Arranged Marriage is a collection of short stories that center on the patriarchy fueled by the tradition of arranged marriages. In many stories, the characters are unnamed, to present the fact that the experiences depicted in the stories are common and can happen to anyone.
The Bats
The narrator is a small child witnesses his mother’s abuse regularly. The child gets so used to the whole thing that he/she starts to pretend to not notice. The mother elopes to a distant uncle in rural Bengal who accepts them as his own and lets them stay with him. At this point, the bats come into the story. The story is high on metaphors. The bats act as a metaphor to describe the mother’s mental makeup. Even after realizing the fate they would get on returning to the grove, they kept coming back till the stop completely. This also foreshadows mother’s actions later in the story when the narrator describes their escapes every time after the father would thrash her. She would return anyway, partly to avoid society’s disapproval, partly due to loneliness. Another metaphor used here is the ring, it is said to come from a wizard to have the power to fulfill any wish. The narrator tries to hold on to it as a token of happy days with the grandpa-uncle. The loss of ring suggests the loss of innocence of childhood.
Clothes
Sumita is a submissive girl who is married to a man working in US. She is fascinated by the polar opposite lifestyle in US. She has a reverence for new and embellished clothes and attaches an importance to them. After she arrives in US, she discovers her newfound love for western wear. However, she can’t wear the clothes in public for it would shame her in-laws. The shirts and skirts instill a sense of confidence in her that her traditional saris don’t. She feels more at home in those clothes, while in US. Her husband is supportive and wants her to further her education. However, she’s wants to work in the store her husband is killed at. To her, the store is the first link to the US she got to forge. Her husband’s support and a will to not fall to depravity, makes her confident enough to choose a lifestyle her family wouldn’t support.
Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs
Jayanti is mesmerized by America, but her illusions about America shatter when she discovers her aunt’s circumstances. She becomes a victim of a racist attack and discovers that her wealthy aunt is not so wealthy anymore. Her deductions about Pratima and Bikram are also questioned as their relationship is not what she thought it was. On the surface, Bikram appears to be dominating his timid wife, even abusing her. But, their relationship is complex. Even though he is the one who dictates the family situation, his wife is the one who acts as a backbone. He can’t bear to lose her. He ends up crying after hitting her, which though is a poor excuse for abusing one’s wife, her wife forgives him as he is worried about her and their financial condition. It shows the complete interdependence the husband and wife have over each other.
The Word Love
The girl in the story is torn between the old world and the new, represented by her mother and boyfriend respectively. She is disowned by the mother when she is discovered to be living in sin. The mother, too worried about her family’s reputation, is particular about the ideals her daughter should have and uses a passive aggressive mode to instill a fear in her daughter. The boyfriend is sometimes jealous, of the omnipresent thoughts of mother on the daughter’s mind, and mostly insecure about her feelings for him. He can’t understand the affection the daughter has for her mother; to him it’s unnatural for a child to be so much affected by her parent’s actions. In the end, her realizes that she was only in love with her mother and not him. The narrator decides to start a new life by leaving both her mother and boyfriend behind, signifying the start of an era in her life which is not defined by anyone’s judgment.
A Perfect Life
Meera has a perfect life, seemingly. She also has an aversion from children. She can’t stand little children and feels that becoming a mother makes you helpless as all your energy is focused on your children instead of your regular life. The addition of Krishna, a homeless boy, brings up a maternal side in her. She becomes so attached to the boy that it begins to affect her love life. She goes to lengths to avoid letting go of Krishna and when she has to, it breaks her. After losing Krishna, she goes berserk and contemplated marrying just for the sake of having a child, which is something she would get disgusted of earlier. The loss makes her understand the power of being a mother as well as the pain maternity brings along. She becomes so wary of the pain that she decides to never have any children ever.
The Maid Servant’s Story
This story features another story in it. The protagonist is the original narrator’s mother. The story questions the stereotypes in the society about women. A women who is educated and accomplished in many ways is cheated upon by her husband when she is pregnant. A woman is trafficked in prostitution is branded a whore and looked down upon as sub-human with no consent. The man of the house is always listened to and followed, even when he is not right. In the end, the narrator’s mother learns of her husband’s infidelity and yet decides to stay in her marriage for the sake of her children. She understands the betrayal that she has inflicted upon Sarala unintentionally. This lesson makes the narrator’s aunt wary of men and society.
The Disappearance
The story describes the negligible importance a woman holds in a household. The narrator’s wife disappears and he loses little sleep over it. He calls his mother to help and she is happy to come to his son. All the signs of the wife soon disappear from the house and soon they start planning his second marriage. All this time, it never occurs to narrator that his wife could have left of her own. He believes her to be a frail, unintelligent being, so modest that she would never participate in sex, like a good wife. The revelation that she left him shocks him not because he loved her or worried about her, because he is unable to fathom marital rape as reason enough to leave material comforts and one’s child.
Doors
Doors symbolize privacy and the need of space in the story. Preeti likes her privacy, Deepak doesn’t cares much about it. This is not something they thought would disrupt their marriage, but the arrival of raj acts as a catalyst to it. Raj and Deepak are raised in environments where concepts like privacy have no value. Preeti is so overwhelmed in the end that it leads to their first fight after their marriage. While their family and friends warned them against the marriage, as both were from different societies, they thought themselves to be in a relationship built on mutual trust and love. However, Preeti realizes that things inherent in one’s attitude can never change, and soon she loses the comfort she enjoyed with Deepak as he learns the value of privacy.
The Ultrasound
The story tells of two cousins, married in different environments and expecting their first child. While Anju lives in US and has a loving and progressive husband, Runu lives in Calcutta with her husband’s large family. Anju is dealing with an identity crisis with her pregnancy, that whether her husband’s love is for her as mother of his child and not for her as an individual. When Runu informs her of her in-laws wish to abort the child since hers is a girl, Anju is shocked, she is further shocked by Sunil’s assertions that it is best for Runu as she can’t be expected to survive alone. This angers Anju who encourages Runu to run from her family, and decides to use her baby as a leverage to convince Sunil.
Affair
Abha is a traditional girl devoted to her marriage to her passive-aggressive husband. They bicker and exchange jibes but remain in the relationship as it’s more important than being in love. She is shocked to hear of her friend having an affair, not just because it’s wrong to cheat on your spouse but because it tarnishes her image as a good Indian girl. With time she comes to realize her dissatisfaction from her marriage and sex life. After Meena confesses to being in love with someone else, Abha realizes that she was never in love with Ashok herself. And, finally the good Indian girl decides to go against her traditions and leave her husband whom she didn’t love.
Meeting Mrinal
Asha has lost the motivation to live after her marriage. She was devoted more in making her marriage perfect than the marriage itself. She has little issue to stay with a man who cheated on her in order to keep things running the same way. Her divorce shatters her illusion that marriage makes a woman complete and is the ultimate step in perfection. She is also jealous of her friend Mrinalini who works and has not married and seem to be living a life she enjoys to the fullest. However, a meeting with Mrinalini shatters this illusion too as Mrinalini confesses that she is lonely and, ironically, jealous of Asha’s life. Asha realizes that perfection is ultimately an illusion and it’s better to enjoy life than to chase after the illusion.
