Malti Agarwal
Lives At Crossroads: Women In Chitra Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the Calcutta born writer, lived in India until she came to the U.S. to study at the age of nineteen. Till date Banerjee has to her credit four novels, two short story collections and four collections of poems. Much of Divakaruni’s work deals with the immigrant experience which is said to be an important theme in the mosaic of American society. The fictional works of Divakaruni often center around the lives of immigrant women- women in love, in difficulty, women in relationships (Softky).
Divakaruni is, no doubt, an award winning poet, yet her fame rests largely on her consummate art of story telling. She is known for her two story collections-‘Arranged Marriage’ and ‘The Unknown Errors of Our Lives’. In both the story collections, she concentrates on analyzing the eastern psyche in western context. ‘A theme that runs through all the selections is that once brought in the tradition, it is difficult to change one’s mind–set even as an accommodation to a new culture’ (School Library Journal)
‘Arranged Marriage ’, her acclaimed collection of eleven stories, is a bestseller in America. San Jose Mercury News has reviewed it as ‘ a remarkably strong debut…The all-too-imperfect lives of Divakaruni’s heroines like precious gems, are unrecognized treasures, worthy of being praised, protected and held dear.” Almost all the eleven stories of this collection are based on arranged marriage in which the parents decide the future of their children. No doubt, the modern generation now –a-days believes in the right of free choice yet the system of arranged marriage still works in India in which the prime consideration of the parents is the status and skin colour and not their daughter’s happiness. Most of the eleven women featured in this collection are Indian born U.S. settled women who are caught in a mesh of hereditary cultural values and modern liberal thoughts. They try their best to strike a balance between these apparently antagonistic modes of life. Eventually they suffer a lot. Often their dilemma reminds the reader of Trishanku, a mythical figure, stuck between heaven and earth. In most of the stories, the narrator is a woman and thus the stories have been told from a woman’s point of view, in the first person and in the present tense. These ravishing beautiful stories “ revolve around the attempt to maintain traditional Indian gender roles in the free – wheeling U.S., where even the most obedient and self-negating Indian women discover they can live a far more fulfilling life ’’ (Seaman Donne Booklist) . C. J. Wallia comments, ‘Chitra Divakarauni ‘s book of short stories, ‘Arranged Marriages’, focuses on family-marriaged matches, a centuries-old tradition in India. These stories about Indian immigrants to the U.S. show how the dislocations of immigration are making this tradition problematic‘’. [Wallia Review]. He further adds, ‘Arranged Marriage is a welcome addition to the rich multicultural literature of the immigrant experience in the U.S.…’
The maiden story The Bats brings forth a woman’s efforts that she makes to preserve her marriage on the one hand and her individual self on the other. She revolts against her husband who beats her severely. She deserts him and goes to her uncle’s house in a distant village. But soon her revolutionary zeal cools down in the face of the traditional Indian cultural ethos when she comes back to her husband.
‘Clothes’, the second story in the collection, portrays a newly married Indian beautiful bride who reaches U.S. with her young husband. Unfortunately, the husband dies leaving behind his wife who despite her liking for saree of Indian colourful clothes has to wear white saree of Indian widow forever.
Divakaruni explores the vast differences between women’s lives in India, the country of their birth and in the U.S., the country of their choice. Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs’ is another important story of this collection which unfolds multiple layers of the feminine psyche in the western context. The protagonist, Jayanti, who is the narrator, also comes to Chicago to stay with her married aunt (whose husband was chosen by her family) before beginning her graduate studies at an American university. First of all, her dream of a big palatial American house is shattered into pieces when she finds, “this apartment smells of stale curry. It is crowded with faded, overstuffed sofas and rickety end tables that look like they’ve come from a large place “ (40). She is shocked to find herself in a tiny room that she is to occupy as “it is the same size as my bathroom at home” (41). When Jayanti’s aunt assures her that soon she will have many American friends, Uncle Bikram interrupts and brings them close to hard realities of the American life – “Things here aren’t as perfect as people at home like to think. We all thought we’d become millionaires. But it’s not so easy” (43).
The Indian immigrants encountered racial discrimination in U.S. Wallia cites an example of the kind of discrimination Indian immigrants encountered during the first decades of the 20 th century. He reports, “In 1929, the prodigious poet Rabindranath Tagore, who had won the Nobel prize in literature in 1913, was treated so humiliatingly by the U.S. immigration authorities in Los Angeles – they demanded proof from the brown –skinned poet of being literate and having funds on hand you guarantee that he would not become a public charge in the U.S. – that he promptly cancelled his lecture and returned to India. The tall, aristocratic, seventy-year-old Tagore, with flowing beard and long locks, commented: “Jesus could not get into America because, first of all, he could not have the necessary money and secondly he would be an Asiatic.” (Wallia Review).
