by Sushi Das
Sushi Das grew up in 1970s London – a culturally messed-up time. Feminists were telling women they could be whatever they wanted, skinheads were yelling at foreigners to go home and punk music was urging revolt.
Amid the social upheaval, Sushi was trapped by Indian tradition – and a looming arranged marriage she would do almost anything to avoid. But how do you turn your back on centuries of tradition without trashing your family’s honour? How do you escape your parents’ stranglehold without casting off their embrace? And how do you explain to your strict dad why there’s a boy smoking in his living room and another one lurking in the garden?
Breaking free meant migrating to the other side of the world, only to find life in Australia was just as culturally confusing. This insightful, often hilarious memoir lifts the curtain on one of the oldest traditions of Eastern culture – a custom which aims to join two families in economic prosperity, though the reality is not always so blissful.
Cover
About the Book
Title
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1 Escape Plan
Chapter 2 A Passage to England
Chapter 3 Starving in a Sari
Chapter 4 Nignog
Chapter 5 Fraternising with Undesirable Elements
Chapter 6 Searching for a Suitable Boy
Chapter 7 Seeing the Doctor
Chapter 8 Men, Women and Wombs
Chapter 9 A Match at Last!
Chapter 10 An Arranged Marriage
Chapter 11 The Ice Age
Chapter 12 Paradise Road
Chapter 13 Sparse End of the World
Chapter 14 They Told Me So
Chapter 15 The Triumph of Hope over Experience
Chapter 16 In the Land of the Free
Sources
Acknowledgments
Copyright Notice
More at Random House Australia
Some names and a few other details have been changed to protect people’s privacy. The sources for this book include my diaries, interviews with family members, audio tapes, letters and, of course, fallible memory.
For Lotus
‘Do you know what your father’s nickname was when he was a schoolboy?’ asked Mum in Punjabi – the language she always used when maximum impact was required. ‘They called him the Saint,’ she said, putting down her knitting and leaning forward. ‘And do you know why they called him the Saint? Mmm? Well, if you stop chewing that revolting bubblegum and sit down, I’ll tell you.’
I did as I was told. ‘Your father was about eight or nine years old when a boy in his class did something bad. Stole a few coins from another boy – something like that. The whole class knew who the rascal was. Anyway, when the teacher discovered there was a thief among his pupils, he was determined to catch him and punish him. He gathered the boys around and asked, “Who stole the money?” But nobody owned up. He asked again, but still nobody owned up. So then the teacher said, “I am going to ask you one more time. If the culprit admits his crime, he will be punished – as he knows he deserves to be. If he does not, I will punish the entire class. And it will be a caning the likes of which you have never seen before. You will remember it for the rest of your lives. And trust me, the punishment I give you will be nothing compared to the beating the culprit will get from his own classmates after my back is turned.”’
Mum paused and resumed her knitting. She always knew when to pause.
‘What happened?’ I asked, chewing my gum with ferocious urgency.
‘Well, the boys were trembling with fear, hoping the rascal would own up. But he didn’t. So your father stepped forward and owned up to a crime he didn’t do.’ I stopped chewing suddenly, eyes fixed on Mum. ‘He made a sacrifice for others,’ she continued. ‘That is the kind of man your father is. He took the punishment to save the rest of the class, and from that day on they called him the Saint. Your father is a good man, a very good man.’
I sat still for a moment, thinking through the ramifications and implications of such gallantry. It didn’t occur to me to ask how she came to know this story.
‘So did he get caned?’ I asked.
‘No. The teacher made him do the chicken for an hour instead.’
Seeing the bewildered look on my face, she explained the punishment. ‘The chicken was a punishment they used to give in Indian schools. You bring your arms around from behind, put them through your legs, squat down and hold your ear lobes. Not easy. They do it to humiliate you.’
I immediately stood up and assumed the pose that Mum had described, but the burning strain on my thigh and shoulder muscles was unbearable, not to mention the difficulty of keeping balance. I keeled over after just five seconds and lay sprawled on the floor, laughing and groaning.
