So—we’re here, and we’ve been living here.
We spent our first week here with Puran and Bina, as Nepali
a couple as you could find. Neither of them has ever left Nepal. Puran grew up
picking tea on his family’s plantation; he poured us cups brewed from third
flush leaves, apologizing that they weren’t first or second (the first flushes are
sold abroad because they’re too valuable for Puran’s family to drink).
Adding to their Nepali-ness is their background. Puran and
Bina are of the Rai ethnic group. Like many Nepali with strong ethnic ties, their
marriage was arranged.
This was never obvious to me. They were never chilly or
hostile, seemed to love each other completely. Even so, I found myself suspicious.
Do Puran and Bina have to smile because Miranda and I are in their kitchen? Do they
want to get away from the other, to find some personal space? Most importantly,
are they dissatisfied—with the person they’re spending their life with, with the
love they might not have found at all?
That kind of thinking made—makes—me self-conscious. I have
the hunch that there’s something wrong about dismissing a cultural tradition as
durable and ancient as arranged marriages. Just because I’m sure that I like my way better doesn’t mean the other way
is wrong (though, of course, I harbored the secret certainty that if I did the math
correctly, I’d turn out to be right).
From this place of curiosity and something like guilt, I
started scrutinizing Puran and Bina. Could I spot a crack between them? Even a few
acerbic shut-downs could suggest unhappiness. But there was nothing. They tossed
playful comments across the kitchen, smiled wide and often, doted on their son,
Mishel. Puran even helped cook—a rarity in Nepal, where men usually eat plenty
but help none. The cheer and laughter of their household reminded me of warm
nights with my family in California—one brought together by a love marriage. If
Puran and Bina are engaged in an act, it is without cracks, or with cracks so
well concealed that no light gets through and not a drop leaks.
"Arranged marriages could have their own love stories—not about passion and freedom, but about devotion and compromise."
I began to wonder if arranged marriages might have a
distinct nature—if they might just fill their containers like fluid, rising to
the highest point possible and going no further. Maybe Bina hoped only that her
husband would be kind and roughly handsome; maybe she didn’t want to pour herself
into him completely, and instead looked for a satisfying routine.
Reducing the expectation that marriage be the most important
source of emotional succor in a person’s life was helpful. I could imagine Bina
being pleased by what she has been able to
get from Puran: a good companion, someone she can laugh with, with everything
else just a bonus.
It occurred to me that that reasoning was not unique to
arranged marriages. There is growing support in Western relationship thinking for
the notion that a single life is not a bad one. The thinking goes that a romantic
partner isn’t the only source of emotional support; networks of friends can also
bring joy, satisfaction, and a different kind of love.
I liked this thought. I’ve often found that my other halves
are often more like other 47-percents. I don’t think there’s anything wrong
with that, and it doesn’t upset me. It does mean, though, that that mismatched fraction of
emotional needs is better satisfied through friends than extracted from a
differently-inclined partner. I feel this also helps me preserve identity
within my relationships; done right, it can help me feel that I’m growing close
to someone without growing entirely into them.
I began to wonder if Bina might do exactly that: share tea
and lentils with her dearest friends and find her love-connection that way. And
that’s a connection that doesn’t depend on her husband.
That thought felt right. Sharing breakfast in their kitchen,
I could no longer dismiss their arranged marriage off the bat. There were
plenty of ways that Puran and Bina could be very happy together—perhaps even more
sustainably than in American marriage, where there’s a great deal of pressure
to find a soul-mate. Let me tell you: if I got an anonymous letter that proved I don’t
have a soul-mate, I’d be more relieved than disappointed. If relationships are
supposed to be matters of intrinsic compatibility, a simple argument or disagreement
might prove that my partner and I have incompatible souls—and how would you deal
with that!
But if the goal is not to find a perfect soul mate but rather
someone who fulfills you and with whom small divergences are no cause for alarm—well,
then a problem is just something to talk about and to fix.
*
Of course, I think that there is some baseline of human compatibility
required. Perhaps these arranged marriages are helped by a workmanlike settle-for-what-you-get
attitude absent from American marriages—but that still doesn’t mean they’ll be
happy partnerships. Work might be important to a relationship, but it’s certainly
not the only important thing. I have no doubt that arranged marriages have
produced bitter or flat partnerships, marriages that leave husband and wife
feeling alone as they fall asleep in the same bed.
Even so, there was still something freeing about the thought
that a relationship didn’t only depend on some deep, imperceptible
compatibility of souls. About half of American marriages end in divorce; if we’re
trying to find our soul mates, we’re not doing a very good job of it. The arranged marriage model, where you find the good in what you have, gives me hope: companionship might be a matter of work, not luck. Arranged marriages could have their own love stories—not about passion and freedom, but devotion and compromise.
A last thought: while arranged marriage might free people
from certain expectations of compatibility, it certainly inhibits freedoms elsewhere.
An arranged marriage gives other people an awful lot of control over your life.
I’m sure that’s the voice of my American individualism, and probably the feeling
of jealously-guarded independence you get as a white man—but even so, there’s
something a little screwy about letting your family decide who will live with you.
It requires that individuals needs be subordinated to collective ones. That feels
off-balance to me, but who knows how Puran and Bina felt? I can’t imagine it
was a simple decision for them. That’s how obligations usually are—costly to
fulfill and costly to neglect, even if they might make some decisions simpler
(if you just fulfill the obligation).
All my thinking about their marriage didn’t tell me much
more than I knew from the beginning; the couple was still as happy, just as
married, as they seemed from the beginning.
On our first day there, Miranda and I took dinner in their
small living room. We were exhausted and disoriented, still full from breakfast
service on the flight even though Bina was serving dinner. The conversation around
their little dining table wasn’t taking off. There’d be a question, a short
answer, and then we’d turn back down to our meals.
Finally, Miranda asked about a picture hung prominently on the
wall: a younger, smiling Bina and Puran, Bina wearing a long, colorful kurti
and Puran a Western-style suit.
“Our wedding day,” Puran said, grinning at Bina, happy and
free as a tourist.
If there’s a message at all, it’s that I don’t know
anything.
Give me a comment if you have thoughts about any of this—the
advantages of low expectations, the benefits that might come from pleasing your
family, or the thousand other things I didn’t notice or didn’t write about.
Also, I’ll try to do some real travel writing before long,
but I would recommend you don’t hold your breath.
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