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Articles > Newspapers > New York Times > When Life's Partner Comes Prechosen
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When Life's Partner Comes
Prechosen
- By Shoba Narayan
(This article originally appeared in
May 1995)
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We sat around the dining table, my family and I, replete from yet another home-cooked South Indian dinner. It was my brother, Shyam, who asked the question.
"Shoba, why don't you stay back here for a few months? So we can try to get you married. 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 expanse of the dining-table. I sighed. Here I was, at the tail-end of my vacation. I had an Air France ticket to New York in ten days. I had accepted a job at an artist's colony in Johnson, Vermont. My car was with a friend in Memphis, my possessions were filling another Memphis friend's garage. And Shyam was asking me to stay back indefinitely.
If my parents had asked the question, I could have immediately dismissed it as old-fashioned and preposterous. But Shyam was my brother, only a year younger than I, and we were very close. As a merchant marine sailor, he had seen more of the world than I had. He had just returned from a voyage to Poland, Germany, Japan, and Libya. It wasn't as if he was a traditionalist wearing conservative blinkers.
"It's not that simple," I said. "What about my car...?"
"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 accusingly.
Oh, what the hell, another part of me rationalized. It wasn't as if they had sprung this on me completely by surprise. Right from when I had arrived in Madras a month ago, my family had been preoccupied with arranging my wedding. I had even met one candidate- an engineer from Oklahoma- but we didn't like each other.
Why not give this arranged marriage thing another shot, I thought. It wasn't as if I had a lot to go back to in the States. My Master of Fine Arts degree had just been revoked in a nasty fight with my thesis committee. I was taking a job as a cook in an artist's colony so I could be near art. I didn't know what I was going to do once the summer was over.
Besides, I could always get a divorce.
Stupid and dangerous as it seems in retrospect, I went into my marriage without being in love, without thinking about consequences, and with the comfort of having divorce as an instantly-usable option. Three years later, I find myself relishing my relationship with this brilliant, prickly man who talks about the yield curve and derivatives, who prays when I drive, and who tries valiantly to remember names like Giacometti, Munch, Georgia O'Keefe and Kandinsky.
My enthusiasm for arranged marriages is that of a recent convert. True, I grew up in India, where arranged marriages are common. My parents and grandparents had arranged marriages, as did my aunts, cousins, and friends. But I always thought of myself as different. I was the artiste. I blossomed in Mount Holyoke where individualism was expected and feminism encouraged. As a college student in Massachusetts and Memphis, I experimented with being an American: I went on cross-country road-trips, I attended frat parties in Amherst and watched my drunk friends swallow goldfish, I encountered Jehovah's Witnesses and Southern Baptists who wanted to save my soul, I walked alongside my gay friends at a Gay Rights march in Boston, and I stared soulfully into a German painter's eyes under a New Mexico sky.
Somewhere along the way, I bought into the American value system as well. I questioned the concept of arranged marriages. I was determined to fall in love and marry someone who was not Indian. Yet, somehow, I could never manage to. Oh, falling in love was easy. Sustaining it was the hard part. Either I would move or he would, or we'd become disenchanted with each other.
Arranged marriages in India begin with matching the horoscopes of the man and woman. Two things that astrologers look for are balance and cyclicality, so that the woman's strengths balance the man's weaknesses and vice versa. In my horoscope, the planet Venus, responsible for art, writing, but also flightiness, is in a strong position. Since my husband, Ram's horoscope has "grounding" planets, such as Saturn and Uranus, and planets responsible for business acumen, such as Mars and Mercury, in a strong position, our horoscopes were considered to be in agreement.
Once the horoscopes match, the two families meet and decide if they are compatible. It is assumed that they are of the same religion, same caste, and same social strata. Hindus marry Hindus, Christians marry Christians and Muslims marry Muslims in Indian arranged marriages. While this eliminates risk and promotes homogeneity, the rationale is that the personalities of the individual man and woman provide enough differences for a marriage to thrive. Whether this is true or not, the high statistical success rate of arranged marriages in different cultures gives one pause from dismissing them entirely.
