A Nod to Arranged Marriage This Wedding Season

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ARI SHAPIRO, host:

It's June, which means brides and grooms-to-be are choosing caterers, photographers and DJs. And in some countries, parents are choosing their children's spouses. Commentator Sandip Roy recently visiting his mother Reba Roy(ph) in Calcutta, and he asked her about her arranged marriage.

Mr. SANDIP ROY (Editor, New American Media): My mother never saw my father until their wedding, when they were exchanging garlands in a hall in Calcutta. In fact, no one in her family had seen him. He was a mail-order husband, a civil engineer building bridges out in the jungle. He married my mother on the basis of an old picture and family references.

Fifty years later, my mom confesses she didn't think too much of the picture.

Ms. REBA ROY (Mother of Sandip Roy): And I didn't like that (unintelligible) fat.

Mr. ROY: He had a mustache and seemed a little fat, she said.

My mother was a dancer. She hung out with Calcutta's artistic glitterati.

Ms. ROY: (Foreign language spoken)

Mr. ROY: She said she didn't want to give up dance to go live in some tiger-infested jungle with no electricity. But my grandfather convinced her. At the wedding, my mother says my father seemed nervous. He barely spoke. But she hoped he said something special on their wedding night. Instead, he talked about how he hoped she would adjust to his family. He said nothing about me, she tells me ruefully - nothing at all. And the next day, she left her home to move to this stranger's house.

Did you cry a lot?

Ms. ROY: Yeah. (unintelligible)

Mr. ROY: She was anxious, wondering what kind of home he was going to, what kind of man she'd married. During her first night at the in-laws, my mother tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

Ms. ROY: Completely lost.

Mr. ROY: But her new mother-in-law, my grandmother, sat up with her, stroking her back, comforting her.

Ms. ROY: Really, she was so nice.

Mr. ROY: That night, she realized she had married into a family, and that she would be okay, even with this strange, quiet man she had known only from a passport photograph. A few months later, they went away to the jungle where my father was building his bridge. He has also built a little bungalow for my mother. He still didn't talk much, but they started to get to know each other. Then, heavy rains came and the river flooded.

Ms. ROY: (Foreign language spoken)

Mr. ROY: For four days, my father was stuck on one side of the river. My mother was stranded on the other side. Every day, they climbed onto each end of that unfinished bridge and shouted to each other across the surging waters.

Ms. ROY: (Foreign language spoken)

Mr. ROY: When my father came back, my mother burst into tears. She made him promise to find a new job because she couldn't bear that separation again. Now, my father is gone, and though while my mother laughs with her cousins on the phone and fusses over her grandkids, I know she still misses him terribly. Because when she tells me that story her, face softens and her eyes light up.

And for a moment, I see them both - not as my parents but as this unlikely couple, the dance and the engineer, both younger than I am now, standing on either side of a swollen river, so filled with trepidation, so full of hope and love.

SHAPIRO: Commentator Sandip Roy is an editor with New American Media.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.