(Un)arranged Marriage

by Bali Rai

  ‘Man, I told you to take it off in the car. It’s all gathered up on your shoulders and back,’ he said.

  ‘Leave it, Ekky, it’s cool. It’s gonna get even more creases in it by the time I’m finished,’ I replied, following my brothers over to where my family stood facing the girl’s family, with a twenty-metre channel between them, like some gang war face-off.

  I had to stand through about three different ceremonies that involved the giving of gold rings and blankets and things, from her family to mine – something called a milni, or meeting. This was another tradition I hated – the fact that the girl’s side had to give the boy’s family so much stuff. I stood through it all yawning my head off and waiting for a chance to grab some time by myself.

  The thing was, after that point no-one left me alone for a minute. If it wasn’t my sisters-in-law fussing over me, it was my old man – already well pissed – telling me to remember the order of the ceremony, and asking me if I needed this or that, mainly money again. And different aunti-jis and uncle-jis were coming over to tell me what a good boy I was and how they were so glad that I had straightened myself out while I was in India.

  Then I saw Parmjit – the cousin who had been left in India for a whole year – standing in a corner of the car park, two kids in tow. A young woman in a Punjabi suit approached him, said something and then shouted at him. As she turned and walked off I realized that it was his wife. He watched her go and then smiled over at me, feebly. I hadn’t seen him for a few years and he had put on loads of weight, just like Harry and Ranjit had after they got married. But the worst thing about his appearance was the fact that his hair had begun to recede and he had these huge dark circles under his eyes, bags big enough to carry shopping home in. How old was he? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? I turned to my old man who was now standing next to me like a farmer with his prize-winning bull, all grins and handshakes for the blokes that filed past heading for the tea and samosas that were being served inside.

  ‘I need to go to the toilet again,’ I told him, looking at my watch. Eleven o’clock. It was time.

  ‘What is the matter with you. Are you possessed or something?’ he replied, in Punjabi.

  ‘I’ll be quick.’ I spoke in English which wound him up.

  ‘What are you? A gorah? Talk in Punjabi. No-one wants your English here. This is a Punjabi temple.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I looked at my watch again, starting to feel the first signs of panic.

  ‘You have to come and have some tea first with the rest of us.’

  ‘You go in. I’m only going to be a couple of minutes.’

  This time I spoke in Punjabi and he relented, telling me to hurry up. I walked into the temple and asked one of the attendants where the toilets were. He told me that there were two sets, one on the first floor near the front, and another set on the ground floor around the back. I headed for those, sweat beginning to form on my forehead even though it was a cold day. I walked through an empty hall area and out through a set of doors, down a long corridor and into what looked like a half-finished kitchen area.

  At the far end from where I stood, right at the back of the building were two fire exits, one in each corner. The way out! I headed for them, pulling off my turban and phullah.

  The first exit wouldn’t budge. Panicking a bit, I ran over to the other one and tried that. It wouldn’t open either and I started to feel paranoid. I mean, if they didn’t open, my only escape would be through the front of the temple and I’d definitely get spotted then. It was enough of a risk going out the back way as someone would almost certainly see me, but it was less likely to be a member of my family. I barged the exit again, really hammering into it, and it gave a little but still wouldn’t open. I stood and thought for a moment and then I started to think about how far I’d come and how much I had taken, all the shit and the beatings and the verbal stuff. All the lies my family had told me. All the racist stuff they had fed me about blacks and whites and anyone who wasn’t a Jat Punjabi. My head just exploded on the inside.

  It was nearly ten past eleven. No time. I launched at the fire exit, using the sole of my right foot to kick it. I did it once, twice, three times. Then again. And again. And then BLAM! The door was open and I was free, running out of the temple on to a narrow back street. I had a quick look down the street but it was deserted. Where the hell was Ady?

  As I ran I threw off my jacket and pulled my tie loose. The buttons on my shirt broke away and the first people I passed – an old couple out walking their dog – gave me a strange look as I pelted by, throwing my tie behind me. I ran down the road, side-stepping a young Asian kid in ragga gear whose eyes nearly popped out of his head in surprise as I rounded the bend in the road that led up towards a row of shops. As I ran I looked behind me and saw a white car pull out onto the main road, similar to the one that Harry’s best mate drove. I couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t be following me already. They couldn’t have found out yet!

