I

The Tamil Nadu State Legal Aid Board in Madras runs a family counselling centre which is open two days a week. Estranged couples, those who desire to end their marriage or, alternatively, mend a battered relationship, approach the centre to discuss their problems, seek legal advice and voice their fears and apprehensions. The counselling takes place in a room packed with unhappy, worried faces and, often, this space acquires the character of a public tribunal, with so-called domestic matters brought within the remit of a hearing that is potentially open to all, that is, other families waiting their turn. Typically, wife and husband, and their respective kin, harangue each other, resort to pleas and accusations, upbraid counsellors (many of whom are elder citizens) for not heeding their points of view, and seek to build their arguments to a dramatic climax.

Such performances, however diverse in content and differently accentuated in their appeal, heed a certain grammar: for instance, while narrating their tales of woe, women often observe that if the gold pawned away by their husbands, without their knowledge, was redeemed; if the jewellery they brought from their natal homes was restored to them; if the precious-somany- sovereigns-worth necklace that had been pawned or sold to provide working capital for the family's petty vending be recovered, they would end the marriage honourably, without acrimony and without going to court, or strive for a reconciliation, as the case may be. Men, in their turn, insist that a part of the gold thus claimed by the women is actually theirs, earned out of their sweat and blood, their labour and, in fact, had been made over as loving gifts to ungrateful wives.