A Decent Proposal

When it came time to tie the knot, Rajiv Kumar was ready. His wife to-be, Vandana was also ready. The two had met earlier that day.

But this was no blind date. For months Rajiv and Vandana had gotten to know each other. They had seen pictures of each other and exchanged personal resumes. They had checked out credentials of one another's family members. They even spoke on the telephone. The first time they spoke, Rajiv had one pressing question. Was Vandana being forced into the marriage against her will? But before he could ask, she asked him precisely that question. "After we talked for one minute, I was completely comfortable with the whole thing," Rajiv says.

The ball had started rolling on two courts some months before. When he was 27, Rajiv, an engineer who had been in the United States for four years, called his parents in India and told them he was ready for marriage. He asked them to find a young woman who was raised in an Indian city, spoke English, was willing to live in the United States and looked good. His parents dutifully searched the community, asking relatives and friends. They came up with more than 50 candidates whose pictures and resumes were forwarded to Rajiv. Vandana's was the first one he liked. He picked a couple more as a backup in case the attraction was not mutual.

Meanwhile in India, Vandana had finished college, and her parents were searching for a suitable groom for her. She was introduced to a few young men she rejected. She was shown candidate's pictures. She was told about their successful careers and about the distinguished members in their families. Nothing clicked until she saw Rajiv's resume and picture. He was an engineer. Their families were from the same village. They had gone to the same type of school. With similar upbringings, their values were bound to be compatible. The attraction was mutual.

Today, Rajiv and Vandana are a modern couple with two incomes and a pair of 8-year-old twins, Vishal and Tushar. Vandana is events editor at India Currents, a San Jose-based magazine, and Rajiv is an engineering manager in a high-technology firm. They are getting ready to celebrate their 11th anniversary of what they both call a very happy marriage. Other than how they met, they say their marriage is no different from any other. Neither was forced into an arranged marriage. Vandana's brothers and sisters had "love" marriages. Rajiv's siblings and cousins did too.

Arranged marriages in India are as old as the Holy Ganges. In the old days parents had complete control over the matchmaking, but contemporary arranged marriages are more like what Rajiv and Vandana experienced. As Rajiv puts it, "My parents were doing the legwork but I was in control." In many cases the individuals are allowed to meet before marriage. These days the institution is more like an introduction service where the children have the final say. And among immigrants the reasons for embracing-or rejecting-arranged marriages are as diverse as the 160,000-strong Indian community in California.

"Arranged marriage is not always dictatorial," says Arvind Kumar, editor of India Currents. "It used to be. But now, most often it is not." He says the prevailing trend among Indian immigrants is still the arranged marriage. But among their children who are brought up in the United States more and more are choosing what Arvind calls "self-arranged" marriages.

In Indian culture, marriage is the starting point of a relationship, Arvind says. Ideally, love grows out of it. Arvind tells of a conversation his parents had right after their marriage. His father asked his mother if she loved him. "No," his mother said. "I hardly know you." To which his father replied, "It doesn't matter. I'm going to win your love." Is that better than our concept of love and passion first, marriage later? Is it worse, in the United States when passion is so often seen as going downhill after the honeymoon? Arvind says, the idea is not outlandish if that's what you grew up with.

To many children of Indian immigrants raised in the United States, the idea is outlandish at first. "In theory, I'm amazed. Spending a lifetime with someone you hardly know is astounding," says Anjali Aurora, a 21-year-old senior at the University of California at Berkeley. But she is quick to add she has seen it work. "In practice it works in a lot of cases. Comparing love marriages and arranged marriages, I would never say one is better than the other." And she keeps open the door to her cultural roots. "I don't foresee an arranged marriage for myself. But I wouldn't say 'no' either. If (at the time I want to be married) I found myself lonely, I would ask my parents to introduce me to candidates. I hope that doesn't happen."

The loneliness Anjali alluded to gives a glimpse into why some immigrants choose arranged marriages. Among graduate students who had arrived from India in recent years, many spoke of the difficulties adapting to the American lifestyle. Arvind explains. "How you grow up and how you learn to socialize is very important. If you haven't learned to date, you can't deal with the dating game. It is difficult in that way to be single in America. You don't have the skills to deal with America, and you don't have the support you get in India. Arranged marriages become more of an option."

Her soft voice rising above the haunting melody of an Indian raga, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni tells the story of Preeti and Deepak. The sounds of the sitar and tabla coming out of a tape recorder seem like a fitting backdrop for the story of the young Indian immigrant couple. As the music rises in intensity, so does the tension that is unraveling their marriage. Preeti and Deepak are torn apart by deep forces that seem alien. The chasm between Preeti's modern American values and Deepak's traditional Indian values seems to grow with every scene.

The story is fiction. In an Oakland bookstore, Chitra is reading from her new short-story anthology, "Arranged Marriage." But while the stories are imagined, they are based on real struggles of those in the Indian immigrant community. It is about women and men coming to terms with a new identity. While not all the stories are about arranged marriages, the tensions around them seem to be a big part in the acculturation process.

Chitra grew up in India. She moved to the United States when she was 19. While in college in Ohio, she met the man who would become her husband in a marriage of their own making. It took six months to convince her mother to accept the marriage. Through her life and the experiences of those around her, Chitra has gained compassionate understanding of the struggles between the new and old values.

"Arranged marriage is seen as exotic and people fail to see why someone who was brought up in the United States would choose it. It is important for people here to understand where it is coming from, otherwise it is easy to look down on it as an exotic thing," Chitra says. "Arranged marriages come from a different concept of the family. You trust the wisdom of older relatives. Ideally, they make good decisions for you and the rest of the family. Here we are so used to make our own decisions and arranged marriage sounds so strange."

And families are very different in India, Chitra says. "In India, the needs of the individual are taken care of by the family and society at large, so you can let go of your own needs. Here there is no such support and you have to take care of yourself. It makes you pull into yourself and find your own inner strength." In her stories, many of the characters find strength, usually after painful struggles.

The struggles were very real to several women who preferred not to be identified. Some spoke of women they knew in arranged marriages with abusive husbands. One woman told of her family refusing to meet her husband because she had married someone from another part of India, a foreigner, without the blessing of her family. "Women are afraid to rock the boat because it is seen as a disgrace in Indian society," she said.

Chitra knows those problems all too well, and she is working to create a safe place to give a voice to women who are afraid to speak out. She was instrumental in opening Maitri, the first help line for South Asian women in the Bay Area. But the problem, she says, is not arranged marriages themselves but the inequalities between men and women in Indian society. "In Indian culture, the man has greater freedom. Society supports what the man wants. In the old days the man ruled and had things his way. The woman made it work." Now, many women are highly educated and many have entered the workforce. And with economic empowerment comes increased control over their own destiny-and over their marriages, arranged or not.

"There are successful arranged marriages and failed ones. All marriages require a lot of work and a lot of compassion. Arranged marriages are no different," Chitra says.

Back in their San Jose home, Vandana and Rajiv sit on their couch, thumbing through a wedding photo album. "I look back at it and say, 'Oh my God! How could I have done it,'" Vandana says laughing. Rajiv laughs too. "I don't know if I'd do it again," he says. Somehow their doubts don't seem serious.

Rajiv and Vandana speak with one voice on most things that have to do with relationships. They expect their impish boys will want to choose their own mates, and they have no problem with that. But if either of the kids asks them to arrange their marriage, they'll be happy to help.

"Marriage is something you have to work at all the time," Rajiv says. "Once you are married, it doesn't matter how you got together. You have to work to make it work."

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