‘You may laugh, young girl,’ said Mum, ‘but remember, your father made a sacrifice, like so many sacrifices he makes for this family. He was just a boy and he held that pose for one hour in the blazing heat because, inside him, there is strength. Inside him, there is wisdom. He is a decent man, a man of good character, and I am very lucky that my parents found me such a fine man to marry.
‘Now, go and spit out that disgusting bubblegum. All day long you’re chomping and grinding that stuff – you look like a goat. You’re twelve years old – it’s about time you started behaving like a young lady. One day your father and I will have to find you a good man to marry. And, trust me, no man is going to accept a girl who chews gum like a goat.’
I burgled my parents’ house when I was fourteen. It was an inside job, by which I mean I didn’t need to break in. It was wickedly late when I tiptoed out of my bedroom and down the stairs, holding my breath as I took each step, careful not to wake the household. Moonlight shone through the big arched window in the hall, lighting up the carpeted stairs that, obligingly, silenced my footfalls. I know there was a big round moon in the sky because earlier that evening Mum had performed her special husband-worship ceremony – the one she did every autumn on the night of a full moon.
I crept into the dining room with Pink Panther stealth, closed the door behind me and switched on a lamp. A handwritten cardboard sign on the dining table shouted: NO ENGLISH PLEASE! – a valiant but largely unsuccessful attempt by my dad to keep his three children in touch with his mother-tongue, Punjabi.
I knelt down and quietly opened the wooden cabinet where he kept his important things, and there they were – rows of neatly ordered photo albums. Photography was his hobby, and when he wasn’t taking close-up shots of flower stamens in parks and gardens, he was taking photos of us kids. I took out the oldest album, the one with the black and green paisley cover and a soft, silky tassel on the spine, and opened it, carefully turning over the gossamer-thin lining paper between each page to reveal the black and white photos he had carefully mounted.
My pulse quickened. I knew which ones I was looking for: me as a baby sitting with my mum on the grass in a park; my handsome young dad lying on his back holding me aloft; me and my sister, aged five and three, standing with open umbrellas in the garden; me and my sister, slightly older, grinning proudly, sitting next to our baby brother. I removed the photos, dropped them into the breast pocket of my pyjamas, and crept back up the stairs to the darkness of my bedroom. Back in my still slightly warm bed I slid the photos under my pillow, the place where I usually kept a tight, anxious fist when I slept.
I could hear the soft, regular in-and-out breaths of my sister, Vin, asleep in the other bed. I took a few deep breaths to slow my heartbeat to the rhythm of her breathing. I liked sharing a bedroom with her. We grew up in each other’s pockets: sneaking sugar sandwiches to bed, nattering endlessly into the night, sniggering behind our hands and harrumphing at the grown-ups.
She had a round, babyish face, slightly gappy teeth and two black, pliable plaits that made for excellent reins when she was the horse and I the cowgirl. She had this way of rolling her eyes that gave her an air of relaxed confidence, as if tomorrow didn’t matter. I always called her Vin. Mum and Dad used her full name, Vanita. Though she was younger than me by a couple of years, she behaved as if she was older. Where my emotions were fierce, hers were restrained; where my tone of voice was shrill, hers was sage. Generally speaking, I felt I could influence her – that I simply had to say, ‘I was born before you, so I know more than you,’ and she would acquiesce. But sometimes I could tell by the way she pressed her lips together and drew in a long, slow breath that privately she didn’t put much store in whatever it was I had said. Still, I could work out who I was because she was my yardstick. I grew up thinking of us, essentially, as one person. My opinion was her opinion. Her life was my life. My secrets were her secrets. Except one.
I never told her about the little suitcase. A dark brown case, just 40 by 10 inches, with two silvery clasps that snapped shut with a satisfactory click. It had been my dad’s at some stage. I don’t remember how it came to belong to me. Inside the lid I had painted in red letters the word SIOUX, because when you’re a fourteen-year-old kid and you plan to run away from home, it’s always a good idea to change your name to something daft.
