To repay my family’s massive debt, I married 80-year-old Seth Hariram in an old Kolkata bungalow. But on our wedding night, he opened a room beside ours instead of going to bed—and two women in bridal sarees were sitting inside, staring at me without saying a word.
Part One: The Karz
I am Kaveri Dutta, twenty-five years old, born and brought up in Chinsurah, and till last year my life had only one tension — whether my father’s old cloth shop in Mangla Haat would have enough sale during Durga Puja.
My father, Bapi, is not a businessman in the way Kolkata understands businessmen. He is a man who still writes his accounts in a red khata, who gives one extra metre to regular customers, who says “next week de do” when someone cannot pay. That habit is what put us under water.
Two years ago, to expand the shop and to pay for Ma’s cataract operation, Bapi took money from Seth Hariram Chandak. Everyone in Burrabazar knows the name. Marwari family, three generations in jute and money lending. Seth Hariram was eighty years old already then, but his name was enough for his son Raghav to run everything. The interest was fifteen percent, compounding every three months. We thought Puja sale would cover it. Puja sale did not.
Last December, Ma’s reports came again — sugar, pressure, and now a heart valve that needed replacement. The amount in the chit was two lakhs, but the hospital quoted four. And on top of that, Seth’s munim came to our house with a paper that said we owed twenty-seven lakhs now.
I still remember that evening. Ma was boiling rice, Bapi was sitting on the floor mat, his spectacles in his hand, staring at the wall where damp had made a map of India. The munim did not shout. He just said, “Sethji has sent a proposal. He is alone in that big bungalow in Shyambazar. He wants a companion for his last years. If Kaveri beti agrees to marry him, the whole karz will be considered cleared. Plus, medical expenses for mother. Plus, Bapi’s shop will be his son-in-law’s shop.”
I laughed. I thought it was a joke. Bapi did not laugh. He cried. For the first time in my life, I saw my father, who had taught me how to ride a bicycle without holding, cry like a small boy.
For one month I fought. I went to two banks, I went to a micro-finance didi, I went to a school for a teacher’s job. They all wanted guarantor, property papers, time. Debt does not give time. One night Raghav himself came to our lane in his white Thar. He did not enter our house. He stood outside and said, “Kaka, court kache bhi ja sakte hain.” We can go to court also.
In Bengal, we have a saying — “Rin kore ghee khawa.” To take debt and eat ghee. We had taken debt and eaten only rice and salt.
So on the 12th of February, on a cold morning when fog was still sitting on the Hooghly, I signed. Not a love story. Not even an arranged marriage. A settlement. Ma kept saying, “You are saving us, shona.” I was not feeling like a saviour. I was feeling like a piece of cloth being cut from one shop and sold to another.
Part Two: The Bungalow in Shyambazar
The bungalow was not what you imagine when you hear bungalow in Kolkata. It was not white and British. It was mustard yellow, with green windows, with a nameplate so old that the letters had melted. HARIRAM NIVAS — 1948. Inside, the floors were black and white marble, cold even in winter. The walls had portraits of men with big moustaches and women who never smiled. The air smelled of phenyl and old books and mustard oil.
There was no shehnai, no crowd. Only a Rajasthani panditji who Seth had brought from Bara Bazar, Bapi and Ma standing far away near the door, and me in a red Benarasi that was heavier than me. Seth Hariram sat on a wooden chair. He is eighty years old, yes, but not bent. Tall, thin like a bamboo, white dhoti kurta, white hair combed back, eyes very clear and very tired. He did not look at me like a groom looks. He looked at me like a grandfather who has forgotten where he kept his glasses.
The mantras were chanted. He put sindoor on my maang. My hand shook. His hand did not. After it was over, Ma hugged me and said, “Phone koris.” As if I was going to college hostel.
At night, the house became more silent. A maid, Shanti didi, brought me to the first-floor bedroom. It had a huge four-poster bed, mosquito net folded neatly, a table with Horlicks and a steel water jug. I sat on the bed, waiting for what all girls are told to fear and expect on suhaag raat.
Seth Hariram came at around ten. He closed the main door, but he did not switch off the lights. He did not come towards the bed at all. He went and stood near the window, looking at the neem tree outside, and then he said, “You must be tired. But before you sleep, you should meet everyone.”
