Arranged Marriage by Chitra Divacaruni

This collection of short stories carries the seeds of novels to come. Published in 1995 (with a 5-page glossary) its characters demonstrate how hard it can be simply to have been born a woman. Divacaruni writes of India and its customs, and the problems of being a wife. (When transplanted to America, new difficulties arise.)

Even if you are moved to tears this is a book worth your time. ( )

A collection of short stories from the PoV of Indian wives.

Arranged Marriage is a lovely collection of short stories which offers multiple perspectives of arranged marriage from Indian and Indian-American points of view. I enjoyed it on a literary level, and I also liked seeing the topic of arranged marriage portrayed this way, having grown up in a Western culture and not really having any idea of the complexity or normalcy of many arranged marriages.

I read this in graduate school, and at the time I had actually moved in with a boyfriend after only knowing him for a few weeks, so we were going through a lot of the same things the characters were, getting to know a person on an intimate level after already combining households. I'm glad to report that our relationship lasted, we got married and have been together for almost seven years, much like many of the characters in this wonderful collection of stories. ( )

Divakaruni's short stories are each jarring in their own way, but I felt a bit cheated at the end of each story. They lack the "completeness" of, say, Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories, and feel more like chapters from a larger book rather than finished works on their own. There was also an uncomfortable repetition of certain themes (divorce & affairs, for one) : at one point almost the same exact description was used in two different stories. At times I couldn't tell one story from the next. Overall, the stories were intriguing, but lacked depth. ( )

Arranged Marriage is a collection of short stories, the author’s first book of prose. At the time of its publication, she had just won the 1994 Santa Clara Arts Council Award for Fiction and the 1994 Award for Poetry from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation. She has since written several well-received novels.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni immigrated from India, and has lived in San Francisco most of her adult life. This book of stories is entirely about Indian women, some living in India, and some in the U.S. All the stories have human relationships at their heart – relationships with husbands, mothers, lovers, and children. Every story in a short space of time strips away the outer trappings of a relationship and gets to the emotions that give it shape. There is not a shallow story in the book.

One of the greatest benefits most non-Indians can receive from the book is to learn how Indian cultural practices affect the lives of women. Judging from the stories of the book, their lives are affected in many ways, some obvious, some subtle. The practice of arranged marriages is touched upon in most of the stories of the book. The place of a wife in the husband’s parents’ family is discussed. The role of a wife in marriage is painted in many of the stories. The importance of children, the disgrace of being a single woman, the behavior expected of married women, the importance of parental approval, all are understood in the context of powerful storytelling. Yet, many of the stories are about Indian women living in the U.S., many of whom who have yearned for and adopted more liberal Western habits. The stories about these women often describe the can’t-win situation many of them are in. If they decide to keep all the cultural mores of their homeland, they also must then voluntarily submit to a subservient position in life. If they throw off their cultural bonds and fly, they fear leaving their beloved families behind – and often their fears are well-founded. And as some of the stories show, the old traditions are in some ways comforting – that’s probably why they have lasted for hundreds or thousands of years. Abandoning them means taking risks with life that can lead to great disappointments. The Western ways offer freedom, but there is no safety net. The Indian woman in the West faces momentous decisions those born here never have to make.

Arranged Marriage does not claim to be about every female Indian immigrant to the West. However, the stories do come from a depth of feeling and knowledge of life that rings true in every way. One cannot read this book without being moved by story after story, and people unfamiliar with Indian culture will learn much. The stories:

The Bats: An Indian child’s abused mother tries to separate herself from her husband, and has difficulties breaking the ties.

Clothes: A woman comes to the U.S. from India to be with her new husband. He struggles financially to run a small store, and she is determined to be a good and helpful wife. Her life turns out far differently from what she’d planned.

Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs: A young woman comes to the U.S. to attend college, and lives with her aunt and uncle. She is enamored of the new clothes and Western ways, and does not understand why her uncle, who she understood has a great job in America, is unhappy with his life and keeps his wife in the house. She finds she is young and has more to learn than she thought.

The Word Love: A young woman living in the U.S. is placed in a bubbling cauldron of choice – live with the man she loves, or maintain a relationship with her tradition-oriented mother in India. Need the choice be made? If it is forced, how may the consequences be borne?

A Perfect Life: A happy single woman climbing the corporate ladder encounters a runaway child who changes her life forever.

The Maid Servant’s Story: A powerful and complex story that reveals the life-long effect that male dominance in society has on the emotional lives of those in their care, affecting even children a generation away from abuse of familial power.

The Disappearance: The story of a traditional Indian man in America whose Indian wife has left him for another. Can he break from his world-view sufficiently to understand why?

Doors: A young Westernized Indian woman and a traditional but relatively liberal Indian man enjoy a blissful marital union in the U.S. Then one of the husband’s good friends comes to live with them for some months, bringing his raw traditional values with him.

The Ultrasound: Two married women, old friends, become pregnant, one in the U.S., one in India. One of them faces a desperate choice.

Affair: A woman’s husband seems to be losing interest in her. Is it because she would not adopt the Western way of life? Is it too late?

Meeting Mrinal: A recently-divorced woman, left by her husband for someone flashier, must also come to grips with her son’s anger and growing independence.

Some of the stories are very sad. Some are hopeful. Every story pulls you deep into a life. One of the themes of this book and others the author has written since is that life is usually not as we would wish it. Sometimes we cannot change it. When we can change it, we must try, and we must do our best for others who likewise stumble through life no matter how happy they may seem when we view them in our ignorance. When we are just a little lucky, we will find sustenance in our relationships with others, and we will survive and grow. As one of her stories ends: “The glasses glitter like hope. We raise them to each other solemnly, my son and I, and drink to our precious, imperfect lives.” ( )