India in Love

by Ira Trivedi

  Her case was referred to the Standard Business Conduct (SBC) cell, which heard both sides of the case. The Psycho was fired immediately after the SBC concluded their case. Much to Priya’s chagrin, even after the Psycho was fired from the Company on grounds of sexual harassment, he continued his emails and phone calls, which only ceased the day that Priya got married.

  ♦

  On the sort of perfect evening that Bangalore seems to be able to produce on demand, Priya and I sit on the steps of her apartment building chatting. Priya’s building is a mammoth, impersonal structure on the outskirts of Bangalore with small, cheap flats, where people from the neighbouring IT offices live. Priya seems calm as she looks through the window where the setting sun is warm and soothing. There is something lovely about Priya, a child-like innocence and an earnestness that is uncommon these days. Though Priya seems a bit lost at times, she is intensely aware of the world around her. Though her English is heavily accented, and at times broken, she is a perceptive conversationalist. With her the conversations are perhaps sad, but always without heaviness.

  ‘I cried a lot that year,’ Priya says speaking of the seven months of harassment. ‘I’m still crying, but at least now I have someone who loves me.’

  A few months after the Psycho was fired, Priya got another Facebook friend request, again from a colleague whom she had never met before. Priya didn’t consider herself beautiful and she wondered why men were attracted to her. Like the Psycho (and like Priya herself) her suitor was Tamil so perhaps that explained the attraction.

  Compared to their parents’ generation, the social lives of IT professionals have become fragmented due to lack of time and the high level of mobility, but nonetheless a number of them cling to older middle-class social values and attempt to reproduce what they regard as the traditional Indian family structure. This may have prompted these Tamil men to pursue Priya, a fellow Tamil, in an attempt to structure a romance that vaguely resembled a marriage that might have been arranged for them by their parents.

  Unlike what she felt for the Psycho, this time Priya was intrigued. His name was Kartikey, he was tall, handsome and had a kind, gentle face. Also, she felt so lonely in Bangalore. Her six-month internship at the company had been converted into a full-time job, and her father had not yet summoned her back to the village for her impending marriage. Kartikey seemed like such pleasant company, and slowly she began building a relationship with him. After three months of courtship on email, Facebook and phone, Priya too fell in love.

  Priya thinks for a second, as if conjuring up Kartikey’s image in her mind, and smiles tentatively. ‘I somehow liked this character, and I wanted to be with him.’ Unfortunately, her brother’s friend, the same one who had encouraged her to take the Psycho to HR, stumbled upon her love interest and told her family about Kartikey.

  She looks at me sadly and says, ‘My father was very angry with me and told me to come home immediately. I knew that if I went back, they would just marry me off without even looking at the guy properly.’

  Kartikey is from the Chettiar caste and Priya is from the Gounder caste, and Priya’s father believes deeply in two things: caste and astrology. Priya tells me, ‘My father thinks that inter-caste love marriage is worse than a disease. When I asked him why, he told me that love marriage was the reason why our society is falling apart. My parents cried when they found out about my love. They were sad before they got angry. But I knew that Kartikey was my first love, and I didn’t want to leave him.’

  Priya recalls what had happened to her cousin, who, like Priya, had fallen in love with a colleague. She was forced to quit her job, and was put under house arrest for four years. Priya told me that she got ‘nice beatings’ from her brother, and after waiting for three long years, her boyfriend eventually married someone else.

  ‘My cousin is now thirty plus. She has crossed the age for marriage and now it is not possible for her to marry someone normal. Still they are searching. She can’t sit at home and cry, so she will get married, though it will be a divorcee, or a widower with children. Everything got spoiled for her. I didn’t want that to happen to me, so I didn’t go back.’

  On 7 March 2010, a year after they began their romance, Priya and Kartikey got married, against the wishes of her parents, in a simple temple ceremony in Bangalore. Kartikey’s parents accepted the marriage, although grudgingly, and not before they put up a fight. Kartikey’s mother wanted her son to marry her brother’s daughter, something that is commonly done in the Chettiar caste but Kartikey was resolute and told his mother that if he didn’t marry Priya, he would not marry anyone at all.