I thought he meant his family photos. Then he walked to the far side of the wall, where I had thought there was a wooden almirah, and opened a narrow door.
He did not switch off the lights. Instead, he opened the small side-room door which I had thought was an almirah. Inside, on the edge of a big teak bed, two other women were already sitting in brand new wedding sarees, full sindoor, mehendi still dark on their hands, staring at me without a word. And Seth Hariram, pulling his shawl a little tighter around his shoulders, said very calmly, “They are my earlier wives. From tonight, the four of us will live together in this house itself. No one is allowed to go out.”
Part Three: Sunita and Latika
For a full minute, I could not breathe. I thought this was some cruel prank, or that old age had made him lose his mind. One woman was perhaps thirty-two, fair, with a sharp nose and hair tied in a tight juda. The other was younger, maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight, dusky, with very big eyes that were already swollen as if she had been crying for hours.
The older one spoke first. “I am Sunita,” she said in Hindi mixed with Bengali. “I came six months ago. From Bankura.”
The younger one whispered, “Latika. From Kalyani. Three months.”
No one smiled. The air in that small room was heavy with agarbatti and something else — fear that has stayed too long in a closed room.
Seth Hariram left us like that. He said, “You three talk. I will sleep in the outer room. The main gate will remain locked. Shanti will bring food. Do not try to go out, people outside are not good.”
Then he actually left, closing the side door but not locking it. I heard his slippers going away.
I wanted to scream, to run. I tried the main door downstairs. Shanti didi was sitting there with a big lock in her lap. She said, “Baba’s order, didi. Outside is not safe.”
That night, the three of us did not sleep on that big bed. We sat on the floor, our expensive sarees crumpled. Slowly, the story came out.
Sunita’s father had a bidi factory that burnt down. They owed money to Raghav. Raghav had sent the same proposal through munim. One daughter’s marriage in exchange for loan forgiveness. She married Seth in August. She thought she would be a rich old man’s young wife, maybe a little lonely but comfortable. Instead, on her first night, she found Latika already in the side room.
Latika’s story was worse. Her brother had taken a bike loan from Raghav’s private finance company. When he could not pay, they threatened to take their small house. She was studying for her B.Ed. She married Seth in November. And on her first night, she found Sunita.
And now I was the third.
“He does not touch us,” Sunita said, almost angrily. “Not once. He sleeps outside. He only tells us to stay inside. Like we are in a jail.”
Latika started crying again. “My mother thinks I am living like a queen in Shyambazar. I cannot even go to the balcony. What will happen to us? Will more come?”
I looked at those two women, both in sindoor, both looking so tired, and something strange happened. My own fear reduced a little. Because I was not alone.
We three slept that night huddled together in the side room, while the old man coughed softly in the outer room, and the big house ticked like a clock.
Part Four: The Twist Inside The Twist
Days passed like that in Hariram Nivas. It was not a sasural. It was like a girls’ hostel run by a very strict, very old warden. Shanti didi gave us food on time — roti, dal, one vegetable, curd. Seth Hariram went out in the morning for one hour, came back with newspaper, sat in his armchair and read loudly. In the evening he asked us if we needed anything from the market — soap, oil, sanitary pads. He never raised his voice. He never called us “wife.” He called us “bitiya.”
One afternoon, I could not take it anymore. I confronted him in his reading room. “Why have you married three of us if you don’t want wives? Is this some superstition? Some tantra? My Bapi told me Marwaris sometimes—”
He looked up from his newspaper. For a long time he did not say anything. Then he asked Shanti to close the door.
“My son Raghav is a rakshas,” he said simply. In his Rajasthani Hindi, rakshas sounded heavier.
Then he told us the real story, and that was the second major twist, bigger than the first.
Seth Hariram had built his money-lending business with honesty, he claimed. But his only son Raghav, after going to Dubai for two years and coming back, had made it into a recovery business. He would give loans easily to poor people with small shops and factories, and then he would charge interest that doubled every few months, and then he would send goons. For the last three years, Raghav’s favourite trick was this — if the debtor had a young daughter, he would propose his father’s marriage. Because a marriage would legally close the loan, and socially the family could not complain to police that they were forced. It was a clean way to take their izzat also.
