Paul Catiang explores family history for The Story When.
I was around four or five when Mommy first told me about Dad. She said that they couldn’t marry because he was already betrothed to someone else from birth, as is the custom among upper-class Indians. The exchange and merging of property was supposedly a done deal—there might have been some resort island involved, as a dowry. In the years that followed, the mental images that came to mind involved a mix of Bedouin tents, elephants, peacocks, turbans, all manner of exotic clichés my young imagination cobbled together from the Arabian Nights and the World Book Encyclopedia’s volume on entries under the letter I.
Read the full story here. Published May 2015.
Puzzled Owl | Words, worked. 