Cast-Offs (Utran, also called Hand-Me-Downs) is an Urdu short story by Wajida Tabassum. It was published in 1975 and reprinted in an English translation in 1994.
Chamki, the daughter of a wet nurse in a wealthy household, is constantly made to wear the used cast-off clothing of the household’s daughter, Shahzadi Pasha. Despite her discontent with this practice, she is forced to accept it through the years as she and Pasha grow up. But on the eve of Pasha’s arranged wedding, Chamki finally has enough of being second and seeks an unconventional payback through none other than Pasha’s own intended husband.
This story was adapted into an Indian soap opera in 1988, and was the basis for the first part of the 1996 film Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love.
Cast-Offs provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Anna Bi, Chamki’s mother, hits her for offending Pasha with the suggestion that Pasha should wear her cast-offs and twists her ear to threaten her into not bringing it up again.
- Alpha Bitch: Shahzadi Pasha has shades of this. As a child, she bullies Chamki into getting in the bath with her in the beginning despite Chamki’s obvious discomfort, laughs at her when Chamki suggests that they become friends by wearing each other’s clothes, and tells her that “her people” only wear her cast-offs and she’ll never wear anything but that because she’s a servant. As a teenager, she callously tells her friends within Chamki’s earshot that all of her used hand-me-downs will be Chamki’s wedding dowry, humiliating her.
- Arranged Marriage: As per Indian tradition, Pasha’s parents choose a husband for her and arrange their wedding when she is a teenager. Pasha’s mother, Barri Pasha, also decides to set up a nikah (marriage contract) for Chamki.
- Beautiful Tears: Chamki's tearfulness after crying over Pasha's humiliation of her is described to enhance her beauty.
- Childhood Friends: Chamki and Shahzadi Pasha are a more acrimonious example. They play together as children and grow up together in the same household, but Chamki resents Pasha for the fact that she’s always forced to wear the latter’s discarded old clothes, and Pasha seems to look down on the former most of the time.
- Early Personality Signs: As children, Chamki and Pasha both exhibit traits they keep later down the line. Chamki is unhappy about receiving Pasha’s hand-me-downs and asks her mother why it can’t be the other way around because she is prettier than Pasha, while Pasha laughs off Chamki’s suggestion that they switch clothes and smugly tells her that poor people like her are meant to wear only her rejects.
- Flowers of Femininity: Chamki wears garlands of jasmine flowers in her hair as part of her ploy to seduce Pasha’s would-be husband, making herself appear more attractive to him.
- Informed Attractiveness: Chamki is described as very beautiful, even when she cries, and she exploits her good looks to seduce Pasha’s husband for her own ends.
- Insatiable Newlyweds: Exploited. Chamki, knowing that Pasha’s intended husband will be sexually frustrated from anticipation during the rituals before his wedding, seeks the man out by going to his room under the pretense of bringing him a tray of malida (a sweet crumbled bread dessert) and seduces him into losing his virginity to her, rather than his bride. This is all solely to get back at Pasha for forcing her to wear her used clothes their whole lives, leaving her with an already used husband.
- Instant Seduction: Invoked by Chamki. She goes to find Pasha’s groom on the night before his wedding and seduces him within moments after meeting him, just for revenge against Pasha for humiliating her.
- Interclass Friendship: A rather cynical take. Chamki is the peasant daughter of the wet nurse to a wealthy girl, Shahzadi Pasha (the daughter of a Nawab Sahib, the Indian title for a ruling prince, governor, or land owner). She and Pasha grow up as childhood playmates, but Chamki harbors deep resentment that she has to wear Pasha’s used cast-offs and that Pasha treats her as an inferior for it. When Pasha publicly mocks Chamki in their young adulthood by stating Chamki’s wedding dowry will only be her hand-me-downs, this is the last straw and drives Chamki to cuckquean her by sleeping with her fiancé.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: After getting her feet done with henna in the lead-up to her wedding, Pasha unexpectedly offers to do the same for Chamki when the latter gets married. It seems like a nice gesture, but when a little girl asks when Chamki will be married, Pasha laughs and mockingly says that her old cast-offs will serve as Chamki’s only dowry.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Shahzadi Pasha treats Chamki with condescension and makes her wear her cast-offs for years, never sparing a thought for the other girl’s feelings because of her lower class status. As payback, Chamki beats Pasha to the punch of taking her would-be husband’s virginity before their marriage, and Pasha is unknowingly stuck with Chamki’s very own cast-off for the rest of their lives.
- Laughing Mad: Assumed to be the case. When Pasha returns home after her wedding to give her wedding night clothes to Chamki, Chamki breaks into wild laughter over how she received Pasha’s used cast-offs all her life, and from now on, Pasha will use Chamki’s cast-off (Pasha's own husband, which she is unaware of) for the rest of hers. Everyone else present thinks that the sadness of saying goodbye to a childhood friend has temporarily unhinged her, not knowing the truth.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: Two examples, both mother and daughter.
- Chamki’s mother, Anna Bi, takes great pride in being the wet nurse to a Nawab Sahib’s daughter because it ensures she and her child live in a wealthy house, where they always get good food and secondhand clothes (and Shahzadi Pasha’s family is so well-off that even silver ornaments and toys are given as cast-offs to the servants). Chamki, however, is embarrassed at always being given nothing but Pasha’s rejects, and as a teenager, she implores her mother not to act so happy about receiving such handouts.
- Shahzadi Pasha’s mother, Barri Pasha, is completely unlike her in terms of how they treat Chamki. While Shahzhadi Pasha looks down on Chamki and sees her as her inferior to foist her hand-me-downs off on, Barri Pasha is a kind woman who cares for her servants like her own children, seeks to arrange a good marriage for Chamki along with her daughter’s, and has a new set of cheap saffron-colored clothes sewn for Chamki to wear instead of the usual cast-offs.
- A Minor Kidroduction: Chamki and Pasha are introduced as small children in the first half of the story, while the second half follows them as young women.
- No Name Given: The name of Shahzadi Pasha's husband is not stated.
- Revenge: The entire point of the story is this. As revenge against Pasha for making her wear her secondhand clothes all their lives and treating her as lesser for it, Chamki has sex with Pasha’s betrothed on the night before the wedding and thus ensures Pasha will be married to a man Chamki used first.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: Chamki sleeps with Pasha’s groom on the eve of his wedding as her way of getting back at Pasha. The most described of it is that he kisses her, and she falls into his arms “to rob him of his purity, to lose her own, to plunder all of them.”
- We Used to Be Friends: Chamki and Shahzadi Pasha are playmates as children, if also prone to bickering because of Pasha's refusal to wear Chamki's clothes in the way the latter does hers. When they're grown, however, any pretenses at friendship vanish when Pasha's public mockery of Chamki drives her to steal the virginity of her former friend's husband.