The Dowry Bride, by Sobhan Bantwal REVIEW

The Dowry Bride, by Sobhan Bantwal

“One sultry night, a young bride overhears an extraordinary conversation. The voices speak of a plot to murder a wife who has failed to produce a child and whose family has failed to produce the promised dowry …” - The Dowry Bride, by Sobhan Bantwal

People say ‘don’t judge a book from its cover’, but I think that old saying wasn’t completely true because the book has managed to attract me at the first time I saw it! Haha. With the picture of Indian woman wore sari and jewelries, and mehendi drawn on her hand, I was somehow wanted to know the story it carried. And unfortunately, I’ve got sort of feeling disappointed after reading this.

            It is a novel written by Indian author, Sobhan Bantwal. It has 338 pages and 5 pages of brief introduction by the author at the end of the book. The thing I got by that brief introduction was that she really loves her Indian culture and its heritage, which I really appreciate though.

            This story told us about Indian culture where the bride should pay an amount of dowries (known as mahar, in Indonesia) to the groom in the case of marriage. And this ‘dowry-thing’ has led many Indian people got into trouble, that is, if the bride couldn’t afford enough dowries to impress the groom’s family, she would get into such cruelties, could be divorce, bride-burning, or dowry-death (killed). “No arrests are even made because of lack of evidence” said Mrs. Bantwal in her novel.

            The main character in this story was Megha, the bride who was the victim of this ‘dowry-thing’, because her family couldn’t afford the promised dowry. She has to fight for her life and struggle through anything that separated her with justice. The idea of this story was really interesting and its complex problem about love, culture, and justice made the story more interesting but, Mrs. Bantwal hasn’t managed to make such beautiful and smooth plot. The plot was quite easy to expect, and the climax should be more frightening or dangerous. And love between Megha and Kiran wasn’t run smoothly. It was like there is a big hand behind everything, quite expected. I expect something more about this book, actually, I think it would be better to fix the ‘big hole’within this story because some we had expected and some we didn’t know why it happened.