The maid was saying this today. Her husband is a drunkard. Her three daughters were married before they were nineteen. She declared fifteen sovereigns as dowry for the third daughter but could give only twelve sovereigns during marriage. Her only son, 27, is employed in a BPO with a meagre ten thousand rupees a month. She expects her son to give her money to buy three more sovereigns. The son argues, rightly so, how much can he give, as he has already given much of his savings during the marriage of the earlier siblings.
Charu Nivedita, in his Marginal Man (Exile in Tamil), has written a similar, more intense depiction of this event. I feel what makes Marginal Man so intense is it is more rooted and it's a much honest depiction of the Indian life.
