A closer look at one of the most precious connections you can have in life, and simultaneously the biggest taboo of them all – love – through the lens of the finest literature to emerge from the subcontinent in the past few decades. Discusses The God of Small Things, A Suitable Boy, Family Matters and The Inheritance of Loss.
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About a year ago, I got into an annoying debate surrounding arranged marriage.
‘If two consenting adults wish for their parents to find them a match, why should you have a problem with it?’ my (non-Indian) friend declared emphatically. ‘I think it’s touching that Indian parents take such a deep interest in their children’s lives; after all, they’re only doing it for their best interests.’
‘Ah, if only it was that simple. The ground reality is that in many cases the bride or groom are caving into familial pressure and emotional blackmail. Some even go so far as to break up with their current partners, giving up secretive, years-long relationships to maintain peace within the family and stay on good terms with their parents. I personally have cousins in my family who continued pursuing higher education simply to stall their parents’ overtly-saccharine, thinly-disguised advances to initiate an arranged marriage. Imagine that – studying a Master’s degree only because you want your parents to stop trying to find a suitable boy for you. The most shameful aspect of them all is the rampant discrimination that goes on in the process of finding an arranged match. Everything from a prospective bride’s (of course, women find themselves at the receiving end of these inspections more than men do) height, weight, skin colour, and family background is weighed up against the groom’s (and vice-versa) before reaching a decision. ‘Progressive’ arranged marriages that do not bother with these details are a rarity.
‘In modern-day arranged marriages, the prospective couple is encouraged to interact with each other before proceeding with the match. Even if they might think it to be a bad match, I sincerely doubt how many would be able to say a firm ‘no’ when faced with the expectant faces of their loved ones who are eager to hear the magic words. The idea that love can happen later, marriage comes first is terrifying – the very notion that love in a marriage is an optional extra strikes me as bizarre and dare I say, inevitably goes on to affect children, if any, borne out of the marriage.’
Of course, I didn’t say any of that. Words chose to disappear, sentences jumbled up and my mind simply refused to present me with coherent phrases to speak out loud. I mumbled something to the tune of ‘Yeah, I guess’ and moved on. But the conversation itself has bothered me for a long time. I knew the practice troubled me, especially its prevalence among my own family. I have since spent a considerable amount of time examining my own feelings towards arranged marriage. After all, where does my vehement opposition come from? Was it born out of seeing my parents never call each other by name? Or after I noticed the stark difference between reel and real life in the Subcontinent?
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In a cruel twist of fate, Bollywood creators have always flocked to (majorly heterosexual) love stories. Rich girl, poor boy. Poor girl, rich boy. College sweethearts. Lovers reincarnated across generations. Whatever else you can think of, Bollywood has already done it before. The same audiences that cheer for the star-crossed lovers in the cinema hall would unhesitatingly condemn such a relationship in their own home. We crave it, because deep down we can only imagine the joy that comes out of loving. But oh god, what would the people say? This hypocrisy can be attributed to a severe fear of social backlash that inevitably comes with breaking centuries of tradition.
How then does Indian fiction deal with love? Is it any different than film?
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I’ve been immersed in Indian literature for the past year or so. In this time, I have read a lot of titles that often get mentions on various ‘best of’ lists for Subcontinental works of fiction. A general observation I’ve made is that books deal with depicting love in India with much more nuance and realism. They eschew the flowery kisses (off-screen, of course) and happy endings, choosing to stick to stories that more often than not mirror real life.
Love Across Caste Divides
To love in India can be a dangerous affair, fraught with misery, for love will transcend barriers designed to never be crossed. Perhaps the best example of a tragedy that deals directly with overstepping caste boundaries is Arundhati Roy’s unforgettably heart-wrenching The God of Small Things.
Caste, in case you’re unaware, is a means of social division endemic to the Subcontinent. The caste you’re born into decides a lot of things, including how you’ll be treated by society at large. Brahmin surnames command a certain respect while Dalits would find it near-impossible to have the same privileges as others when it comes to education and employment. In rural India, which forms 65% of the country’s population, the divide between upper and lower caste communities can be shocking to say the least, with so called ‘lower’ castes in some instances not even being allowed to celebrate marriages or visit temples in the vicinity.
If living a dignified life itself is a taboo for ‘lower’ caste peoples, loving someone from an upper caste is playing with fire. Roy immortalizes the act of crossing this divide with arguably the most memorable quote from the book: “Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.”
Backlash can be severe, and violent. Unlike Bollywood, one’s family doesn’t necessarily come around and accept love. In their minds, righteous retribution needs to be dished out, and their own families might not hesitate to murder the couple out of a distorted sense of honour. The fact that this is a legally punishable offense has done little to stop this from happening.
The God of Small Things delves into one such love affair and its aftermath, where the family and community – including the police – conspire to end Ammu and Velutha’s relationship. Ammu is locked up, Velutha brutally tortured and killed. Probably the worst thing to happen – and what scars the twins for life – is their unwitting false testimony which is used to frame Velutha as a kidnapper and justify his death. This loss of innocence is contrasted with their earlier obliviousness to caste divides, when they happily played their days away with Velutha, unfettered by the social restrictions placed upon adults.