Since then so many decades have passed, still the immigrants undergo the agony of racial discrimination. Bikram uncle warns Jayanti against this hatred towards the Indians in the English hearts,” The Americans hate us they’re always putting us down because we’re dark-skinned foreigners, kala admi. Blaming us for the damn economy, for taking away their jobs. You’ll see it for yourself soon enough” [43]. When Divakaruni first came to America, she herself experienced this cultural shock which eventually became a pivot on which most of her stories revolve. She observes, “ The very second day when I was in this country, I went out for a walk in a suburb of Chicago, and a group of white boys called me a ‘nigger’ and threw slush at me. It was, as you can imagine, a great shock. It made me realize, for the first time in my life, how it felt to be seen as an ‘other’, how it felt to be hated for the colour of my skin. I think this was one of the key experiences that made me want to become a writer’’. [Interview. bookreporter. com]. In the present story alongwith her aunt, Jayanti, like her creator, went out for a walk in a suburb of Chicago, for native boys called them ‘nigger’ and threw slush at them. The dreams of silver pavements and golden roofs are crushed when Bikram uncle bursts out,‘ This damn country like a dain, a witch-it pretends to give and then snatches everything back” [54]. Jayanti now begins to miss the bustle of the Calcutta streets. She realizes that “ the beauty and the pain should be part of each other’’[56] Thus the cobweb of illusion is cleared.
Like other stories of the collection, the next two stories – ‘The Word Love’ and ‘A Perfect Life’ portray Indian women, caught between two worlds. These women are liberated as well as trapped by cultural changes. ‘The Word Love’ depicts the dilemma of an Indian immigrant woman who falls in love with a U.S. born young man. She lives with him but does not want her mother to know of her affair with a foreigner, perhaps considering it a sin. A turmoil which goes on in her heart eventually results in the estrangement of her relations with Rex, her boy friend. She suffers, she tries to cross the boundaries of age-old Indian traditional cultural ethos in which Indian mothers can never marry their daughters to the Americans. The story ‘ The Maid Servant’s Story’ also reiterates the dichotomy of the Indian and the Western outlook. The female protagonist here enjoys a liberated relationship and lives with a foreigner whom she might never marry.
In ‘A Perfect Life’, Meera, the unmarried heroine, swept by motherly-love, the tidal wave, finds herself in a crisis when she gives shelter to a dirty little kid in her house. Like a typical Indian woman, she is overwhelmed with motherly love for the boy and cares a fig to the law of the land.
The next story ‘Doors’ is the story of Deepak, born and brought up in India and Preeti, a girl though born in India but brought up in America. Preeti’s mother asks her daughter not to marry Deepak. She said, “What do you really know about how Indian men think? About what they expect from their women’’ [184]. But the daughter does not give ear to the advice of her mother. Deepak’s Indian friends also ask him not to marry Preeti because “She’s been here so long it’s almost like she born in this country. And you know how these ‘American’ women are, always bossing you; always thinking about themselves-----’’[185]. They get married and soon their different individual tastes and habits come on the surface. Preeti like Americans loves privacy and she keeps the doors closed while Deepak is used to keep the doors open. But when Deepak’s Indian friend, Raj, comes to stay with them, a clash between the couple starts. Preeti cannot approve Raj’s interference in her household though she realizes that it is a cultural thing and that she is ‘not used to long-term houseguest”. Thus, the bi-cultural pulls result in the conjugal clash.
‘The Ultrasound’ provides an insight into the acceptance of a baby girl in India and in America. The story is strictly restricted to woman’s perspective. A docile Indian housewife suddenly turns rebellion when the tradition-bound-family did not accept her unborn baby girl. In contrast to this dismal scene in India, Divakarauni narrates the story of an Indo-American pregnant girl whose ultrasound showed that there was a male child in her womb. Many questions riddle this pregnant such as ‘Does Sunil love me, or only the mother-to-be of his son? Would he have cared for me as much if we had been in India and the baby had turned out to be a girl?’ (228).
How can marriage be a beautiful experience? Is an arranged marriage a perennial bliss? Does a woman miss autonomy after marriage? Divakaruni has been preoccupied in answering all these questions in this anthology. ‘Meeting Mrinal’, the final story in the collection, is the manifestation of this age-old unanswered question-how can marriage be a beautiful experience? Mahesh, the husband, deserts his wife and son after living with them for so many years. He wants to live for himself and his happiness. The westernized outlook towards life lulls down his eastern perspective towards life. Divakaruni presents other side of the picture. Mrinal, an Indian friend of Asha, comes to meet her. Apparently she seems to be happy as she enjoys freedom and power. But somewhere in her heart, she regrets on her being deprived of the bliss of married life.
Almost all the stories in Divakaruni’s collection vividly portray the “ adjustments of immigrants to a foreign land or the accommodations families make to the disruptive differences between generations, Divakaruni poignantly portrays the eternal struggle to find a balance between the pull of home and the allure of change” [ebooks.palm.com]. The writer, in her attempt to fill up the gap between India and America , children and parents, men and women, gives voice to the trauma of the immigrants whom their past haunts whenever they fail to assimilate themselves with the alien culture. Divakaruni paints the bright side of the diaspora too when the Indian Americans adjust with their American self and enjoy life. To them America becomes their “other” home.
Works Cited
Divakaruni Chitra Banerjee . Arranged Marriage .Berkshire: Cox & Wyman
Ltd.,1995
Softky, Elizabeth. A Cross-cultural understanding Spiced with the Indian
Diaspora @ Black Issue, www.indiastar.com
Wallia, C .T .S .Review. Arranged Marriage. India