Meenachi is twelve and the freedom of the long street is hers no more.
Yellow chrysanthemums in her glossy hair, a special diet of milk and
curds and sweet cakes fried in ghee, and the outspoken congratulations
of relatives, male and female, mark her entrance into the estate of
womanhood. What the West hides, the East delights to reveal.

Now follows the swift sequel of marriage. The husband, of just the right
degree of relationship, has long been chosen. The family exchequer is
drained to the dregs to provide the heavy dowry, the burdensome
expenditure for wedding feast and jewels, and the presentation of
numerous wedding garments to equally numerous and expectant relatives.
Meenachi is carried away by the splendor of new clothes and jewels and
processions, and the general _tamash_ of the occasion. Has she not the
handsomest bridegroom and the most expensive _trousseau,_ of this
marriage month? Is she not the envy of all her former playmates? Only
now and then comes a strange feeling of loneliness when she thinks of
leaving the dear, familiar roof the narrow street with its tamarind
trees and many colored looms. The mother-in-law's house is a hundred
miles away, and the mother-in-law's face is strange.

Will Meenachi be sad or happy? The answer is complex and hard to find,
for it depends on many contingencies. The husband--what will he be? He
is not of Meenachi's choosing. Did she choose her father and mother, and
the house in which she was born? Were they not chosen for her, "written
upon her forehead" by her _Karma_, her inscrutable fate? Her husband has
been chosen; let her make the best of the choice.

Will she be happy? The future years shall make answer by many things.
Will she bear sons to her husband? If so, will her young body have
strength for the pains of childbirth and the torturings of ignorant and