version of this story appeared in the Usawa Literary Review, in May 2022.