I detested Sushila, my full name, because mumbled or spoken fast it sounded like Sheila, an even worse name. At school, half the teachers called me Sushilla (so that it rhymed with killer), presumably because they didn’t know how to pronounce a ‘foreign’ name. It’s a terrible name to say if you have a lisp: Thootheela. Even worse when you’re drunk: Shoosheela. Loosely translated, it means ‘good conduct’ or ‘good character’, but at home everyone called me Neelum (blue sapphire). According to the story my mum tells, my maternal grandfather named me Sushila, even though my dad preferred Neelum. So Sushila became my official name and Neelum my unofficial ‘home’ name. At least officially I was a person of good character.
I considered changing my name to Sue, but that was obviously a Western name, and with my black hair and brown face, I looked nothing like a Westerner. I had been reading about Sioux Indians. Perfect. It still sounded like Sue, but I would spell it Sioux, and if anyone asked, I would just say I had a bit of Red Indian in me. I could be an Indian, just a different kind of Indian – the type that didn’t have to have an arranged marriage.
The next day, I waited till Vin was out of the bedroom before I got down on my hands and knees and reached under my bed for the little brown suitcase. I’d been packing it for months. So far I had a toothbrush, a few spare clothes, a pen, sanitary pads and a ten pound note. Not much, but it was a start. I took the stolen photos from under my pillow and looked at them. Quickly, I slid them between the folds of a T-shirt in the case, clicked it shut and pushed it as far under my bed as I could.
From under a pile of books on my desk I pulled out my diary to make my daily entry, without mentioning the theft. The year was 1979. I was a fastidious chronicler of daily events, recording in minute and irrelevant detail the dull happenings of each day: ‘Had to help Dad paint the skirting boards today. White gloss. Mum made aloo gobi for dinner again. YUK! God, my life is humdrum, can’t wait to get back to school again, then I won’t have to help Dad decorate the house. Stripping wallpaper from the back room tomorrow (using soapy water and scraper, not blow torch – that’s only for painted wood).’
I started keeping a diary in 1977 at the age of twelve and stuck with it for probably far too many years. Dad had mixed feelings. ‘Never write anything in your diary that you wouldn’t like to have read out in a court of law,’ he warned. I have no idea what he thought I was writing, but clearly he had no faith in my judgment. I think he worried I would write something that might inadvertently bring shame upon the family. That’s why I never wrote anything about running away. Sometimes I wrote in code. It was not unusual for Vin to see me furiously scribbling hieroglyphics late into the night as I recorded the latest development in my parents’ single-minded goal to find me a suitable boy to marry.
I knew through gradual family osmosis that my parents expected me to have an arranged marriage. It didn’t matter that they had migrated to Britain in the 1960s, or that I, as well as Vin and our brother Raja, had received an entirely Eurocentric education. Indeed, Western culture was the wallpaper for us, and not the type you can simply strip away, although my parents did try. As far as they were concerned, we were Indian and arranged marriages were the Indian way, regardless of where in the world we lived. Diaspora duty.
As long as an arranged marriage was either being planned or taking place, the world was as it should be. My parents had it all sorted: I would finish my school studies; a respectable Indian boy, educated to a level slightly above me, would be found, probably from Britain, but possibly from India; and I would marry in my early twenties. Their ideal suitable boy, like the ideal suitable boy sought by millions of Indian parents in Britain, America, Australia and anywhere else Indians lived, was, of course, a medical doctor.
There would be a splendid Indian wedding, probably in the local community hall, after which I would re-enact a scene from a Bollywood movie – I would tearfully wave goodbye to my parents in my red wedding sari, laden with twenty-four-carat gold jewellery, and head for my husband’s house, where I would live for the rest of my life, bearing healthy sons and dutifully looking after my husband and his ageing parents.
