On one American independence day - The fourth of July, me and my brother decided to visit the house of an American who said “ I am not an American, I am the American “ – Mark Twain. Driving seemed so uncomfortable and fumingly hot in an A/C car with a broken A/C. On our way as usual stopped at this gas station which all looked similar in America, picked up some bottled water, ice cold Starbucks coffee and few chewing gums. We almost forgot to fill gas as we were eager to get out of the city of New York and off to the country land of Hartford Connecticut.
It was only two days that I was back in the USA after spending a month and half visiting India. It was indeed a pretty long vacation as the US immigration officer called it and asked if I still had a job where I worked. The longest American vacation is usually two weeks, but for me a month and a half still seemed to be too short for the purpose I had gone - Marriage.
Driving through the lush green merit parkway on my way back from The American’s house, I thought of some thing that might interest my Indian friends who are yet to be married and are debating about their choices and options. Living their age, I never believed that I would give up my personal liberties for any thing less than liberty itself. Now that I have got married, I proved myself wrong. My parents had a mission impossible in their hands when they came to visit me and my brother last summer for his graduation ceremony. My marriage as I put it was masterminded by all except me and orchestrated projecting me as the sole beneficiary of it.
To my friends who are enjoying all the virtues of being a bachelor, I would comment there is nothing wrong in getting married or in not getting married. It’s not very long that I am married and for that reason of inexperience I refrain to comment about it. But I had a great life when I was single and can tell you what has changed. I still could do all the things that I wanted to do, but have to run this new wife.dll (dynamic link library) file embedded in my brain before I do it. It feels very strange what can change in one day - the day before and the day after marriage. In computer language I would say for every statement that runs in your mind, it calls for the execution of wife.dll file which returns a Boolean value. Any thing that you do become a go or a no go depending on the value it returns. The content inside the wife.dll varies from person to person and the value returned depends on the complex relation they both share. But it is impossible for any married man to just discard the wife.dll file.
Often I discover that the idea I thought as my own creation seemed to be invented long before me. I find those ideas at strange places like a scratched up bill board or even when I read through some old books. Is there nothing more to be discovered or to be written about? Then I get reminded of my famous art teacher in college who said “Madonna and the child” was drawn and redrawn by many famous artists and none of them look alike. Even though the same ideas seamlessly flow transparent underneath, the way it is presented gives it a new beauty. Some times it represents the state and time during which the artist lived and some times it just redefines the concept itself to a new perspective, for instance cubism.
With a true desire to bring forth the facts and troubles of marriage that a generation like mine is facing, I thought I might redraw another Madonna and the child. What I meant by my generation should not be misunderstood as it is the crowd that this article might impact the most. Rather than stereotyping all the Indians in America, I belong to my own category of a college graduate from India who came for higher studies to America and then started to work here to find and admire the concept of personal liberty and financial freedom. I dare to quote myself that a single man doesn’t need much to live by; other than just the desire to live. I feel marriage in itself is a great adventure to be a part off. Before I start bragging about my daring success and tearful failures let me shift back to what I want to speak about - The criteria and the thought that riddled my mind and finally made me say yes to marriage.
Being abroad puts a lot of challenges to young adults who grew up in India and went looking for their fortune elsewhere. One such case that never occurs in your mind until it starts getting into your nerves is marriage. I think its some thing that needs to be addressed as early as possible and planned by each individual who wish’s to go abroad. He should give it a time frame and no matter follow it through. Aspirations, career and time are like three primary colors. You can mix them in proportion to give any color to your life. But if you dump them all together without proportion its all gray that you are going to get. Many wonderful things that you take for granted in India might turn out disturbingly difficult once you set to sail abroad. Things become more puzzling as you lose grip of the shore you left and start to hold on to the shore you live.
I have never felt getting a post graduate degree or getting a job as a turning point in my life. Nor did I feel it at many instances in life that have shaped the way I think and behave. But marriage definitely had changed the ways of my life. You can never be too prepared for it even though it’s a normal thing to do socially. In this age of diffused feelings of what is right and what is wrong, I am eager to quote Samuel Clemens “Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong”. Perception and beauty of marriage is ever lasting if you happened to create good memories out of it and constantly cherish them by casually remembering it in words or through ways each partners share. Searching through those grains some times you find details of things that has happened which you have never noticed till date. Then you go back to those moments to feel the surreal feeling of that never replicable day.
I have told my friends and talked to them often about marriage. In fact I have encountered criticism and cynical opinions from them on my perplexed stands. I was thrown in a wormhole of thoughts and had to many times think through the idea of getting married. The best arsenal in defending my stand on getting married against my friends view is the theory of restaurant hopping. Many might have been familiar or heard and done bar hopping like I have in my mid twenties. Restaurant hopping also may be an existing phrase which I haven’t come across but here depicts a different context.