  Priya told her parents that her decision had been the right one and wanted them to meet Kartikey, even if just once, to see this man for themselves. But they would have nothing to do with it. ‘Throw away that mangalsutra,’ they said. ‘We’ll find you someone else.’ But Priya had made her decision.

  When Priya married against her parents’ wishes, there were people she left behind and would never see again. There were things that she loved that she might not ever taste or touch or share again because she was hundreds of miles from all that she had known. From the moment she made up her mind she knew it would take effort and resilience to survive. There were moments when she regretted her decision, when she missed home so badly that it hurt physically. Udumalpet, Tamil Nadu, was still deep within Priya’s heart, and the sight of some insignificant thing or a gesture would take her back and remind her of what she once was and where she had once been—it could be the sight of a boiled corncob, or slices of raw mango brushed with red spices being sold by street vendors.

  ‘It’s been a year-and-a-half now since I spoke with anyone from my family. They tell me that they don’t want to see me till I die,’ she says.

  For Priya the consequences of her decision were felt a few months after she got married, when the flurry of first love calmed down and real life took over. Priya got pregnant and miscarried a few months later. Six months after her miscarriage, she was pregnant again, and this time around she got an abortion because of complications. After her abortion, Priya became severely anaemic and spent six months in and out of hospitals. Kartikey had to work to pay her hospital bills.

  Priya looks away and she speaks impassively. ‘Before my marriage, I had so many relations, so many people in my life, and now, staying alone like this, especially in the hospital, it was the worst time in my life. I told my sister about what happened, and I begged her to talk to me, but my sister told me that I took my decision alone and had to face the consequences alone. After this, I decided not to call my parents ever again. I told myself that I would have to live my life here with Kartikey.’

  Priya tells me about Kartikey’s family. He has two siblings. His sister is divorced; Kartikey supports her and her twelve-year-old daughter. When his sister had an arranged marriage, her husband was a manager at United Colours of Benetton. A year after marriage, he quit his job to become a professional astrologer, and moved to Jaipur. Priya says that he is a ‘full-time drinker’, and quips that it is ironic that he predicts futures when he doesn’t have a grip on his own present. Every month Priya and Kartikey send money home to Kartikey’s family, as is expected of the oldest son. They send a larger share then they can truly afford. Even with the double income, finances for the young couple are tight. Bangalore is getting increasingly expensive to live in.

  Priya tells me, ‘I used to get so many scoldings from my mother-in-law about cooking, about Kartikey’s health, about my house. Now she likes me because I earn at my job, and I send money to them. I like working, but also I have to work. It’s funny, first I came to work because I didn’t want to sit at home. Now I have to work to survive.’

  Now that night has fallen, we step inside Priya’s apartment. Her home is extremely simple, but sparkling clean. The few pieces of furniture are comfortable, but old and unpretentious. Like a teenage girl, Priya has put up posters on the living room walls, of kittens, or puppies, of cartoon heart
s. There are plastic dolls with blue eyes and frilly underwear and stuffed animals with beady glass eyes carefully preserved in a glass showcase.

  Priya gives me her perspective on marriage. ‘If you come to Bangalore, and earn 50,000-60,000 per month, you wonder why you should obey any man. This is the way that girls think. Girls are not “adjustable” like they were before.’ She continues, ‘See my mother, she was adjustable with her mother-in-law. I am not like that. Things are not like before. The older culture is gone.’

  Over fluffy onion uttapams that Priya has made for us, I cautiously ask her about sex, unsure if this would be an uncomfortable subject for her to deal with. Priya though is forthright as always. ‘In my apartment building we have so many love marriages. All these people are having everything before marriage. Those girls who are married have sex with some other guy who is married to some other girl. It happens like this only,’ Priya says. ‘According to me, though, marriage is not only for sex, it is for other things, and most of all to live happily. I told Karti that I don’t want anything to happen between us after that last abortion. He is very understanding about it. He told me that he wants me to get well soon so I can be like before. Some of my friends tell me that their husbands hit them to have sex. My husband is not like that, he is very good to me.’