When my parents visited Ram's parents, they began looking for clues to see if I would fit into their household. My mother, for instance, insists that "you can tell a lot about the family just from the way they serve coffee."
The house had a lot of coconut trees and a lovely flower garden. The family had laid down roots and liked gardening. Good.
Ram's mother had worked in the United Nations on women's right issues, besides holding top positions in the Indian government. She also wrote humorous columns for Indian magazines. She would be supportive of my writing, and understand my liberal feminism. 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 radicalness.
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. That meant that Ram was used to strong, achieving women. Hopefully, he would encourage his wife to do the same.
The photographs in the living-room showed that the family had traveled a lot, lived in Bangkok, England, New York, and Japan. They were worldly, broad-minded, tolerant. But they didn't seem to have any pets. Hmmm...
November 20, 1992. Ram and his parents were coming at 7 p.m. to "meet" me. All day long, the house was in a state of excitement. My maternal grandmother was there, as were my uncles, aunts, cousins, and whoever else felt like dropping by. My mother was roasting the coffee beans that would be decocted through a muslin cloth, mixed with piping hot cow's milk and served in brass tumblers ("They like traditional Indian coffee"). My uncle was ordering flowers, a cousin had gone to the pastry shop to pick up snacks and pastries, an aunt was plumping the cushions in the living-room.
"They're here!" someone shouted.
My cousin, Sheela gently nudged me out of the bedroom. More out of habit than anything else, I kept my eyes on the ground as all Indian girls are taught to do in front of elders. "Why don't you sit down?" a voice said.
I looked up and saw a square face and smiling eyes. His voice was solicitous, his eyes anxious to put me at ease as he pointed me to a chair. Somehow I liked that. The guy was sensitive, and self-confident. Pointing me to a chair, in my own house.
I looked at him covertly and my mother and aunts brought in coffee and plates of snacks. He looked all right. Wouldn't have swept me off my feet if I had passed him on the street, but I would have probably given him a second look. Could stand to lose a few pounds. I liked his smile, the way his lips curved to meet his eyes. Curly hair, commanding voice, unrestrained laugh. He caught my stare and I looked away.
After some more polite conversation, the elders left us alone in the living-room and adjourned to the den. To my surprise, the conversation flowed easily. We had a great deal in common. We compared universities, summer jobs, Spring Break, and cheap airline tickets. But his profession was very different from mine. I learnt that he had an MBA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor ("Great campus!"), had worked on Wall Street for a while before joining a financial consulting firm.
Ram said, "I'd like to get to know you better. Would it be fair if we say that we speak to each other on the 'phone? Unfortunately, I have to be back at my job in Connecticut, but I could call you every other day? No strings attached, and both of us can decide where this goes, if anywhere. Does that sound Okay?"
It did.
He called ten days later. At first we spoke on the 'phone every other day, and then began to speak everyday. In the beginning, I spoke hurriedly, aware that his telephone bill was rising every minute. But he never seemed to be in a rush, and always waved away my suggestions that we hang up quickly. Gradually, I relaxed and began enjoying our conversations, which usually lasted for over an hour. We talked about our goals, dreams and anxieties; we argued over which was the best pizza place in New York; we teased and joked with each other. One year after we got married, Ram dug out his $1500 telephone bill for that month. We are saving it to show our grand-children.
"What do you want out of life?" he asked me one day. "I don't know. I'm not really sure," I replied. "Why don't you think about it? Come up with five words maybe, of what you want to do with your life." His question intrigued me. Two days later, I told him what I had come up with. "I really like the Alcoholics Anonymous slogan," I said. "God grant me the courage to change the things I can change, the fortitude to tolerate the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference.' I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially since...." I trailed off. "I actually came up with five words," he said. "Curiosity, contribution, balance, family, and fun. That's what I want to do with my life."
