My maid servant, Ayesha, was in a state of great jubilation. She had found a ‘suitable boy’ and was all set to arrange the marriage of her daughter, Aliya. But if she was elated, I was appalled - and angry. The girl was just 15 years old. Still a child herself, she was not ready to produce the child that she would, I knew, within a year of getting married. And what would happen if the baby were a girl? Would she be thrown out? Would history repeat itself? Would Aliya end up like her mother, who, having produced two daughters, had been abandoned by her husband and left to bring up her children on her own?

I have been trying for sometime to convince Ayesha that she should have her daughter train for something that would enable her to stand on her two feet should the need ever arise. Aliya had been taken out of school several years earlier because her mother, realising that she was unable to pass her exams, or so she told me, had decided that it was a waste of money sending her to school. This was before I had employed her, and though subsequently I had offered to pay the child’s fees, Ayesha, for some reason known only to her, was adamant that her daughter would not go back to school. Well, there were other avenues that could be explored, I suggested to Ayesha. Why, for instance, didn’t we get Aliya enrolled in sewing classes? She could always earn a livelihood by being a seamstress. But this proposition was also rejected. As was the suggestion that she join a beauty parlour ? a friend who had such a parlour had agreed as a favour to take her on ? and train there.

“I cannot be responsible for her any longer,” Ayesha insisted. “You don’t realise what happens in our para. My daughter may have no brains but she is very pretty. While I am at work, there is the danger of her being raped or molested. The only solution to the problem is to get her married. Then she becomes the responsibility of her husband, not mine. And if she is married, the men in our locality will think twice before touching her.”

Her whole attitude seemed rather cavalier to me. How can a mother think this way? Was she not concerned about her daughter’s welfare and future happiness?

I realised how wrong I was when a psychotherapist spoke recently of a major mistake counsellors often make in trying to help sort out someone’s problems. ‘They see the problem from their perspective,” she explained, “and not from the point of view of the person with the problem. To understand the problem, they need to put themselves in their shoes.” This was precisely what I had not done. I still disapprove in principle of a 15-year-old girl being married off, but I now appreciate that Ayesha has no choice.