  ♦

  Kartikey is tall and serious, with sloping shoulders and a relaxed gait. He is dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a shirt. An old habit not easily lost, he totes along his backpack, not the industrial-size backpack from work, but a small, green one for casual use. Priya is dressed in her weekend clothes—a decorative salwaar-kameez with lace and gold, and long golden earrings. Her face is sufficiently powdered, lending her a strangely dusty-white pallor, and her hair has been freshly washed, tied in a loose ponytail. I notice that she has beautiful hair.

  We are lunching at Total Mall, one of the many new malls in Bangalore. Unlike his wife, Kartikey is shy and hesitant around me, and it is only after much probing that I am able to get him to tell me a little more about his side of their love story. ‘When I saw her I just liked her, I don’t know why. It took me a long time to propose. She had complained about another guy, and I was scared that she would complain against me, but I didn’t give up. Initially she told me, let’s be friends, but I told her, “No, I love you, I cannot be friends with you.” After this the rest was history,’ he says grinning at Priya.

  I ask him about the love lives of his IT colleagues.

  He tells me that a lot of people have ‘relations’. ‘Often you get lonely, far away from home, especially boys. And then there is freedom, no parents, no brothers, and no relatives. You earn a lot of money, and you don’t have to ask anyone for permission. Some people hook up on site, then break up, some stay together. Most people in IT are having love marriages. It is easier that way, because the lifestyle is similar.’

  I have heard this before, my grandfather used to make a case for arranged marriage within the caste, saying that ‘similar lifestyles and culture’ made it easier for the marriages to work out. Economic growth and industry are helping bring down some of the age-old social barriers. For Priya and Kartikey and so many others, it seemed to me IT was a sort of new caste system.

  Priya and Kartikey seem very much in love. Like high school lovers, they joke with each other, hold hands, and gaze at each other shyly. Priya tells me that they are going to visit a friend who has recently had a baby. Her voice is soft, with a tentative edge to it. They are overjoyed by the birth of this baby, because before the birth of this child, that couple too had to deal with a miscarriage. I know Priya is desperate to have children so she can quickly fill the blank spaces within her heart.

  We take pictures together in the mall, Priya, Kartikey and me. Priya hugs me tight and thanks me for the time that I spent with her. She says she has had more fun than she has had in a long time because I am someone who listens to her carefully, without interrupting her or judging her. I remember a walk that we took, through the office complex one afternoon. Suddenly, apropos of nothing, she turned towards me, and gave me a tight hug, taking me by surprise. She told me that this was the happiest that she had been in days and that she was thrilled to have a friend like me.

  ♦

  ‘Bangalore has changed more in ten years than in the past hundred. It has seen the most revolutionary cultural change in the recent past since the days of the British,’ says Dr Shyam Bhatt, a Bangalore-based psychiatrist who also hosts a popular radio chat show on love, sex and relationships.

  Migration and urbanization, and perhaps the most important—a changing culture of love and marriage—have lent the sleepy, south Indian city of his youth a brand new identity.

  I meet Shyam Bhatt at a Cafe Coffee Day outlet, the ubiquitous nationwide chain of coffee shops started in Bangalore with the suggestive tag line: ‘A lot can happen over coffee’. Its credo seems apposite this morning as the coffee shop is full of amorous couples sipping cappuccinos and sharing dessert.

  After spending fifteen years in the US, Dr Bhatt moved to Bangalore, his hometown, to capitalize on the numerous business opportunities available here. His business is burgeoning because of increasing relationship problems, particularly amongst IT professionals.

  ‘Love marriages,’ he says, ‘are on the rise.’ The bulk of his patients are from the IT sector. Typically two young people meet in Bangalore at their work place, marry, and set up permanent base in city. The office atmosphere is like a hothouse because men and women from traditional, conservative families are thrown together suddenly. They experience a sense of freedom, and romance blooms. But with this romance comes a series of problems.