There was only one slight hitch: nobody asked me if this was what I wanted. I was simply expected to do as I was told. My destiny lay in my parents’ hands and, naturally, that made me skittish. I bit my nails, sat on the edges of chairs, spoke fast, leapt up steps two at a time. I was perturbed not only by the robbery of my right to choose, but by the fact that I didn’t share my parents’ vision. How could I let someone else decide my future? An arranged marriage! The very idea was unhinged. What would it be like to have sex with a stranger? What if we didn’t get along?
I wouldn’t be forced into a marriage, they insisted. If I didn’t feel comfortable, I was free to say no. I wondered how many times I could say no. I could say no to the first boy they introduced me to, maybe even the second one. But beyond that I had to start providing reasons. Could I say no forever? And if I did, would there be adverse consequences?
I had many other unanswered questions, mostly prompted by news reports about girls from Indian and Pakistani backgrounds – the daughters of first-generation migrants – running away from home to avoid an arranged marriage. There were stories of girls being locked up by their parents, even beaten if their behaviour harmed or threatened family honour. Sometimes they were taken to India or Pakistan to marry or to be de-Westernised.
Then there were the heart-stopping stories of honour killings – fathers, uncles, and brothers who killed, or played some part in murdering, daughters, nieces and sisters who brought shame on the family. I’m not talking about honour killings in India. I’m talking about honour killings in Britain in the 1980s. Indeed, they are still happening today.
I never feared that anything like that might happen to me. My parents were as horrified by honour killings as any right-thinking person would be. But I was never sure how far they would go to persuade me to follow Indian tradition. I feared my fate. What if I turned my back on the arranged-marriage system? What repercussions would I suffer? What repercussions might my parents suffer at the hands of the Indian community?
Brutal treatment of Indian and Pakistani girls who stepped out of line was the backdrop to my youth. It was a terrifying reality that seeped into our house through rumours in the Indian community and through the mainstream news. And there was no escaping those headlines because ours was a household bombarded by newspapers, radio news broadcasts and TV news bulletins.
The ease with which I was able to produce half-baked plans and harebrained schemes to get out of my bind were alarming, even to me. If running away didn’
t work out, perhaps I could, somehow, become famous. Nothing like the glare of the public spotlight to inoculate a person from parental pressure. Or maybe I could quietly but definitively repulse potential husbands so that they always rejected me, until Mum and Dad, in exasperation, would finally allow me to pick my own husband.
Unfortunately, such schemes lacked even a grain of realism, and I knew it. In search of a way out, I prowled the undergrowth of fantasy before turning to the wide-open plains of reality, where it was evident that a career might fulfill the dual function of income generation (and therefore financial independence) and an escape route. But which career?
Dad was a news junkie who didn’t know when to stop. The BBC World Service was his friend. The Lilliburlero theme music, now seared onto an ancient part of my brain, never seemed to be more than fifty-nine minutes away. Then there was the day’s newspaper, stuffed into the letterbox or brought home in Dad’s briefcase at the end of the day. He was a man who took The Times, but later moved to the Guardian. Occasionally he’d buy other newspapers, but never the tabloids. He would clip articles he deemed important or particularly enlightening and file them in one of his many collections of cuttings.
Sometimes he clipped articles that he thought I ought to read for my intellectual nourishment. He would leave them on the dining table or by the phone, or any place he thought my eye might inadvertently fall upon them. There was no avoiding those headlines: ‘Shocking Truth about Youth’; ‘Lazy Lifestyle of Teenage Girls Exposed’; ‘Teachers Warn against Late Nights’; ‘Broccoli: the New Super Food’.
If Vin or I ever picked up the newspaper, it would be to check the TV listings on the back page. ‘Why don’t you read the front page?’ Dad often said. ‘That’s the page most people read first. You might learn something.’ He wanted us to be intelligent girls, not dithering ninnies, which he feared we might become without his constant guidance.