I got married and was back in States when my friends in town wanted to ask about the extravagant occasion. We planned to meet at a launch called Zanzei bar for an early martini during happy hours. Every one had the same questions, Hay did you run out of girls in New York that you had to go to India and get married or is it true that women here are not good enough for you? I had tortured my friends who took the vow of marriage before me, so I felt perfectly Ok in getting picked by the newly formed crowd of bachelors. That was when I came up with the analogy between restaurant hopping and dating per say.
It’s like this, I told my friends – On Mulberry Street down town Manhattan, also known as little Italy there are so many fine Italian cuisine. There are lots of Chinese restaurants on canal street, part of which is called china town. Lets take an instance where you try to eat at all the restaurants in little Italy or in china town, I bet you will never be able to finish it in one life time. I have tried it and each time I finished one, I found a new one popping up next to it.
Reusing the same analogy of restaurant hopping, it dawned upon me that each one should pick a restaurant of their taste and become a patron of it to find out all the different variety of dishes they serve. But before you choose, make sure that it is the restaurant and the type of food you like. Also establish a good relation with the waiters and proprietors so that they might pour an extra glass of wine out of love. Every broken relation in life leaves a mark and carries over an emotional baggage with or with out your knowledge. Life is bright and colorful when you look at it from the side where the light is falling. It becomes gray and dull when you look from the down shadow part. You will have to constantly refocus and shift your views about marriage and try to see it from the bright side always as there will be shadows falling from it at one side or the other from time to time.
On my way back from India I had a chance to get down at Dubai and wash my feet on the other side of the Arabian Sea. It was hot and burning out side the tourist bus but I had to run and touch my feet in sea. I don’t know but some times I go crazy about doing things like crawling down the narrow cliffs to see how the water fall looked from the top, or how it feels to be at brim of Grand Canyon looking down hundreds of feet into the deep earth’s craters. I never took a picture of that view as it is not for every one to see. It’s for those few people to enjoy who dare to take that risk on their lives.
As I walked out of the A/C bus, people looked at me as if they had seen a mad man. They were stunned when I took off my shoes and ran on the fiery hot sand of the beach. Those men will never feel how cold and bubbly the water was. The sun was coming down on me hard, but I took a moment to feel the gentle lather with which the sea washed my feet. It established a bond inside me to that part of the land. Comparing New York to Dubai, I would say buildings were not a wonder. But for me the wonder was in the determination of the people there to change a barren desert to some thing far more than just inhabitable. As I cruised on a house boat in the Dubai creek eating some fresh dates, I was reminded of my love and bought her a silver anklet fulfilling a promise I made her before marriage.
It’s cruel to be mistaken that I admire other’s cultures more than I do mine. I have nothing against any ones believes, but against the ways it is used at times. Appreciating the good in others can never be seen as a depreciation of our own values. Coming back to Kerala after long years of stay abroad, I felt that it’s a land that preserves itself from the changes around it for the good. We will one day be able to cash out the tradition and beauty of our land when others have traded them for huge buildings and fast life. As I went visiting friends and family they asked me how it feels to be back. My reply was rather spontaneous - there is no place on earth that I feel more welcomed. As we explore more of others culture, you appreciate more of your own. When you come to the land where you were born, it feels like it brings back the true of you, redefines you and resets your focal points to the values that you grew up with.
I was intertwined and had to face most of the problems that a young aspirant will face in America. I have gone through the stages of rejection, denial and finally acceptance. Rejection phase is when you find fault with every other culture and feel that yours is the only right one. Then the phase of denial where you became a disbeliever in every culture including yours. Finally to my own dismay I some how ran into the phase of acceptance where I concur with E. M. Foster’s view of tolerance. I should say tolerance is beyond rationalism as I could never at times understand why people do things that they do. I had to remind myself that they do it with the same true conviction and conscience that any other will do if brought up the way they were brought up.
In my flight back to USA, I had the chance to fly with a 34 year old medical student of Indian origin. The way he garnished himself with books around him made me feel uneasy to talk to him. Honestly I never had the habit of reading while traveling. I always took a window seat even if it was an airplane and tried to observe life around. Of course what can I see at 35000 feet looking out of the window other that clouds, blue skies and divided lands by nature and by men. Still I never picked up a book. I decided to entertain myself watching movies in the mini screen TV of Air bus 340.
