SOURCE: SCROLL

An excerpt from ‘Devrani Jethani Ki Kahani or A Tale of Two Sisters-in-Law’, by Gauri Datt, translated from Hindi by Smita Gandotra and Ulrike Stark.

Chotelal’s wife had a maternal uncle in Delhi whose daughter had been married into a family in Meerut. When this woman’s daughter was nine, she was married to the only son of Shivlal Baniya, a merchant from Koyal.

One day, the boy was flying his kite on the rooftop and playing kite-fighting with others when his eyes fixed on the sky, he stepped forward and fell from the three-story house onto a stone. There was a loud thud. His bones were crushed and he suffered a deep wound to his head. He lived for two days and died on the third.