Revision:The Gopalpur

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• Men and women in Gopalpur rise with the first light of dawn. The women stumbles into the black interior of the house and brings out cold food left over from the day before. The farmer wolfs his light breakfast and hurries off to his field, carrying his plough over his shoulder and driving his cattle before him. By 10.30-11am, the farmer returns to the village. While the farmer ploughs, his wife has brought several pots of water from the stream. She has swept the house and the yard in front of the house, and carried the rubbish and manure to the compost heap outside the village. She has dried grain on the roof and ground it. She has started a fire in the kitchen using only a few sticks of wood. Over the fire, she has placed an earthenware pot containing chilli, beans, leafy vegetables etc.

• On some days, when there is not much work in the fields, the whole family will get up while it is still dark and go off noisily with their neighbours to the forest, four miles away, and they collect firewood.

• A young couple"s first male child is fortunate. He will be the elder brother to all succeeding children and someday he may be head of a large family. His parents will spend more money on his wedding than on the wedding of his younger brothers and expend more effort selecting his bride. The youngest child in a large family is likely to be regarded as a burden. Female children are welcome into most families as they provide a means of participation in the process of forming ever-larger kinship circles. In a few families, where custom requires that the father of the bride pay large sums of money to the bridegroom, daughters may come to be regarded as a curse.

• The most desirable marriage for Ego is with his own sister"s daughter, for the sister"s daughter cannot possibly contain the same seed as Ego. Ego"s brother"s daughter has the same seed as Ego, and she is classified as Ego"s "daughter".

• The decision concerning the choice of a bride is made by a man"s parents, acting in consultation with the important men of the village.

• After the wedding ceremony, at which the bride and groom often see each other for the first time, the bride leaves Gopalpur with the Groom"s family.

• After the ceremony, the bride and groom return to the groom"s village and take up normal sexual relationships. When the wife first becomes pregnant, it is likely that she will return to Gopalpur to give birth to her first child. Later, as the wife forms more and more attachments in her husband"s village, she will visit her parents less and less frequently.

• Sometimes, and angry husband strips his cheating wife of her jewellery and sends her back, weeping, to her own people. A wife, searching for something which she cannot find in her husband, runs away with another man, or seeks shelter with her parents. When this happens, the groom"s party comes again to Gopalpur to demand the return of their bride, or at least the jewels the bride was wearing when she escaped.

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