Bride At Ten, Mother At Fifteen
SETHU RAMASWAMY
First a young bride, then a mother and then a matriarch. The author has sifted through the past to chronicle history with a memory blessed with total recall.
Hardback | 140 x 216mm (5.5 x 8.5") | 192 pp
ISBN 8174362894
Rs.295.00
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Add to Cart Add to Wish ListAbout this book
In the autumn of 1992, a sixty-nine-year-old woman moved from Delhi to Shimla with her youngest daughter. Four months earlier her husband had passed away; she was aching and empty. Encouraged by her daughter to write, she rummaged through the past, going as far back as seventy years to make peace with the present. The result is Bride at Ten, Mother at Fifteen: Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Woman—a story that spans personal and subcontinental history: Kandy and the plight of tea-estate labourers, Trivandrum and her in-laws, New Delhi during World War II, Partition riots, childbirths, marriages, disenchantments, deaths. Then there are memorable characters—a journalist husband who would throw a fit if his pen was misplaced, a clairvoyant if distressed daughter, Sri Ramana Maharishi, and film distributor ‘Paramount’ Krishna Iyer. This remarkable account chronicles history through the life of a woman blessed with total recall.
About the author
Marriage at the age of ten forced Sethu Ramaswamy to drop out from school after the fifth grade. As a result, a slip of a girl became first a bride, then a mother and eventually a doughty matriarch. Although Sethu was forced to bury some of her youthful dreams, she did not allow this to come in the way of becoming an educated and fulfilled woman. Already adept at English and deeply attached to Tamil, her mother tongue, Sethu taught herself Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu and Sanskrit after she was married. She also became an amateur veena player and even gave occasional performances on television and radio as part of a music troupe.
Today, she lives in New Delhi with her daughter and son-in-law and spends her spare time reading and teaching,
and listening to Carnatic music. Recently at the age of seventy-nine—nearly sixty-nine years after her marriage—she has acquired her Masters in history.
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