Most of The Story of a Brief Marriageconsists of slow, meticulous descriptions of Dinesh’s thoughts and feelings during his one day as a husband. Because the Iyer (Hindu Brahmin) has been killed, the father himself performs the makeshift wedding, after which Dinesh takes Ganga to a small clearing in the jungle where he has created a living space. If he perishes, he reasons, at least he will have experienced marriage and will not expire alone. Dinesh is skeptical about this claim, but he surmises that the father wants to ensure that someone will care for Ganga if he dies.Īfter considering the proposal briefly, Dinesh agrees. His reasons are unclear, but he mentions that marauding soldiers are less likely to rape a married woman than a virgin. One day, an older man at the camp pulls him aside and offers Dinesh his daughter, Ganga, in marriage. Even if he does not die in the shelling, soldiers overrunning the camp could either kill or conscript him. He gathers the mangled bodies of survivors and carries them to a makeshift hospital, where an overworked doctor struggles without medicines, equipment, or anesthetics. During the last months of the conflict between Sri Lankan forces and the liberation movement known as the Tamil Tigers, Dinesh lives in an evacuee camp where shells fall like clockwork.
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