“I agreed two times,” Seth said, looking at his hands. “Sunita’s father and Latika’s brother — I thought if I marry them, at least they will be safe from Raghav. Because Raghav will not harass his own father’s wife, legally. He fears property law. If I am alive, my wives are owners of this house. He cannot touch them.”
My head was spinning. “So you married us to save us from your own son?”
“I am eighty-two, bitiya. My kidneys are gone. Doctor says six months, maybe less. I thought if I can keep you all inside this house for some months, till I die, Raghav will not be able to do anything bad to you people outside. Outside, his boys follow you. Inside, this house is still in my name. No one can enter without my permission. Not even my son.”
Sunita, who was listening from the door, said bitterly, “So we are goats kept inside a safe cage?”
“Better than being eaten outside,” Seth said.
That night, the four of us had dinner together for the first time on the floor. Seth told us about his wife who died in 1985, about how he never wanted to marry again. He told us he had written a will. He showed us a file.
The will was handwritten in English and Hindi, signed and notarised. Hariram Nivas, and all his fixed deposits — about three crores — would be divided equally between his three wives, on one condition: they must live together in this house for one full year after his death, and they must not sell the house for three years. It was to prevent Raghav from pressuring one girl alone to sell.
I asked, “And after one year?”
“After one year, you are free. You can divorce me — actually you will be widows, free legally — and you can go wherever you want, with your money.”
I looked at Sunita and Latika. For the first time, we looked like conspirators, not co-wives.
Part Five: The Last Wedding
Seth Hariram died after forty-one days of my marriage. It was a quiet death. He was reading newspaper, he coughed, and he slept off. No drama.
Raghav came the same evening with two lawyers and four boys. He was shouting, “This property is HUF! These marriages are fraud!” He tried to open the gate.
But Shanti didi was smarter than we thought. She had already called a local TMC dada who was Seth’s old friend, and a lady constable from Shyambazar thana. And she had Seth’s will, death certificate, and all our marriage registration papers in a steel box.
The lawyers read the will and told Raghav, “Your father has left everything to his wives. And as per law, you cannot evict them. Plus, if you harass them, it will be Domestic Violence Act also, because they are legally family.”
Raghav left, but not before looking at us with such hatred that Latika shivered.
After the shradh, the house became truly ours. For the first one month, we still did not go out much, out of habit and fear. But slowly we started opening windows. Sunita, who knew stitching, started cutting blouses on the dining table. Latika started teaching two children of Shanti didi for B.Ed practice. I, who had done graduation in English, started writing letters for people in the lane who needed application to municipality.
One evening, while cleaning Seth’s almirah, I found a small diary. In it, Seth had written our fathers’ names and the original loan amounts. Next to my father’s name, he had written: “Loan 4 lakhs. Interest added by Raghav illegally 23 lakhs. Forgive.”
So my Bapi never owed twenty-seven lakhs. He owed four. The rest was Raghav’s extortion.
That was the last twist, and the most bitter one.
We called Bapi and Ma to the bungalow last month. Bapi touched the marble floor and cried. I told him he owes nothing now. In fact, we own something.
Tomorrow we are going to the registrar office. Not to sell, but to register a small trust — “Hariram Nivas Girls’ Hostel and Library.” Sunita wants to keep the ground floor for a tailoring unit for debt-affected women. Latika wants to start free tuition. I want a small library where any girl can come and read and stay for some days if her house is not safe.
People in the para already gossip. Three young widows of an eighty-year-old Marwari Seth living alone in a big yellow bungalow, not going to their maika, doing business. Let them gossip. In Kolkata, gossip is also a kind of puja smoke. It rises and disappears.
Last night, the three of us slept again in the side room, not because we had to, but because we liked it that way. The big four-poster bed in the main bedroom is still empty. We keep it neat, with fresh sheets, because sometimes I feel Seth Hariram comes and sits there in the afternoon, reading his newspaper loudly, making sure no bad boy enters the lane.
I married an eighty-year-old man because of karz. I thought my life was finished on that suhaag raat when I saw two silent women in wedding sarees. Now I know, sometimes life does not finish on suhaag raat. Sometimes it starts after it.
