Pretty much once a year, every year since I had moved to New York, I’d been hauled back to Bombay for a look-see. All my cousins had done it that way, usually meeting their spouses at a family wedding. It was almost a domino-effect, although I thought it interesting that I was the only female cousin still left standing, with the exception of Namrata, and another, who was only eleven. Even she would probably find a husband before me at the rate all this was going. I had also been told that, at Nina’s wedding, at least five girls had expressed their interest in ‘either one’ of my brothers. Such was the grab-bag nature of the game.
That I had received one expression of interest was in itself of tremendous significance. Bombay, after all, was a matrimonial melting-pot. All a single person need do is show up, make a few calls, pray, seek the advice of astrologers, family priests and professional matchmakers. And then pray some more that these people had some idea what they were doing. And most importantly, as my mother never failed to remind me, it was all about compromise.
From my family’s perspective, this proposal was a big deal. Someone had literally ‘asked for’ me, and it was an honour, any way they looked at it. I had always told them I really wanted to get married. Truly I did. I wanted to slip back into the system. Yet I had been away so long now that often it was like I’d been forgotten by the society I was born into. I realized that when an attractive, eligible man appeared on the scene, I wouldn’t be the first choice because I was living alone in New York, far removed from the matrimonial-minded masses.
I was oddly drawn to the age-old system of arranged marriage – it seemed exotic somehow, noble, and fragile. Observing the tradition would elevate me to the highest ranking on the scale of social conduct; when a girl marries a man her family members select for her it is the ultimate act of piety, and, according to tradition, would bring many, many blessings.
On each of my trips back to Bombay, I secretly hoped that this would be the special, destined journey in which I would find ‘the one’. That here, in the midst of the wedding parties and politics and desperate mothers seeking boys and girls for their offspring, I, too, could find my intended.
On this trip, now, there was a proposal.
But, for God’s sake, he lived in Accra.
‘Beti, it’s not the place, it’s the person,’ my mother said, reading my mind in that most inconvenient way that mothers do. ‘If he’s a good boy, then you’ll be happy anywhere you go.’
Nice thought. But I still wasn’t buying it.
‘What do you think?’ my mother asked my father.
After thirty-five years of marriage, my mother still never addressed her husband by his first name. She had told me when I was very young that wives should refer to their husbands only with a very grand ‘he’. Anything else would be defamatory. ‘Your husband will be your lord, and you must treat him with dignity and respect,’ she had said. I must have been five.
But now, my father was stumped for an answer. He was no longer as involved with my matrimonial affairs as he had been, say, fifteen years ago. In fact, he would commonly say that he had ‘given up’, which hardly inspired hope and confidence in my beleaguered and perpetually single thirty-three-year-old heart.
At last, my father spoke. ‘We should definitely consider it,’ he said, wrapping a floppy brown piece of chapatti around a chunk of paneer. ‘You’re here, so you may as well get the job done. That way, at least your airfare won’t be wasted.’
After lunch, my mother telephoned Maharaj Girdhar.
‘Yes, I’m calling about the Accra boy,’ she said, as if responding to an ad in the Village Voice about a second-hand Volkswagen. She grabbed a piece of paper and pen, and started scribbling.
‘Yes … of course … good … oh, almost thirty-nine? … Very good … Educated … Well-to-do and all … Good … Yes, I’ll talk to my husband and call you … No, Anju is supposed to be leaving tomorrow, but of course if something works out, she’ll stay. Her job in New York is not so important, hah? She must see the boy first, no?’ she said in a conciliatory tone, wanting to please the priest as he, evidently, held the key to my future happiness.
She hung up, and turned back to us.
‘OK, so here are the details. He’s almost thirty-nine, which is a good age. Five foot eight, which is quite a good height, OK not so tall, but then you’re not that tall and you’ll maybe have to stop wearing such high high heels,’ she said. Scanning her notes, she went on. ‘Only son, one sister married, they have their own business, some shops, even a factory. Rich. Parents are nice. He also went to school in America. He travels here and there, I’m sure he’ll take you along.’
She paused, having felt she’d done a sufficiently convincing sales pitch. ‘He seems to have everything. What else do you want?’ she asked, reasonably.
‘Well, it’s just that I have a nice life in New York,’ I began. ‘And I’m sure he’s a decent enough fellow, but I don’t think Accra is the place for me.’
‘Beti, do you want to stay unmarried for ever?’ my mother countered. ‘Just imagine, if you met someone, and you married him, and he lived in a place you don’t mind living in, such as New York or London or Singapore, and then something happened and he had to move to not such a nice place, like maybe even Accra. Are you saying that you wouldn’t go with him? That is what marriage is, sacrifice and compromise.’
‘Yes, I understand, Mummy, but I’m not married to him so the sacrifice thing doesn’t come up. I have the choice right now. You know what I’m saying?’
I looked at my mother’s slowly greying hair, elegantly swept off her smooth and unlined face, the prize feature of which was her regal, haughty nose. She was wearing a polyester kaftan, similar to one of those 1970s-style Gucci djellabas from a few seasons ago, but this one had been made by the family tailor. It was my mother’s preferred choice of stay-at-home clothing.
‘Anju, you can’t have everything in life. You can’t be too hoity-toity. Didn’t Maharaj tell you so many years ago that you have to learn to compromise? Where will you find everything you want in one boy? It’s not possible, beti. You’re already almost thirty-four. Soon, no one will ask for you any more. You must think carefully.’
I was thinking carefully. About waking up to Matt Lauer every morning, about the paraffin manicures and oxygen facials at Bliss, and Saturday afternoons shopping in Nolita. And the parties and fund-raisers. And waiting to see if Paris Hilton and Aerin Lauder would turn up, and what the fabulous ex-Miller girls would wear. And trying every different flavour of Martini, every new designer shoe, and giggling with my girlfriends as I listened to the stories of the boys in their lives. It had taken me some years, but now it was a life I had grown intimately familiar with and happily accustomed to. And, like so many women in my situation, I wanted a man to fit in neatly with it. I wanted him to live the same life, enjoy the same things, look the part. And, simultaneously, I wanted him to be chosen by my parents, sanctioned by the rest of the family. It wasn’t much to ask for, was it?
But I also knew that in the view of my society, a woman was never much of anything until the day she got married. She was always a guest in her parents’ home, they were her temporary caretakers. When the right man came, regardless of where or how he lived, this young, single woman would wrap her life around his. It was not about what she wanted, it was about what he wanted for both of them. Given that view, I remembered how my mother was baffled one time, watching an American TV movie, where a woman left her perfectly nice husband because she said she wanted to ‘find herself’.
‘Such nonsense,’ Mummy had said. ‘He’s not beating her, he’s not doing anything wrong. She wants to leave, for what? Stupid woman.’
My mother just didn’t get it, but there was no reason she should. Her life had been all about sacrifice and compromise, the same virtues she plugged to me every day. My parents met once, and were engaged within five hours,