  I took a left into a side street and sprinted to the end, my lungs about to burst. Right. Then right again and back down a parallel street. Back on myself. The car, a white, old-shaped Cavalier sped round the corner after me and passed me by before stopping in the road. The door on the driver’s side came open and the sound of hip hop music blasted out. I stopped running and approached the car, realizing that it wasn’t anyone from my family. Ady was behind the wheel, grinning at me.

  ‘Your taxi, sir,’ he said, laughing as soon as he’d spoken.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ I shouted, peeling off my shirt to expose a grey hooded top underneath. I got into the passenger seat, throwing my shirt out onto the road.

  ‘Chill out, my yout’. I’m here, ain’t I? Happy Birthday.’

  As I pulled the door shut he drove off, wheel spinning down to the bottom of the road as Busta Rhymes kicked the ballistics.

  ‘Woo Hah!!! I got you all in check.’

  now

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Tuesday 30th November

  IT’S TWO YEARS to the day since I did my disappearing act and I feel that maybe I should explain my actions. It’s something that I’ve thought about for ages. Ever since that day in Derby. I don’t regret anything that I did: the cheat, doing a runner and taking all that money. I still feel that it was something that my family owed to me after all the years of treating me like some kind of private possession and not as another human being.

  I’m nineteen now and I live at Lisa’s parents’ house, in her room, only we’re not together any more. She’s taking a year off, just like she always said, and travelling around the Far East. She e-mails me twice a week and I still love her as much as I ever did, only in a different way. Her parents, Amanda and Ben, took me in after I left. I was going to get a flat but Ben told me to bank my money so that I could use it to pay college fees when I eventually returned to my education. They were a godsend and I love them both to bits although Ady tells them they are like those couples in Australian soap operas – the ones that take in all the waifs and strays.

  I’m still working nights for the same supermarket, waiting to retake my GCSEs. I’ve been provisionally accepted for college but I can’t start until next September which is fine with me. I want to save up as much money as possible to add to what is left in my bank account – Ady helped me spend some – and I should be able to get some sort of funding. It’s something that I need to find out about. I might have to go to night school to do my A levels and work during the day. Whatever. The thing is, all the choices that I make now are about me. The person that I want to be. Not the person that my old man tried to beat and pressure me into being. And that makes everything that I did worthwhile.

  I haven’t spoken to anyone in my immediate family since my wedding day that wasn’t. From time to time I’ll see Harry or Ranjit and Jas, walking through town or driving by but if they see me, they don’t show it. I was scared that they would come after me, find me and try to make me go back. Ekbal, who I see out and ab
out all the time, told me that for the first few months after I left, that’s exactly what they’d threatened to do. Harry had talked about beating the crap out of me, sending me to India for good, all that sort of stuff. Only I kept a real low profile for about a year afterwards. I’d try not to go out in the day and totally avoided going anywhere near Evington Road. If I did go into town or whatever, I’d be looking around every two minutes, watching my back like some IRA super grass. I didn’t enjoy doing it but I had no choice. There was no way I was ever going back to that way of life. No way.

  In the end, I didn’t have to leave. My family moved to Oadby where they bought two houses next door to each other so that they could carry on playing happy extended families. Jas and Ranjit have a little girl now too, but Harry still hasn’t managed to prove his manhood. Ekbal told me that I stopped being a factor in their lives after they had moved. No-one spoke about me, or even mentioned my name. It was like I had never existed at all. Apparently my old man wasn’t badly hurt by what I did; he just kept on drinking and working and visiting the gurudwara on Sundays. And my mother, despite all her threats and her drama queen hysterics, never killed herself or died of shock or anything like that. Their lives just went on like before, only they didn’t have me to ignore or beat up or anything. My father only had two sons now.

  I still have this idea that one day I might be accepted back into the fold, like they did with Jag, but I know deep down inside that it won’t happen. They haven’t even spoken to Jag since he helped me to escape from India. I call him up every other week though. Or I send him e-mails on my new computer. He’s cool, Jag, still the same, although he hasn’t managed to make it over to England yet. That’s changing though. He’s coming over to London soon and I’m going to go and stay with him and his family, who I can’t wait to meet.