Another time, he was telling me about his sister. "She's really idealistic, an Aries, like you. She's the type that will do anything for friends. She's feisty...." "Excuse me," I couldn't hear him clearly. "Feisty. You know, spirited. F-i-e-s-t-y," he spelled. "Feisty is spelled f-e-i-s-t-y," I said. "You sure? I'm almost positive it's with a i-e," he said. "Wanna bet?" I asked. "Okay," he replied. "Whoever loses has to surprise the other." We left it at that, and talked about other things. As soon as we hung up, I flipped through the dictionary, and jubilantly noted that feisty was spelled the way I had said it would be.
That evening, the door-bell rang. When I opened the door, I saw a huge, huge bouquet. Red roses, yellow daffodils, orange irises, all threw out a riot of color. In it was a card, "Here's a feisty bunch." I couldn't help laughing out loud.
One month later, in the middle of a conversation, after he described how Bill Clinton was riding a wave in 1992 election campaign, and before we talked about whether to hold the wedding in December or April, he proposed, I accepted and the elders took over the wedding preparations.
Our extended honeymoon was wonderful. Ram was popular, and there were dozens of dinner-parties and receptions that we were invited to. On weekends, we took trips- to Mount Holyoke, where I showed him my old art studio, to Boston, where we both had friends from college, to Franconia Notch in New Hampshire where we hiked and camped, and to Long Island, where his cousin and her family lived. We huddled under the covers on rainy summer days and caught up on each other's lives. We courted each other- with flowers, with surprise dinners at intimate restaurants, with scented cards under the pillow and funny cartoons stuck on the frig. I revelled in the romance of it all.
It was in Taos, New Mexico that we had our first fight. Ram had arranged for a surprise visit to the summer camp that I used to work in and talked so much about. We visited my old colleagues, with their long beards, matted hair, Greenpeace T-shirts, long skirts and warm hugs. Ram, with his clipped accent, clean clothes and pleasant manners was so different, so Republican, compared to my free-spirited, idealistic friends. What was I doing with this guy? One the car trip to the airport, I was silent.
"What's wrong?" Ram prodded me several times. "I think, perhaps, we might have...made a mistake," I said slowly. The air changed. I could tell from his stillness that he was surprised, that he was listening carefully. "What do you mean?" he asked. "Our worlds are too different," I said. "We want different things out of life. We aren't right for each other. My friends are idealistic…." "Well, your friends may be idealistic but they are not responsible. They are escaping from their lives, as are you. We are married. Accept it. Learn to work with it. Grow up!"
He had never spoken to me this harshly before and it hurt. I wanted this man's respect, because I respected his integrity and his conviction in his beliefs. I didn't go back to Taos but I didn't talk to him during the three-hour drive back to Albuquerque airport and on the plane-ride back to New York.
That fight became the pattern of our lives for the next several months. In the evening, when Ram came back home, I would ignore him, or blame him for bringing me to this new town where I had no friends.
I half-heartedly searched for a job, and continued to mail away magazine articles and queries. At night, I would turn away from Ram and cry into my pillow. He would hold me, whisper soothing words into my ears, but I was too depressed to care about it. Or him.
Something happened two years into our marriage. Maybe my horoscope changed. Maybe I woke up to the fact that I had become a really ugly person. I was ashamed to realize that while I had treated Ram with veiled dislike, he had always tried to improve our relationship.
Slowly, things started to improve. First, a magazine accepted a query that I had sent, then another, then I got admitted into the Columbia Journalism program. At Ram's
insistence, I had applied, even though I maintained I was tired of journalism and wanted to study acupuncture. Falling in love, for me, began with small changes. I found myself relishing a South Indian dish that I disliked, mostly because I knew how much he loved it; I imitated his cool, rational arguments when I tried to sell a story to an editor over the 'phone; I listened to him when he said that I shouldn't let my sentences trail off since that made me sound diffident; I realised that the first thing I wanted to do when I heard some good news was to call him immediately and share it with him, not with my parents, not with my friends, but with him. Somewhere along the way, the "I love you too" that I had politely parroted in response to his endearments became sincere.
This article originally appeared in
May 1995.
Copyright © 1999 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. |
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