by Ajay Patel
Arranged Love
An Indian Boy’s Search in Amrika To
Find A Suitable Girl
A Story By Ajay Patel
Writers Club Press
San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai
Arranged Love An Indian Boy’s Search in Amrika To Find A Suitable Girl
All Rights Reserved © 2002 by Ajay Patel
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
Writers Club Press
an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.
For information address:
iUniverse, Inc.
5220 S. 16th St., Suite 200
Lincoln, NE 68512
www.iuniverse.com
This is a work of fiction. All events, locations, institutions, themes, persons, characters, and plot are completely fictional. Any resemblance to places or persons, living or deceased, are of the invention of the author.
ISBN: 0-595-22742-2
ISBN: 978-1-4697-7621-7(eBook)
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Preface
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
2
3
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Preface
I am not a writer by profession, which is why I feel that the following pages are better described as a simple story instead of a book. In Mark Twain fashion I would like to emphasize that while the characters may be one dimensional, the stereotypes patently obvious, the conflicts Rated G Disney clean, and the plot as predictable as a Hindi filum,itis important to me that an interesting story be told. In fact, when I first started writing, I thought this story was largely my story based on my experiences as I searched for an Indian wife in America. What really surprised me, however, was that as much as it is my story, it is also the story of many others like me. A story of my generation, growing up in America, assimilating, yet still having enough of a cultural desire to find a soul mate of the same ethnic and cultural background. Because it is more of an our story as opposed to a my story, I felt even a stronger desire to write about it so that others who will be taking part in our story can have an idea of what to expect.
Writing our story served another important purpose for me. It served as a cathartic release for many of my emotions. This is because our story can be, at times, emotionally exasperating. But through all of the pages, I hope one message is made clear. Don’t give up hope. Our story can be a long and draining one. It can be full of disappointment and painful experiences. Surviving through these times is important because there is happiness to be found at the end of the journey. We all can find that perfect person if we look hard enough. It’s neither selfish nor idealistic. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.
To the many friends and acquaintances I met during our story, much of what follows may sound familiar. I want to express my appreciation in your willingness to hear and talk about it the first time, and sincerely hope you don’t mind reading about it again.
PRE-ARRANGED
1
The End of the Beginning
Vijay dreaded visiting home tonight. His visits to Yorba Linda, a quiet suburb fifty miles from his apartment in Los Angeles and known mostly for being the birthplace of Richard Nixon, had consistently proven to be full of tension recently. It troubled him that he felt this way.
His papa and mummi, known as Jayendrabhai and Shantiben Patel by their friends, had lived in the same four bedroom, two and a half bath home for years and had emigrated from India to Amrika, their embarrassing way of pronouncing America, when he was only two months old. Despite the frequent differences inevitable in a household where the parents had grown up under customs and a culture different from those of their children, his memories of his childhood were generally pleasant ones. It helped, despite the generational and cultural differences, that Vijay’s parents were fairly tolerant and understanding—at least relative to other Indian parents raising kids in America.
In fact, Jayendrabhai and Shantiben only had to be tolerant towards Vijay. Vijay’s older brother, referred to often by them as the “why can’t you be like Rohit, he is such a dayo chokro” son, had dutifully followed, without question, all of the edicts set forth by his parents, including those involving dating, schooling, and attending family and “auntie uncle” functions. Rohit, a shorter, skinnier, and less assimilated version of Vijay had a Napoleonic air of entitlement about him because he was the elder sibling, more than twelve years older than Vijay, which alone would have been enough to explain the great difference in personalities between them. But added to this age difference was the fact that when the family had moved from India, Vijay was only an infant while Rohit was practically a teenager. Because of this, Rohit’s personality was rooted in Indian customs just as firmly as Vijay’s was rooted in American ones.
As an orthopedic surgeon, Rohit was the equivalent of an Indian god in the eyes of their family and Indian society in general. This was not to say that Vijay was merely a member of the congregation in comparison. Rohit, although brilliant in the sciences, often had trouble communicating his thoughts either verbally or on paper. This was largely because English was his fourth language (Gujarati, the local language from the state of Gujarat in India, being his first, Hindi, the national language of India, being his second, and science, as he had explained to Vijay thousands of times, the universal language, being his third). Vijay, on the other hand, spoke and communicated with eloquence. He enjoyed debating, mostly in arguments over useless issues with his parents while growing up. With this skill well honed by the time he had graduated college, he knew that law school, not medical school, was the proper calling for him.