Not to my surprise, the guy next to me opened up the usual mallu (malayalee) conversation in English. I don’t know if it is just me or every one else who gets the feeling that people are trying to gauge you by asking what you do where you live and how old you are. At times I find it so offending and still feel bound to give an answer with a pleasing smile. So be it, I think in my mind and give them the most honest answers I can deliver. The more they like you the more they keep asking personal questions and the more you get irritated. Not that I have spent my youth doing nothing but I still feel I haven’t done enough with life. We all are obsessed in freeing our self’s from social bindings and responsibilities than discovering what can be done with the limited freedom we have. Then again one can only excel to the extent that he or she is given opportunity to.
He must have felt that I am a worthy candidate than his big and boring books that he started pouring out his heart and life. By and large he had already squeezed out my life story and came straight to the most recent event - marriage. I told him what I can and casually asked if he was married even though I could see in him that he was not. That opened the cork of remorse. He started off saying he was 34 ….. He went abroad for higher education …. He didn’t have many friends at the new place … He didn’t know where he wanted to settle down ….. He had family thing to take care off ….He couldn’t feel financially stable enough …. He cannot find some one he likes … As I kept hearing his tormented thoughts, I could retrospect my self a year ago and was shocked to see myself in him a couple years down - if I wasn’t married. Constraints of time are more defined by the time lost than time gained as time gained could always have been gained.
Trying to resolve this big and entangled puzzle, I tried a different approach. I caught him off guard by asking if he had any girlfriends. He being an Indian and having lived in India until his early twenties, I could guess how his synaptic nerves were doing math. In that fraction of time when he was picking his answer, I found myself answering a serious realization – Had I not married at the age I got married, I wouldn’t have the guts or the charm or the patience to go through that act in life. The age and time of marriage is very much culture dependent. When you pass that age you have to strain yourself to believe in the wonders of marriage. The guy came up with the answer rather quick. He out right denied that he had any girlfriends. Probably it might be the frown on my face that made him think again. He might have thought that I have mistaken him for a gay. He amended his statement saying he is seeing some Scottish woman and he didn’t know how much serious the relation was. I can understand the relevance of that statement. I felt proud for he was honest to me to some extent.
Before marriage I tortured my self with many realistic questions. I could read them all on the beautiful faces of my new Indian acquaintances at the dinner table in Dubai. Those two Indian girls, one working for IBM and the other pursuing her Masters degree cared to join me for dinner as we felt equally strange in that strange land of Arabs. I opened up myself without reservation to make them feel free to talk what they want to say and not obligate them to speak things that they didn’t want to share. The IBM career woman had issues in trusting men. From that statement I could measure the insecurity she felt in marrying a guy from US and the feeling of not been understood properly by marrying a guy from India. The other girl comparatively new to the idea of liberty was willing to take chances but is not sure where she is accepted now. She is not in par with the US standards nor is she any more cut for a traditional Indian mind.
I had no reason to twist their minds to find what they consider as their virtues or their concept on good and bad. But I think most of us preserve or at least try to preserve the values that we grow up with. I guess it is because it’s heavier to carry guilt than to carry lust in our hearts. Besides lust fades away and guilt’s pile up. The first sense of integrity you feel is when you have to fight back against compromising your views in front of a power beyond your control. I think that every culture has its own values and virtues that over time have shaped their ways of life or vise versa. Virtues that every one carries are not explicitly what is imposed upon them but what they make out of a society by living and seeing how it functions. It has a lot to do with upbringing and the exposure to the society you want yourself to be a part of.
I have talked and seen the second generation Indians in America out right rejecting their parent’s proposal to marry partners who grew up in India. This social inflection is because they are seeing broken homes arising due to the welding of people from different circumstance and social understanding. As far as my farsightedness goes, I think one should get married to a person from where they have spent most of their life or where they have started living the age of adolescence. I will never rule out the wonders of love nor its odds against nature. Then again how much can you count on your instinct of love? It seems to play both good and bad tricks on all kinds of people. I guess I am growing more conservative as I am getting old which reminds me of a friend who said “You don’t have a heart if you are not a liberal in your twenties and you don’t have money if you are not a conservative in your thirties”. You can judge me any way you like. The good news I get from that statement is I might turn rich one day and the bad feeling is that I will move myself away from my heart.
I tried to reflect myself and see why I got married at the age I got married. It was because; as we get older or wiser we loose the charm and the necessity in the concept and practicality of marriage. I tell people to see Niagara Falls from the Canadian side; I wish all kids can go the Disney world. I can tell my opinion based on my experience, but for some one who has already seen Victoria Falls or has landed on the moon, I can’t guarantee that they will enjoy my suggestions or find it useful like many others might. I don’t think it’s in what you have to offer or what you can get out of marriage, but marry for the sheer joy of getting married and to run through those unforgettable moments of life not counting before hand if it’s going to be a success or a failure. No one knows the future so it’s not worthy to say - If I know the future I would have done every thing right. We all will only see so many sunrises but through our story will be that the next generations seek their origin.
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