Monsoon Diary (18 page)

FIFTEEN

Arranged Marriage

WE SAT AROUND the dining table, my family and I, replete from yet another home-cooked South Indian dinner. It was my brother who asked the question.

“Shoba, instead of returning to the States right away, why don’t you stay back here for a few months so we can try to get your marriage fixed? I mean, you’ve seen how it is. You in the States, us here . . . it isn’t working out.”

Three pairs of eyes stared at me from across the dining table. I could feel my shoulder blades tightening. My car was still in Memphis, my sculptures with Steven. I had applied to the Vermont Studio Center, an artists’ colony in Johnson, Vermont, and had been accepted. I wanted to hurry back to the States, make more art, put my experience in Memphis to rest, catch up with friends. My life was over there. And Shyam was asking me to stay. I should have expected this. From the moment I had arrived in Madras a month ago, my family had been preoccupied with arranging my marriage. My horoscope had been matched with those of eligible bachelors, my parents had met other parents, I had even met one candidate—an engineer from Oklahoma—but we didn’t like each other.

But staying back just to get married?

If my parents had asked the question, I could have immediately dismissed it as old-fashioned and preposterous. But Shyam was my peer, my brother, and my ally. I couldn’t dismiss his opinions. As a merchant-marine sailor, he was as much a renegade as I was, eschewing a traditional engineering or medical degree to command ships on high seas. He had seen more of the world than I had. It wasn’t as if he was a traditionalist wearing conservative blinders.

“It’s not that simple,” I began. “What about my car in Memphis, my job in Vermont?”

“We could find you someone in America,” my dad replied. “You could go back to the States.”

They had thought it all out. This was a plot. I glared at my parents.

Yet a part of me rationalized the whole thing. It wasn’t as if I had a lot to go back to in the States. I was still traumatized by the whole experience in Memphis. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do once my summer job in Vermont was over. Why not give this arranged-marriage thing a shot? If all else failed, I could refuse to get married at the last minute.

Arranged marriages used to be very common in India, although they are becoming less so in urban areas. When I was growing up, everyone I knew had an arranged marriage, so it seemed entirely natural that I would have one too. Nowadays, young people in most cities date, fall in love, and get married, although arranged marriages—like many of India’s traditions—persist too.

Once I agreed to postpone my departure, my family went into overdrive. My mother called her large circle of friends for names of bachelors, Shyam postponed his own departure to assist in the process, and my father reopened his “horoscope file.”

My father had taken to studying astrology while arranging my marriage. As horoscopes of various men began trickling into the house, Dad abandoned English literature for astrological charts. He looked for two things in a match: balance and cyclicality, so that my strengths would balance the man’s weaknesses and vice versa. In my horoscope, the planet Venus, responsible for artistic abilities, wields a strong influence. So for balance my father sought out men’s horoscopes in which Mercury—responsible for business acumen—was in a good position.

The other aspect was cyclicality—the crests and troughs of a person’s life. Well-matched horoscopes are those in which one partner’s fortunes can balance the other’s misfortunes—that is, when the husband is undergoing a low period, the wife—ideally—should be riding a high.

Not all Indian families believe in horoscopes. I once asked my dad why he does. It was a warm April evening, almost a month after our conversation around the dining table, and my father, Shyam, and I were sitting out in the garden. Teddy was sniffing the jasmine bushes, the crickets were just beginning to chirp, and my mom was standing by the gate, gossiping with a neighbor.

“How accurate is this horoscope-matching process?” I asked. “You don’t actually believe in it, do you?”

Dad thought for a minute. “Why don’t you think of it as a way of narrowing the universe?” he offered. “As a tool, a word from God if you will.”

“But what about love?” I asked. What about chemistry? I thought.

“You’ve had your chance,” Shyam said. “You had five years alone in a foreign country to fall in love. You goofed. As usual.”

I glared at him. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s see how you do. Let’s see who you marry.”

“I know who I’ll marry,” Shyam replied. “I’ll marry a beautiful Iyer girl who can cook well, and who’ll be at least four years younger than me.”

“Why four years?” my dad asked curiously.

“So I can boss her around and not have to put up with all this feminist stuff that Shoba comes up with,” my brother replied smirking.

“What?” I was outraged. “I can’t believe you said that.” My brother’s views shocked me, especially since I thought I had trained him to be an emancipated male. “Haven’t you thought about falling in love?” I asked Shyam.

“And then what?” he replied. “Sail off into the sunset? I don’t have all these fantasies like you do. Think about it, Shoba. How do you think Mom and Dad will feel if I married an American? Never mind that they won’t be able to show their face around here . . .”

I glanced at my dad, who smiled tolerantly but said nothing. “You’re exaggerating,” I said.

“Yes, but not by much,” Shyam replied. “And what about small pleasures like laughing over Sardarji jokes or singing old Hindi songs? If I married a foreigner, she wouldn’t understand them, let alone enjoy them.”

“She could learn,” I said. “And you could learn to enjoy other things.”

“Maybe, but she would always be an outsider in our family gatherings. She wouldn’t understand our rituals, Nalla-ma wouldn’t be able to talk to her, and I would have to keep explaining everything.”

I shook my head, exasperated. “You are presenting all the classic arguments for being conservative,” I said.

“Wise, my dear sister,” Shyam replied. “Not conservative. And someday you’ll thank me for it. Like I said, you had your chance. It’s not as if Mom and Dad forced you to marry the first guy they picked.”

WE FIRST HEARD about Ram from my dad’s second cousin, Ambi, who knew both families. We had heard of Ram’s parents before but didn’t know that they had a son of marriageable age. Ram’s mother had been hailed as the first woman to be appointed chief secretary of Kerala State. His father had held several top positions in the government and had worked in the prime minister’s office when Indira Gandhi was in power. Together they had been written about in several newspapers. One magazine,
India Today,
even called them “the most powerful couple in India.”