Vijay had been out of law school for over a year now, having graduated with honors from Boalt Hall in Berkeley. He was recruited by and worked at a prestigious law firm in downtown Los Angeles. Even though he had become successful as an attorney, every now and then there were jokes made from his relatives that he still was the black sheep in the family for having chosen the “liberal arts” as opposed to the “sciences” path. This attitude was borne largely from the reality that as much as lawyers were joked about and held in derision in America, it was nothing compared to how lawyers were regarded in India. When Shantiben had told relatives in India that Vijay had decided to become a lawyer, the first thing that the relatives could say was “Oh, did he not do well in his studies?” The stereotypes had been cast by his family and the community and had been carried over to America, and overcoming them had proven exhausting for Vijay. However, these stereotypes and comparisons were not the cause of Vijay’s uneasiness as he stood at the front door of the house tonight. No, the tension and uneasiness stemmed from the fact that he was there with Jennifer.
Jennifer had light brown hair bordering on blond accompanied with striking blue eyes. Vijay could never tell whether his i
mpression of her eyes being striking was based on the fact that they really were striking or just because he came from an Indian background where everyone had brown eyes unless they wore colored contacts. With high heels on, she stood five feet ten inches tall, an equal in height to Vijay although Amazonian relative to the height of most Indian women. In fact, when they visited his family, she seemed to stoop and slump ever so slightly, perhaps to try and bridge the gap in distance between her and Vijay’s mother who barely cleared five feet in height.
Vijay and Jennifer had been together for over three years now. Having met in law school, they spent a good deal of their first year studying together. The study breaks that came every hour where they would, as a rule, talk about anything but the law, made them realize that they had quite a bit in common, including an attraction to each other. Their relationship slowly blossomed, and before Vijay knew it, he had his first serious girlfriend after several brief and less serious girlfriends in college.
While they were at Berkeley, the first years of their relationship were effortless. Perhaps it was because they both were away from home and parents with school being the only thing to distract them. Now, however, the relationship required effort. They had both moved back to Los Angeles and feelings of easiness and comfort were often interrupted by feelings of uneasiness and tension. Thinking back on it, Vijay realized he first started having these negative feelings the day he had introduced Jennifer to his parents.
Even though Jayendrabhai and Shantiben were more tolerant than most Indian parents would have been about Vijay’s often-unconventional choices, when Vijay told them last year about his relationship with Jennifer, it was not welcome news. They had difficulty in accepting the fact that their son was dating someone who was not Gujarati, let alone Indian. Vijay insisted and pleaded, however, that as his parents and his family grew to know Jennifer, they would see all the things that he saw in her and would realize how he had so fallen in love. To their credit, after the initial shock and disappointment wore off, they tried to make an effort, as did other family and friends. The results, however, were not always as he would have liked them to be.
Vijay remembered the first of several disasters nine months ago at his cousin Sejal’s wedding. It was Jennifer’s first Indian wedding and she was excited. She surprised him at the front door of her apartment by wearing an exquisite turquoise sari which had taken forty-five minutes for her and two of Vijay’s female Indian friends to wrap around her properly. Vijay stood in his suit and tie at the foot of the steps, amazed at how beautiful and exotic she looked. However, when they arrived at the wedding, numerous stares and looks of an all-together different nature greeted them. It almost seemed that wherever they walked, they left a wake of whispered “can you imagine?” and “how inappropriate!” Vijay couldn’t tell if the comments were because Jennifer was dressed in Indian clothes or whether it was a larger issue based on the fact that he was even with a “Jennifer.”
As much as Vijay felt the stares and heard the whispers, Jennifer felt and heard them more. They didn’t even last through the whole wedding before she said she had to leave. In the car ride home she started crying, realizing how difficult it would be to fit in, how simply putting on a sari and wearing a bindi would never satisfy everyone.
The story was much the same at other Indian events that they attended as well. Throughout all of this, Vijay realized that his relationship with Jennifer would always be viewed with skepticism and disfavor, perhaps just like his choice to become a lawyer as opposed to a doctor.
Although he had keys, Vijay knocked on the front door to warn everyone inside of their arrival. He looked at Jennifer and said in a pleading tone under his breath, “Honey, in two hours it will be over. I know it’s difficult and awkward coming here, but my parents are trying.”
“The fact that they have to try to like me is NOT a good thing,” she said curtly, refusing to look at him.
“Give them time. They’ll grow to love you. Just as must as they love Vaishali.”
Vaishali was Rohit’s wife. Vijay remembered when the family first introduced Rohit to the concept of marriage and Vaishali three years ago.
“Rohit, papa and I believe it is time that you have thoughts of marriage,” Shantiben had spoken from one end of the couch after a rented Bollywood DVD of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai on the television screen had come to an end. What followed was the attack most single Indian children faced from their parents when they reached that age of twenty-something. Rohit relented without much protest, obedient as usual, with his only condition being that he would like to marry someone from India with traditional values. Before anyone could blink, the tickets to India were booked.
