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Society
How to Choose A Spouse?
Some of India's
cities have become, over the last decade, not just IT centers, but also
'bridegroom catchments areas' for their states. Pune, Bangalore,
Hyderabad, Chennai...these cities produce software engineers by the
thousands every year.
Almost all these young men (and some women) have jobs with US-based
companies in their own cities, or are headed to the US on an H1B visa.
These constitute the 'cream' of the marriage market for most parents
looking for eligible matches for their daughters. With salaries ranging
between US $2500-5000, good career prospects and the chance of settling
down in the US, these young men are systematically 'wooed' by parents of
young women. They usually have dozens of prospective brides to choose
from, and often the marriages are fixed soon after the first meeting.
Men who come from the US on a short 20-day holiday, are pressured by their
parents - as well as their own circumstances - to make a quick decision,
marry, put the paperwork in place, and return with the bride to the US and
resume work. The wives travel on H4 visas as dependents, without any
individual status or rights in the US immigration machinery.
In the past four to five years, this system has begun to show serious
cracks. Several such marriages have ended up in separations, divorce,
allegations of cruelty and deliberate isolation of the young women, and
much mental and emotional anguish all around. Given that the wife is in an
alien country and often completely dependent - financially as well as
legally - on her husband, her situation is precarious if things go wrong
in such a marriage.
Till recently, families in which the daughter/daughter-in-law had walked
out after such a marriage (sometimes in a few months), were reluctant to
discuss or disclose to anyone what had gone wrong. However, this is
changing. One positive development is that many young people are seeking
premarital counseling - either individually or along with the person who
they intend marrying. More enlightened parents too are encouraging them to
seek the guidance of counselors in clarifying their objectives, hopes and
areas of doubt and anxiety over marriage, and living and working in
another country.
At least for a small but growing number of people, it is not enough
anymore to simply match photographs, horoscopes, check bank balances, and
plot career graphs while selecting a life partner. They are now
acquainting themselves with the real issues involved in marital
partnerships, especially those who are going to live away from India.
The trend towards seeking counseling and taking a more rounded approach to
choosing a spouse is evident amongst young women as well as young men.
Over the last year or two, an increasing number of young men, unable or
unwilling to make a 'clinical choice' during their 20-day vacation, would
return to the US without having finalized their marriage, to the dismay of
their parents. Many of them seek premarital counseling on a subsequent
trip home or even via the Internet, with a counselor that they know in
India. Some, who are still in the country, but headed for the US in the
next year or so, are anxious "to get it right", as one 28-year-old put it,
and hence seek counseling.
Premarital counseling workshops, organized in Mumbai and Pune, draw many
newly-engaged couples, and even parents looking for a match for their
children. A premarital counseling workshop or one-on-one session usually
consists of specific and frank explorations of core issues - world view,
money, sex, intimacy, children, elders, careers, etc - that are of vital
importance to both people and are usually lost or ignored while a match is
being arranged. It also entails some amount of debunking of unrealistic
ideas about romance, duty, sacrifice and the like. Counseling also
involves clarifying of issues like the need for healthy emotional
interdependence as opposed to complete dependence or independence.
Says Samira Sarkar (name changed), who was engaged recently: "Attending
such workshops, or just a couple of counseling sessions, helps you air
your anxieties as well as validate some of the things that you consider
important in a marriage. Elders in the house tend to ignore or scoff at
these things when they force you to make a quick choice based mainly on
the man's salary or his family background."
As one family counselor puts it, "I think the problems that newly-wed
girls have run into in such situations have to be understood from within.
It is no more appropriate or adequate to see it as merely a
gender/exploitation issue. No boy coming to India to marry starts out with
the idea of marrying someone to abuse and neglect her. It's really a
matter of wrong and misguided assumptions and presumptions about marriage,
the work tensions and sense of isolation in a foreign country, and various
other factors that contribute."
What emerges is that many men and women have some extremely unrealistic
notions about what marriage, living and working in a western country
entails. Some of the men have idealized notions of a wife and 'wifely
duties'. Secondly, many of these men live in social and emotional
'bubbles' in the US, barely interacting with local people, mistrusting
most other communities, limiting most of their relationships to work, and
sticking with other Indians or, if these are not available, living fairly
isolated lives. This, too, seems to create problems when they marry: The
wife (usually a qualified woman of 25-28) is isolated at home without a
job, and instructed not to make friends on her own across cultures.
The women, themselves fed on idealized notions of marriage and of life in
the US, are often unable to conform or adjust to this new reality, have
little or no outlet for their skills or their need for social contact, and
are often deeply frustrated.
In the light of this, there is an increasing need - as well as a trend -
for parents, eligible women and men, as well as counselors and other lay
advisers to create an atmosphere of better understanding and awareness.
"With a more rounded perspective on marriage, work, and the immigrant
experience, we can hope to make more informed choices to build lasting
marital relationships," says Dr Minnu Bhonsale, a psychotherapist and
counselor in Mumbai.
– Gouri Dange
March 6, 2005
By arrangement with
Womens Feature Service
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