My parents were doubtful about whether such a couple would ally themselves with an average, middle-class family, but they sent my horoscope anyway. Within a few days we received a reply from Ram’s father stating that our horoscopes matched and inviting my parents for a visit.

When my parents visited Ram’s parents, they were looking for clues to see if I would fit into their family. My mother insists that “you can tell a lot about the family just from the way they serve coffee.”

Ram’s mother, having worked in the United Nations on women’s rights issues and having held high positions in the Indian government, would understand my liberal feminism. She also wrote humorous columns for Indian magazines, so she would be supportive of my writing. Yet she served strong South Indian coffee in the traditional stainless steel tumblers instead of china—she would be a balancing influence on my youthful radical nature. My parents liked the fact that she held on to Indian traditions in spite of being a world traveler.

Ram’s father had supported his wife’s career even though he belonged to a generation in which most Indian men expected their wives to stay at home. Ram had a good role model.

Ram’s sister was a pediatrician in Fort Myers, Florida, which meant he was used to strong, achieving women. Hopefully, he would encourage his wife to be the same.

The photographs in their living room showed that the family had lived and traveled abroad—in Bangkok, England, New York, and Japan. They were worldly, broad-minded, and tolerant.

But they didn’t seem to have any pets. Hmmm . . .

I WAS PREPARED to dislike Ram even though I hadn’t met him. He had a job. Worse, he had a steady job, unlike all my artist friends. He seemed to be of the establishment, something that I wasn’t, or at least liked to imagine I wasn’t. If I had to have an arranged marriage, couldn’t the candidate at least be an environmental engineer or work for a nonprofit? Ram worked in finance.

I had other issues as well. I couldn’t help thinking that I was wasting my life. While my friends in America were making art, falling in love, and getting on with their lives, here I was, waiting to get married. And I couldn’t seem to get myself out of the situation.

I was stuck, trapped in affection, smothered by love. As Shyam said, I was leading the life of “your average, nice Indian girl.” I didn’t want to be nice. I wanted to shake the world. At times I wished I hadn’t stepped on American soil. All my Indian girlfriends from high school and WCC were awaiting marriage as I was. But they didn’t feel tortured and conflicted like I did, they didn’t forever compare India with America and find both countries lacking in some way. I felt alternately furious and melancholy.

I missed Shyam. He had postponed his contract as long as he could and then finally joined his ship after six months. Right after he left, this alliance came up. Now I missed his brutal candor, his teasing taunts that made light of everything I took extremely seriously. He had a way of defusing tension in the household by laughing at everything from my father’s professorial idealism to my political correctness to my mother’s enthusiasms. But he was on his ship, and hard to reach.

NOVEMBER 20, 1991. They were coming at 7:00 P.M. All day long the house was in a state of excitement. Nalla-ma had arrived for the occasion, bringing along several of my aunts and uncles. My mother was roasting coffee beans because
they
liked traditional Indian coffee and “none of this fancy Western stuff.” The flower woman arrived with armloads of jasmine, Ayah was sweeping and mopping the floors, an uncle had gone to Grand Sweets and Snacks to pick up some specially ordered food. My parents had invited Ram and his parents to have tiffin and tea, and oh-by-the-way, to meet me.

Tiffin, in this case, consisted of
sojji
and
bajji,
which are to Indians what scones and tea sandwiches are to the English.
Sojji
is a warm, sweet pudding made of milk, semolina, ghee, cashews, and saffron.
Bajjis
are vegetable fritters—thinly sliced potatoes, onions, eggplant, or plantains, dipped into a savory batter and fried until golden brown.
Sojji
and
bajji
are the twin pillars of Indian tiffin and are usually reserved for formal occasions, especially when boy meets girl. In fact, eating
sojji-bajji
has become a euphemism among Tamilians for meeting prospective mates in an arranged setting, as in, “Now that you are thirty, you’ll probably be eating a lot of
sojji-bajji.
” My mother had been up at dawn, roasting cashews for the
sojji,
mixing batter for the
bajjis.

AROUND 5:30 P.M. the women gathered to dress me up. We went into the master bedroom where a series of colorful saris were laid out on the bed, with matching blouses, glass bangles, barrettes, and sandals. Everyone else was already dressed, the older women in rustling silk saris, their hair put up in a knot at the nape of their necks and their tongues red from chewing betel. My younger aunts and cousins had let their hair down, either as braids or tied with a barrette. They wore the more stylish chiffon saris, glass bangles, and imported perfume. The perfume competed with the strings of jasmine that everyone wore in their hair. A fan whirred lazily, stirring up the still afternoon air. The women crowded around the bed, examining the saris, debating their various merits.

“Let’s dress her up in the green one with gold sequins,” Nalla-ma said. “That’s the most elaborate. Besides, green is an auspicious color.”

“I am not a mannequin, to be dressed and inspected,” I said loudly.

There was silence as everyone digested the tightness in my voice. My mother, who had been ruffling through her closet, stopped and turned around. She had been too busy to notice me all day, but now all of her attention was on me.

“I hate this!” I cried. “This whole day has been a circus. Everyone is rushing around to please
them.
You are making
sojji
and
bajji
to please
them.
The house has been whipped clean because it will impress
them . . .
”

My dad walked into the room, hearing all the commotion. “Who is them?” he asked.

“Those people,” I replied. “Why does Mom have to cook up all that
sojji
and
bajji
for them? Why can’t they make
sojji-bajji
for us? Why make
sojji-bajji
at all?”