Rohit gave himself three weeks to find his bride and get engaged, if not married. He thought that would be plenty of time. He explained to Vijay that many of his friends had found successful matches in less than two weeks and that the whole country was geared to generate a wedding with only a few days’ notice. “Besides”, he said to him on the plane ride to India, “I’m not only a successful doctor, but a green card holder as well!”
“You sound like a bad American Express commercial,” Vijay groaned.
Disregarding Vijay, Rohit continued to speak out loud as he fantasized about his future wife with a smile on his face, “The parents will be lined up around the block for a chance to have their daughter marry someone as qualified as me…” He made it all sound like a job interview.
Vijay was still not sold on the arranged marriage idea, although he had heard the arguments their parents had launched at Rohit. Vijay asked Rohit, “How can you possibly find a life partner within a matter of a few days? Don’t you want to take the time to get to know the woman you’re going to spend the rest of your life with, to make sure that she’s the right one for you?” Vijay thought about how slowly and carefully he had cultivated his relationship with Jennifer.
Rohit replied in a thoughtful voice, “Marriage is like being on a deserted island with only one woman. Although you may not be sure what she will be like and she may not be all that you hope for, you have to, and eventually can and will make it work.” Vijay just shook his head, deciding it was hopeless to try and explain to Rohit what true effortless love could really be like.
Surprisingly, however, everything was just as Rohit had said it would be. A schedule of interviews with daughters and their parents had been arranged for Rohit and the family at their Mota Kaka’s flat in Bombay.
For the longest time while growing up Vijay had assumed that his father’s oldest brother was named Mota Kaka. When he was just a child, he had innocently asked his father why their last name was Patel instead of Kaka, fearing that the reason involved some scandal with multiple wives. To that his father laughed out loud, explaining that Mota Kaka’s name was Narendra Patel, but since he was Vijay’s and Rohit’s eldest uncle, they were supposed to, out of respect, call him Mota Kaka, which loosely translated to “big uncle”. His father explained that even when he spoke to him, he called him Mota Bhai, which meant “big brother”. Having been told that this was just a nickname, Vijay expected, when he went to India for the first time at the age of eight, to find a large, towering, and bulky person of Buddha like proportions greeting him at the door. He was surprised, however, to find that his Mota Kaka was anything but big, instead being slight of build and wispy with a large gold Seiko watch that always hung loosely near his wrist because his forearms were so thin.
As they cleared the long customs line at the dank smelling airport in Bombay, Mota Kaka greeted them with an excited wave of his arm, his Seiko watch sliding around his wrist trying to keep up with the motion. He excitedly told them that their visit would be a productive one as he had spread word in the community that his nephew from the US was looking for matrimonial prospects. He explained that Rohit would have many girls who were “good catches” to choose from.
Each “interview” that their Mota Kaka had arranged involved a family and their daughter coming to the flat for a socia
l visit and introductions over a cup of chai and a plate of laddoos, which were dense, overwhelmingly sweet pastries made primarily from ghee, the equivalent of butter. Normally such types of meetings involved the potential groom and his family visiting the potential bride’s family at their house, but this was not possible given the number of girls that had to be met by Rohit and the time constraints involved before they had to return to America. After three “interviews” in a span of seven hours on just the first day, Rohit had seen enough. He agreed to marry Vaishali. Vijay often wondered if Rohit had made such a quick decision because he truly had fallen in love or because he was getting fed up with having to drink so many cups of chai and eating so many laddoos.
Vijay’s Bhabbi, the name he was constantly reminded to call Vaishali because she would now be his older brother’s wife, had grown up in Bombay and was fairly “westernized”. This meant that she was college educated with a Masters in Home Sciences, spoke English with only a slight accent, and even dressed, on certain occasions, in blue jeans and Tommy Hilfiger tee shirts.
Vaishali was petite and, unlike Jennifer, short like Vijay’s mother. Although Vaishali was considered “attractive” based on the standard Indian criteria of having fair skin and a slight build, Vijay could only describe her as attractive in an Indian way. He didn’t quite know what he meant by that, other than the fact that no matter how she dressed or looked, she had an appearance about her that would always give away the fact that she had been raised in India, not in the United States. Perhaps this was the case because despite her “westernized” attributes, she nonetheless exhibited the traditional qualities that Rohit so desired such as speaking softly and being deferential. These, among others, were qualities that were not as easily found in Indian women growing up in America. Vaishali doted on her in-laws and was content to be in a supporting and submissive role as opposed to a co-star in Rohit’s life.