Indian Women Rejecting Arranged Marriages

Modern Generation Says No to Traditional Matchmaking

Once I reached my twenties, I would be married, likely through the arranged marriage system, and as hard as my parents would try to find a good man for me, who knew what my fate held? My wedding and marriage, like any Indian girl's, were constant topics of discussion. At 10, I'd get giddy and excited at every mention of it; at 15, I'd blush. By the time I was 20, I had taken to yawning.

We were told that once married, we could travel to exotic locales with our husbands, go to parties that stretched beyond the 8 p.m. curfew, and if our husbands were the adventurous sort, maybe even get piercings and tattoos.

What they neglected to tell us was that this was the best-case scenario. It was more likely that we'd be giving up not just our names, but our identities."You can go with your husband," my mother would say each time we'd pass by a club and I'd let out an exaggerated sigh.

When I drooled over mini-skirts or backless dresses in store windows, she'd say, "Those would look good on you. We'll get you some like that for your honeymoon."Once married, I would sport short hair with purple highlights, have a knife-shaped tattoo on my lower back, wear mini-skirts, and finally get to know what beer tasted like.

Forbidden Practices and Taboos

The mother-in-law doesn't like it when you travel because that leaves her to take care of the house and home that you now share with her. The husband never has time for parties because he went to plenty in his youth and now has to focus on his career. You can't color your hair, wear mini-skirts, or get tattoos because you belong to a good, decent Indian family.

In my version of the dream, I envisioned spontaneous travel, long road trips, living on limited finances, eating in dubious joints, camping, and lots of adventure. In my boyfriend's version, I made him healthy meals, took care of his family's needs, and performed religious ceremonies with his mother while he worked in order to guarantee our financial security.

In my life, I began to see my mother's. My own mother had no freedom to speak of, was never "allowed" to have friends over, wear jeans or other "western" clothing, or travel alone. Now nearing her sixties, with her mother-in-law long gone, my mother the former bibliomaniac who could pick apart a VCR and put it back together in less time than it takes to air an episode of Desperate Housewives doesn't bother any more with the library or the theatre and travel is overrated.

In Your Mother's Footsteps

She could pour over accounts books for hours, and could be saving a multi-national corporation millions of dollars right now with her business savvy. She was my hero. I wanted to be just like her. What I didn't want, was her life. When my parents' peers were denouncing love matches, they encouraged my brother and I to find our own spouses. They had seen many an arranged marriage go sour, and by the time I had reached my twenties, they were open to other possibilities.

As a teenager, I would secretly pray that I wouldn't be, willingly or unwillingly, coerced into an arranged marriage. I prayed that I'd find a good man and love him enough to want to marry him. I wanted real romance, heartbreaks worthy of being written about, and reunions that would awe.

Instead, years later, I find myself caught between two worlds - one that promises to let me call my soul my own, but that may never truly arrive, and the other that offers security and companionship in exchange for a piece of my identity. I've chosen the former, and while I haven't made the compromises expected of me as an Indian woman, I've made others.