ARRANGED MARRIAGE- CHITRA DIVAKARUNI

Chitra Divakaruni has written a wholly unexceptional, simple, and commonplace book. There are no dramatic overtures, no startling revelations, no sudden complications (mostly). And this is precisely what makes her such an effective writer, this is exactly what gives her descriptions of women in arranged marriages, a draconian element of common gloom. I have to say that this is one of the most depressing books I have read recently, because the mundane and universal tales of arranged marriage that Divakaruni weaves make one realize that all over India, hundreds of thousands of women live the lives which she has described. There are many in the book that begin and end so unexceptionally, that you wonder whether the writer is telling us a story, or merely describing a scene on a typical busy day at the market. And that is exactly what the lives of many women caught in Divakaruni’s (and India’s) arranged marriages seem to have become- uninteresting and cliché scenes of life that tread on their inevitable trajectory. Let me describe two:

‘The Bats’ tells us a story seen through the eyes of a small girl, whose mother is being ill treated by her husband every day. The girl’s descriptions of her mother’s sobs, expressed furtively at night so that nobody should hear, are described as if they represent the shackles that women wear all over our country, the supposedly inevitable trials that they bear without resentment. The silent suffering that the mother undergoes, the little girl’s painful bewilderment at her mother’s travails, and her mother’s futile attempts to answer her questions about what is happening, are harrowing to say the least. Finally, in order to save her own sanity and that of her child, the mother decides to surreptitiously go to her uncle’s place, far away in the village. The scenic descriptions of the countryside and the city, her uncle, and the rustic and nourishing life in a village that the girl recounts, could strike a chord only in the hearts of Indians or those who have visited India. Mother and child seek refuge in the kindly old man’s small house. The little girl is delighted by the hues that nature paints in the countryside, and she is enraptured by the fishing trips she undertakes with her grandfather. The story ends, on no certain note, with the girl’s father calling the two back to the city, and promising to be more tolerant the next time...

‘Clothes’ is a more interesting story and one that drives home a general point about the plight of women in arranged marriages, in a more general and distinct manner. It talks about a girl from a rural Indian town ('Roja' from the film with the same name comes to mind) who is about to be married to a man settled in the US who owns a gas station and the inevitable store next to it- quite a typical scenario in its general form. The story is again told from the perspective of the girl. She is at once excited, apprehensive, and fearful. This story is interesting because it has no elements of injustice or oppression. The husband is a good man, and he admittedly loves her and is understanding, and the girl’s in-laws are kind people, if somewhat strict in their demeanor. The girl’s in laws don’t even oppose her wish to teach in a school. Her husband dreams along with her about a life where they can earn enough money to live comfortably, buys new clothes for her, and enthusiastically shows her around the supermarket. The girl is happy to be with him, and happy with the life she is living. The end of the story, best not divulged, ends in a tragedy and also in a glimmer of hope.

The reason why this book seems depressing to me is because it again raises the question which is asked many times. Are girls in arranged marriages really happy? Or have they convinced themselves to be happy, because they have convinced themselves that this is the life they must inevitably live? In their readiness for ‘compromises’, apparently a condition that is frequently touted to be particularly essential for arranged marriages, have they compromised their will, and their sense of liberty and conscious thought? Admittedly, their husbands are frequently making much less of compromises, so one does get the feeling that the situation is not as ideally symmetric as it sounds earlier. Put another way, have they settled for whatever they have, because they think they cannot get something better? Do they even think they deserve any better? Notice that this question would not arise if the marriage is a love marriage. There we already know what's best for us. There, we know that we are happy. The girl in ‘Clothes’ seems innocently happy, but is the happiness really that emanating from a conscious evaluation of her situation, or is it a consequence of something that she has convinced herself, simply cannot be another way? Is the happiness her choice? In fact, she seems to have been brought up in such a way that her parents have almost unconsciously made her believe that not only will she be happy this way, but also that she should be proud of her happiness. Parents propose; daughters dispose.

I believe that the illusion of happiness and satisfaction that women in arranged marriages have is an insidious and tormented crack in the foundation, and just like Noam Chomsky’s famed ‘manufacture of consent’, is much more dangerous to women’s liberation than outright oppression. Just like Chomsky describes the thought control that a ‘democratic’ government imposes on the unconscious psyche of its citizens, do parents impose a life of preorganised order and happiness on their daughters’ lives, sometimes themselves doing it unconsciously? In Chomsky’s model, the people are made to believe all their life that they are free and happy, and it is exactly on this sense of satisfaction that the government preys through subtle means. Similarly girls are made to believe (many times by ‘allowing’ them access to higher education) that they are in control of their destiny, and that even an arranged marriage is essentially a decision of their volition
This crack is truly damaging. That’s simply because, a lot of times, on the face of it, it is not visible, because everybody appears happy. But what many women have done is form their own little world, and resign themselves to be happy within its constraints. In fact, I fear that they form this happy little world precisely because they don’t want to face an alternative, damning reality. I always have this complaint against even well meaning middle class parents who are apparently well educated. The fact that they allow their daughters to get engineering and medical degrees is not enough. Do they actually turn their daughters into independent thinkers, who could, and should, even defy them, when necessary? Maybe they need to define being well educated again. I have no complaint against girls who ‘willingly’ entered into an arranged marriage, as long as they are supremely confident of this ‘will’ of theirs. But there are so many marriages, in fact arranged and otherwise, where looking back ten years down the line, almost as a revelation, we see that the girl has made many more sacrifices, many times the only ones. By that time, she has had kids, nobody wants to have an altercation and damage an enduring marriage, and so everybody is again happy. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; they seem to have it all...I believe that they may have foresworn all of it.

This scenario of enforced happiness that seems to leave everyone smug and satisfied, is sickeningly more striking and depressing than all-out and vociferous arguments about marriage and women’s equality. Such scenarios abound in Divakaruni’s book, and it is precisely their commonplace, uninteresting, matter of fact ethos which screams at us to lift the veil and see and know better. It is their trivially obvious nature that alerts us to the zombie like existence lived by many girls in our society. Of course, like the beings inside the Matrix, they never know what they miss, so they might as well continue this blissfully unaware way of life. But then their behavior defeats every cardinal feature of human idealism, our capacity and vision to break free and see beyond our condition. If this is what these girls wish to do, then their plight is no different from the slaves in Southern American plantations, who happily used to sing songs during the night around a fire- definitely an exaggerated analogy, but an analogy nonetheless (Actually the condition of slaves was probably better, because they were aware of their condition and simply indulged in festive events to stave off the depressing feeling)

Of course, philosophically, the general question about the bourgeois concept of happiness is unresolvable (Me: Of course I am happy. You: No no, you only think you are. Me: No! I insist that I am happy. You: No! That's exactly where the illusion lies...). But no amount of philosophical cogitation can get rid of what 'is'.
Maybe girls in arranged marriages will object to my descriptions. But if I ask them if they are happy and if they have always consciously been happy, can they dare to answer otherwise? More importantly, are they capable of answering? If the answer to these questions is yes, then it does not matter anyway, because as Gibbon said, "The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous"...