  ‘When they are young, in their twenties, they can handle it. In their thirties, they begin to feel the impact of this new way of life.’

  Inexperienced with romance and relationships, they don’t know how to deal with the problems that come along with it. As they have often pursued their romance without their parents’ knowledge and against their wishes, they have no emotional support network when they hit a rough patch. They look for answers in Western media and other foreign, inappropriate sources and this simply exacerbates the problem.

  Shyam worries about the future, he feels that India’s love revolution is creating widespread emotional havoc and isn’t sustainable. There is too much change too fast. People are now beginning to search for an anchor and for some stability. Many of them have turned to religion and spirituality, and this has led to the mushrooming of spiritual organizations in the city, among them a mammoth Art of Living centre, a New Age spiritual sect, on the outskirts of the city, which propagates a set of meditative breathing techniques for well-being. And there are many spin-offs of this organisation dotting the city.

  ♦

  During my last few days in Bangalore, I move from the centre of the city to my cousin’s home in the suburbs. My cousin resides in a lavish colony complete with palm trees, manicured lawns, smooth driveways, a swimming pool and squash courts. I feel like I am in an American suburb, except that everything here feels smaller—compact town houses instead of sprawling mansions, dinky Tata Nanos instead of hulking SUVs, narrow streets instead of mile-wide ones. This housing complex is tastefully done, and well planned, in contrast to the world outside this gated community, where the road is yet to be built, and the stench of sewage is so strong that several of the security guards wear gas masks. Outside the gates of the compound, remnants of village life are still visible. Coconut trees sprout next to dumpsters, a verdant hillock sits next to a two-storey supermarket, mud-coloured houses and walls plastered with cow dung stand warily next to shops selling internet connections and SIM cards. Cows, chickens and other livestock amble around the trucks carrying construction materials for buildings to house the growing population of IT employees.

  Here, in this housing complex called Palm Springs, I am protected from the village life outside. I wake up to the sounds of young American voices and cricket games, instead of the sounds of B
angalore that I have gotten used to—clanging temple bells and the raucous sound of traffic. I look out the window into the watery monsoon sunlight and a see a group of boys, mostly South Indian it seems from their dark skin and small frames. They speak and dress like American boys, except that they play cricket instead of baseball. In the years of the brain drain, their parents left India, armed with engineering degrees, to mint their fortunes in the land of dreams, but now India is where the future is, so they have come back—returned to their roots in Bangalore, but with American ideals. Here they seem to have the best of both worlds—maid-servants, drivers, steaming cups of morning chai and elaborate South Indian breakfasts, but also the infrastructure: manicured lawns, communal swimming pools and IT firms where they interact with more Americans than Indians. They vow to raise their children the way that they grew up, with Gandhian values of austerity, discipline, and hard work. Looking around at kids wearing the latest Nike sneakers and sipping from bottles of mineral water I am not sure how this will happen or what this new breed of children will be like. They bring with them American sensibilities, but will grow up in India, they will create their own unique value system—taking a bit of both cultures.

  I have promised to go for an evening walk with Tanisha, my cousin’s sweet teenage daughter. I go look for her and as I suspect she is on her computer, on Facebook, listening to Rihanna, and looking at photos of the Irish boy band One Direction. Like her father, a talented engineer, thirteen-year-old Tanisha is being trained to solve mathematical problems that would boggle an eighteen-year-old’s mind and is expected to attend a top college. She is one of the nicest thirteen-year-olds that I have met. In India, children are always younger than their age, and more innocent. She doesn’t demand her privacy, she is very obedient, and listens to her parents, following their orders without any friction.

  Her mom, my cousin Ritu, is a successful fashion designer who had an arranged marriage to Anand fifteen years ago. Theirs is a happy, peaceful marriage, though their personalities are so different—my cousin gregarious and social, while Anand is a quiet banker who prefers to spend his free time with his family. Ritu and Anand connect on something more basal: a shared sense of values, similar family and community beliefs.