This book draws on close to two de cades of ethnographic research in
Kutch, Gujarat. During the course of my &eldwork, there were two things
in my experience that tended to not be spoken about freely within the family:
the &rst was the devastating earthquake of January2001, and the second was
the fact of “Bengali” women— that is, mi grant women from eastern parts
of India—as wives. The causes and consequences of these public secrets were
differently manifested. Although the presence of “Bengali” women tied into
the state’s identi&cation of “illegal” migration and “in<rators” believed to
be from Bangladesh, the earthquake was often what would— perhaps
could— not be narrated, the wounds in(icted by it perhaps not recountable
in an interview or even in conversation. It was during the marriage of a muchbeloved
daughter that some of these tensions played out for me.