The act of defying existing barriers itself is a beautiful one despite resulting in tragedy. There is a lot to be said about the human spirit that chooses to defy knowing fully well the possible outcome. Roy’s equally beautiful prose captures the euphoria of one such defining moment in the book:
Centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment. History was wrong-footed, caught off guard. Sloughed off like an old snakeskin. Its marks, its scars, its wounds from old wars and the walking backwards days all fell away. In its absence, it left an aura, a palpable shimmering that was as plain as water in a river or the sun in the sky. As plain to feel the heat on a hot day, or the tug of a fish on a taut line. So obvious that no one noticed.
Love across Religious Divides
Two works of art that tackle the subject matter of loving someone from a different religion in India come to mind. First and foremost, Vikram Seth’s magnum opus A Suitable Boy outlines the love affair of Maan, a Hindu boy and Saeeda Bai, Muslim courtesan in newly independent 50s India. There is also a plot thread where Lata, another Hindu protanogist, falls in love with and eventually breaks up with Kabir, a fellow (Muslim) college student. Secondly, Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters presents the reader with a regretful Nariman Vakeel’s dementia-fueled memories of Lucy Braganza, a Christian lover he gave up for an arranged marriage to please his parents, which ultimately resulted in personal tragedy.
Religion is a polarizing subject in India, so much so that even big brands cave under pressure to pull ads depicting interfaith relationships. Despite Seth’s book being set in the 1950s, communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims often take center-stage as they do in real life even today. Maan’s affair with Saeeda Bai inevitably results in word spreading through the community, with the gossip ultimately reaching his parents.
This remains one of the biggest deterrents to challenging social norms. The backlash is swift and painful. In the novel, possibly due to their high standing in society, Maan isn’t disowned by his family, but sent out to the countryside under the pretense of a trip so as to distance himself from his lover. In real life, this takes the form of ultimatums, threats of disowning and even suicide. Saeeda Bai herself is shown to be fully aware of the impossibility of a legitimate future with Maan and plays a key role in distancing herself – yet is unable to detach from her love for him.
The second thread in A Suitable Boy that deals with inter-religious relationships is Lata and Kabir’s. The reality of the uphill battle for social acceptance facing their relationship – at such a young age too – is a dampener to the headiness of first love. Malati, Lata’s best friend, is the one to inform her of Kabir’s background. The shocking casualness with which she states that Kabir is off-limits now hints at the duality of society. The same community that is respectful and friendly with her family would turn against them in a second if they found out about her involvement with Kabir. In that case, did those relationships ever matter?
In Mistry’s Family Matters, Nariman Vakeel falls prey to the ‘matchmakers of misery.’ His parents and their social circle pressure him into marrying a Parsi widow, forcing him to break up with Lucy. Nariman faces opposition to his love from both sides – neither his family nor Lucy’s is ready to accept their relationship – and despite her suggesting running away from them all, is unable to bring himself to do so.
Mistry does not hesitate to critique radical Parsi elements in their community who promote marriage only with other Parsis to battle a declining population size and preserve their identity, portraying such characters as deranged fanatics who are regarded with pity.
On the other hand, perhaps because the story he narrates is close to his heart, on the matter of his novel’s signature Lata-Kabir-Haresh-Amit love quadrangle, Seth remains frustratingly neutral about parents taking control of their child’s love life. The reason why the dissolution of an interfaith romance in A Suitable Boy bothers me so much is because India desperately needs more stories that go against the norm. In real life, one needs to battle not just their family and friends but also the State for the fundamental right to love. Laws passed in recent years have made it harder than ever to be an interfaith couple in certain parts of the country. The power of A Suitable Boy’s fiction can go a long way in abolishing the walls around suitability in the country, just as Family Matters shows an aftermath full of regret that lasts long after the decision to give up has been made.
Love across Class Divides
Lasty, I wanted to briefly touch upon class divides as shown in Kiran Desai’s brilliant The Inheritance of Loss. Sai falls in love with her Nepali tutor Gyan; in this instance their affair isn’t forcefully brought to an end by family but through inevitable class conflicts. Gyan hails from a lower socio-economic background. Sai on the other hand has an air of pride when it comes to her lineage and family background. He finds himself torn between the two: his budding love for Sai, and his hatred for the wealthy, privileged background she hails from, and which shapes her worldview. He is drawn to her yet finds her to be immature about the things that matter to him. This rift in their understanding of each other is further widened when he is drawn to a revolutionary cause that calls for radical change in the region. While he sees himself as a champion calling for equal treatment, Sai views his actions as dangerous. Her Western outlook is also a cause of friction between them: You are like slaves, that’s what you are, running after the West, embarrassing yourself. It’s because of people like you we never get anywhere.
This narrative thread also brings up the fact that navigating class divides isn’t an easy task, much less for young adults who often lack maturity. At this reactionary stage, it is easy to say things one doesn’t understand the gravity of, to damage relationships beyond repair. As one discovers and moulds their core beliefs in life, it is natural to find oneself at odds with loved ones who might not share those views. In the end, this is what drives Gyan and Sai apart.
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There are various social norms that I haven’t mentioned here. It is mostly because of two reasons: a) this piece has already gone on for too long, and b) no major works that I’ve read so far come to mind. That doesn’t change the fact stressed above: love transcends all those other barriers, be it sexuality and gender identity (now that I think about it, briefly depicted through a secret relationship between a cis man and a trans woman in A Burning) or race. No book for the latter comes to mind, which makes me happy because there’s probably a great read awaiting me out there.
Until then.
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Photo by Anuj Yadav on Unsplash
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