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Times Past

Watched a Bengali movie after a pretty long time recently. By any objective standard it is pretty poorly made. The plight of the hapless young lady that simply can't be married off by her family is a maudlin, over-done tragedy to the point of cliche. Hard to tell what day and age the story is set in - one assumes several decades ago being that the protagonist goes to a typist school. All that being said, the movie struck a painfully deep chord with me. 

I have spent time in the arranged marriage purgatory of the middle class Bengali family back in my day. I have also seen other women in my family and social circles do their time in hell. Nothing good has come of out of it for any single one of these women including myself. The system is not designed for any remote shot at success. Depending on the woman's level of tolerance, which my Bengali sisters are blessed with plenty of, they soldier along and try to give it an appearance of working. For the first few years they even go the extra mile and try to appear giddy with joy. Not every sister can carry on this charade for life- but some exceptional ones do - they are the masters of the game. 

The movie brought to mind, the revolving door of prospective grooms, their insufferable families trooping in to check out the patri (the would be bride) with no outcomes. It gets to the point where getting married is about as welcome as being granted parole. The romance and happiness that marriage is supposed to bring in its wake wears out well before the garlands are exchanged. Being married (at last), turns out to be deeply anti-climactic. The dust settles, the newly-minted bride realizes that she was short-changed by the system. 

She looks around and sees there exists a world where she could live and breathe a free human being and not be valued exclusively for her performance as a wife and a daughter-in-law. If she is how I was back at that age, she will like work up an exit plan out of that marriage stunning all concerned - all the time and effort to get married laid to waste. I remember feeling like I had failed everyone who had been a part of this bizarre multi-year production - the effort to get me married to a bangali bhadralok - I had made them all look like fools. 

My own troubles were secondary to the large scale social disappointment I had caused by quitting on the marriage before year three. It is easy to look back at that time today and say how stupid I must have been to allow this to be done to me, that I should have held my ground and taken charge of my life. I was an educated, working woman back then - I surely had no excuse to be shown around like a cow in a cattle market looking for someone to approve of me solely based on what I looked like - if I met their criteria for "beautiful". I had agency and failed to use it - shame on me, no need to blame the "system".

When I describe that time of my life to J, she thinks its bizarre and medieval. She cannot comprehend how one such as her mother could subject herself to this atrocity. Yet, that was the life I lead and everything that happened to me, happened to all Bengali girls I knew. It was hard for me to fathom that we were collectively victims and we all deserved better. There was an implicit understanding that we girls needed to be processed through the system and somehow emerge married on the other side. That was the rule of the game and no one questioned it. There was this presumption that once you got to the other side and achieved the status of "married" life would be simply wonderful. That is how they sold this barbaric game to women, 
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