Treasure Trove--a Folktale

 

Treasure Trove

I call this a folktale, not an anecdote. Why? Because I first heard it more than fifty years ago, from men who were already in their fifties then, so the incident itself must go back at least a century. I was not even a teenager when I heard it. And like all folktales, it has grown richer in retelling—more entertaining, more ironic, more memorable than a mere anecdote.

In those days, there was no dowry in the modern sense—no greedy father of a groom dictating impossible demands to the harassed father of a bride. Instead, the custom then was just the reverse of its present format: the father of the bride received a bride price from the groom. This made marriage a costly affair for young men, and many remained bachelors all their lives, unable to meet the steep sums demanded.

In this tale, a fatherless young man, aided by his village headman, found himself a bride for the staggering price of four hundred rupees. To put it in perspective: a hundred years ago, that amount could buy two acres of farmland or twenty cows!

The bargaining dragged on for six long months, beginning after Dussehra and concluding only after Holi. The bride’s father would not yield a single rupee, and finally, he prevailed.

On the wedding day, the groom arrived at the bride’s village in a palanquin with four people carrying it on their shoulders, with the headman and twenty men as his procession. There was no dance, no musical procession. In those days, women did not join the marriage party; they stayed back to blow conches, shower rice as blessings, ululate in rhythm with the conch and bell, and, of course, gossip—either admiring the groom or poking fun at him. But in this case, the groom was widely respected, for no ordinary man could have raised such a fortune.

Before the knot could be tied—the sacred act sealing the marriage for a lifetime—the bride’s father demanded to see the money. The groom’s men produced a tin trunk, solemnly declaring it held the four hundred rupees. But calamity struck: they had forgotten the key back in their village!

The astrologer warned that if the auspicious moment passed, the bride’s destiny would be cursed—she would live as a widow. Fetching the key in time was impossible. There were no bicycles in the village, and even if there had been, the bridle paths through the vacant paddy fields in the rainless season were hardly like well-laid-out roads.

The bride’s father, unwilling to risk his daughter’s fate, announced that the marriage was off—and openly asked if any eligible man would take her hand. No one dared, for all feared the groom’s headman—except one brazen fellow. He came forward, offering himself as suitor for what would have been his third wife, and even offered five hundred rupees—a hundred more than the agreed price! But he was hooted down, for the bride was young enough to be his granddaughter.

At last, a compromise was devised. To prove there was money in the trunk, it was lifted and shaken. It rattled and jingled convincingly. Satisfied, the bride’s father relented, and the marriage went ahead. The knot was tied, the rituals performed, and the bride sent off to her new home.

Only later, when the key finally arrived and the trunk was opened at the bride’s father’s house, did the truth spill out. Inside lay nothing but iron splinters and broken pieces of earthen pots. At the very bottom, there were only five rupees.

And so the grand four-hundred-rupee wedding ended—not on the weight of wealth, but on the hollow jangle of deception.

Epilogue

Rituals change with time. The bride price of yesteryears gave way to the dowry of more recent times. And now, I am told, there are even instances where some women marry only to divorce soon after, securing a steady alimony. Who knows—will that one day harden into a custom of its own? Perhaps, perhaps not. But one truth remains: in the grand algebra of society, customs may shift and habits may evolve, yet the only unchanging constant is change itself.

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By

Ananta Narayan Nanda

Bhubaneswar

20-08-2025

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