  The only thing that I regret about the whole cheat thing is the fact that I left it until my wedding day to carry it out. At the time it felt like the right thing to do, the best way to take my revenge. I was angry and hurt and all those things, so much so that I wasn’t thinking with a clear head. I confused all the hate that I felt for my family and their stupid traditions with being a Sikh or being a Punjabi. It was all one big whole to me, maybe because I was too young to see the difference.

  OK, so I got my revenge on my old man and my stupid brothers and that, but I also disrespected the girl’s family and it wasn’t their fault at all. And I disrespected the temple and the Sikh religion and I never meant to do that. Not that I’m a Sikh myself or anything. I’m still trying to work out whether there actually is a God at all. But I did confuse being a Jat Punjabi in the way that my old man saw it, with being a Sikh, which is something totally different.

  I’ve been reading up on it lately and I’ve found that Sikhism preaches tolerance and equality towards everyone, a bit like an Asian version of Christianity, only without the Adam and Eve bit. Men, women. Black, white. All the same. The problem is that people like my old man tie in all these old traditions to the religion – arranged marriages, all that racist shit, the caste system stuff, things which are nothing to do with religion and more to do with culture and politics and social norms.

  My old man and his mates are the ones who are really confused; they’re too ignorant to change their ways or even realize that they don’t know what they are on about. They don’t even understand the religion that they try to brainwash their own kids with. They just piss about with it until it suits their needs, fits their own way of thinking, and that, as far as I’m concerned, is wrong. Just as I was wrong for allowing myself to confuse everything and put it all together in one big whole, until anything and everything that was Punjabi or Sikh became part of the problem.

  As for Ady, well he’s the same old nutter he always was. He’s still living at his brother’s with Sarah and Zac, and working with me. Sarah is studying to become a nurse and Zac just gets to be more and more like his dad everyday. They can’t take him to the supermarket without him toddling off after the girls – Ady has even taught him to say ‘honeyz’ in the same stupid accent he always put on. It’s been interesting to see Ady grow up since Zac came along and he seems to have coped well, even when he had to be up all night changing nappies. Back when we were kids the man couldn’t get out of bed most mornings. But then again Sarah keeps him on his toes.

  I owe Ady a lot. Without him the cheat wouldn’t have worked. The way he planted those extra clothes in that toilet cubicle at Leicester Forest East, borrowing his brother’s car even though he hasn’t got a licence. All that stuff. And to top it all, he named me as Zac’s godfather. It was a little later than normal, granted – Zac was six months old when Ady asked me – but I was thrilled to bits.

  And then there’s me. Dreaming about travelling and writing and all that other stuff, and still waiting for Liverpool to win the Premiership. My life isn’t exactly like a garden of roses at the moment. I have to work hard, stacking shelves all night long, and sometimes I have to watch every single penny that I spend. But my life is mine and that’s what I’ve always wanted. And I’ve got a new girlfriend too, a girl who works part-time on the reception desk at the supermarket. She’s called Jenny and she’s great, dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, and she’s really intelligent too. We’re into a lot of the same things, like books and music and stuff, and even though she’s not Lisa, she’s still wicked. She’s actually coming round in a minute to help me celebrate my birthday. We’re going out with Ady and Sarah. It should be a laugh. But whatever it is, I’m doing it because I choose to do it.

  And that is what all this stuff has been about.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Bali Rai lives in Leicester and combines managing a bar with trying to write. A graduate in Politics, if he had to get a ‘proper’ job, he’d pick journalism. This is his first novel and, after seeing the inside cover photos, he thinks that Bollywood might call. Failing that he will get on with his next project if his agent can get him out of bed on time.

  (UN)ARRANGED MARRIAGE

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 49885 9

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Penguin Random House Company

  This ebook edition published 2011

  Copyright © 2001 by Bali Rai

  Mehndi design © Jerry Paris, 2001

  First Published in Great Britain

  Corgi Books 9780552547345 2001

  The right of Bali Rai to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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