Saleema with daughter Afroza at Hanjik village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Budgam district. Telegraph picture

Soibugh (Budgam), June 3: From a distance, Rashida resembles any other Kashmiri village woman as she washes clothes on the banks of a pond.

Her scarf is draped over her head and she is wearing a Kashmiri pheran reaching below her knee.

A closer look and a brief interaction make the distinction clear. Rashida’s Kashmiri is not chaste and her features are different. She is the Bengali bride of a local artisan, Farooq Ahmad Shah.

Every lane here has a similar story, of Bengali brides trying hard to pick up the language and adopt the local culture. “My village has 17 mohallas and each of them has three to four such women,’’ Shah said. “My brother, too, has a Bengali wife.”

Aneesa Shafi, head of sociology at Kashmir University, said: “Earlier, such instances were found mainly in Srinagar city, from where many people would go to Bengal to sell shawls and handicrafts. But it’s now common in the villages, too.”

Shafi explained: “Kashmiris mostly look for grooms with a secure future, and we have a high unemployment rate. Many of the youths who cannot get local brides look to Bengal. Besides, a Kashmiri marriage is extravagant but marriages with Bengali brides are inexpensive.”

She said the Bengali brides who marry here mostly belong to poor families.

“My father had six daughters, so when he got an offer for me from a Kashmiri, he didn’t think twice,’’ said Saleema, originally from Durgapur village in Bengal’s Nadia district and now living in Hanjik village. “Be chehas ni yoor chori anmich (I have not been brought here by deceit).”

The reference is to a band of agents who bring girls here in lieu of money. Although several Bengali women said they were not brought by these agents, others were candid about the connection.

“My husband paid Rs 10,000 to the man who brought me here. My family, too, gave him Rs 1,500,’’ said Rubina from Lalbagh in Murshidabad, now living in Hanjik.

Farooq Ahmad, deputy inspector-general of police (Srinagar-Budgam), said the Bengali women do not fall into the prostitution net. “Although they marry here, there is nothing of that sort.”

There are arranged marriages, too. The matches could be made by women already married here or through a Kashmiri who frequents Bengal and is approached by an eligible bachelor for a bride.

Most of these couples are happy. “I am happy here,’’ said Rashida, whose husband Shah claims he could not have found a better wife.

But Shafiqa, married to Manzoor Parray, wants to go home. “We were told we would have easy lives and fair husbands. But unlike Bengal, we have to work in the fields as well as our homes. I now have to eat hakh (a vegetable) every day — I miss my favourite fish.”