Arranged marriage with a dash of philosophy
A few years ago, I was invited to an Indian wedding. It was bigger, brighter, longer, and louder than my expectations and probably any cinematic version I have personally known (watched?).
Anyway, the wedding itself was pretty memorable to me and rather forgettable to the bride (as per her own confession). The wedding lasted an entire week, where the first 4 days were purely festivities of all kinds and the last 3 days were the actual ceremony. By the end of that week, pretty much everyone (a thousand odd people, according to the bride) was wiped out and ready to drop into sweet slumber for the foreseeable future.
My presence there was as much as that of a wallflower. I was there because the bride wanted me to attend in her support. But it gave me the opportunity to do some unique people watching with nobody expecting me to “help out” or otherwise take any kind of responsibility for being present and in attendance.
Being the ignorant but very curious foreigner that I was, I happened to strike up a conversation with the oldest person in attendance there, who happened to be the great-grandmother of the groom. As the oldest family member, she would have been the center of attention for all the relatives (only after the bride and groom, of course!) who only happen to meet up once in a big wedding or so.
Instead, she chose to be my friendly wallflower neighbor. She was 96 years old, still very sprightly, and sharp as a bell (mentally). Naturally, my nosiness got the better of me, so I decided to keep her company all through that week. I found out that she could speak rather fluent English, which was a bit of a pleasant surprise for me. In her own words, that was because she was lucky to have attended a convent school during her young girl days and up to tenth grade no less! According to her, such an education was nothing short of miraculous given the relative time, place, and family of her birth.
Her story goes thus. She had had an arranged marriage at the age of 17 (which was still considered rather old at that time) to a man who was 13 years older, had her first child at the age of 18, had six more children later (out of whom only three managed to live beyond the age of 10), and widowed by the time she was 45. By all measures, she had lived a life of comfort and was lucky enough to have had wonderful children and grandchildren who would look after her ungrudgingly.
So, given this unique window into the life of a nonagenarian, I had so many questions. But the most burning ones were regarding her own happiness and the choices that she had (or perhaps not had).
I asked her if she was happy with having had an arranged marriage and a husband chosen by everyone else around her, to which she said that on average it was far above average. After all, according to her, she was happy not to have to make such a decision of a lifetime all by her young self. To her great relief, her husband had been kind, caring, non-abusive, very gainfully employed, and mindful enough to respect her choices. When asked if she was happy in her marital life, her answer was an immediate yes. Her happiness rather cooled my enthusiasm, and any pointed curiosity on my part thereafter would probably poke holes in her happy armor.
She then asked me how old I was, how much and what I had studied, and whether I was married. When I told her that I was unmarried, she obviously asked me why, to which I decided to dispense with seriousness and go with the standard “I was busy studying and then finding a job and making money”.
Astute thing that she was, she gave me the once over from head to toe and asked “That was then, so how about now?” Obviously, I was caught, so I slowly told her that getting married was not the issue but rather it was remaining married and making it work for a long time. Once again she managed to surprise me and said “yes, marriages mean that two nuclear families become one big unclear family.” Where I come from, that would most certainly be impossible, and that big family would probably not last a week’s worth of sanity under one roof. I decided to keep this part to myself.
“Marriages mean that two nuclear families become one big unclear family”
By the end of that long wedding week, while most people around us were sapped to exhaustion, I had swapped more stories with her. After the wedding came to a grand close and everyone had started leaving to get back to their normal lives, it was time for my one last conversation. That day, she drew me aside and told me not to get married too quickly or without being adequately prepared for it. I still remember her parting words to me that she said with a giant twinkle in her eye:
Getting married is but a week’s worth of effort, but marriage itself is a sum of the efforts of the rest of your life. If your marriage would rob you of yourself, it would be better to become a philosopher instead. We could use more of those.
Freud: 0. Nonagenarian grandma: +100
Thank you for reading my story!
