Note: Before you read the following, it would be helpful to first read the screed that I refer to in the email below. It might also be fun to listen that song: "Arranged Marriage" by Apache Indian, as you read this.

Dear C,

Thank you for sending me this entertaining screed. While I have encountered suchlike before (for example at Sulkeha.com, there were numerous articles, flame wars etc, which raged around this topic: “love” vs. “arranged” marriage), this was a superlative screed, in that Ms. Jain did attempt to draw out larger lessons from her experience, and tried to be humorous (sort of) about it.

However, (you knew that was coming didn’t you?), however reading through the screed, in the body of your email, rose a couple of my hackles right away. So I went to the website, and printed it out, in order to give it the whole red-pen treatment.

Thus playing the devil’s advocate (and as Borges once mused because gentlemen prefer lost causes), here are my observations, criticisms, nitpicking(s) etc:

1. Misuse of terminology: The page 'byline' (the brief text that appears at the top of the webpage) goes: “A Modern Indian Woman’s Struggle With Arranged-Marriage.”

If Ms. Jain is “Indian”, I am Daffy Duck! Jokes aside, this does rise an important point: how does she define “Indian”? Does she have a set of parameters based on which she uses that adjective “Indian”? Shouldn’t the article be, at least this is what I think, more suitably titled “A Modern Woman of Indian Ancestry…”?

A Latter Thought: It also occured to me that Ms. Jain, very freely, bandies the term "modern". Again, what exactly are the criteria for being considered modern? Are people who live in America modern? Are people who date modern? Also are people who have arranged marriages, by implication, medieval?

2. Contradiction: “My parents, in a very earnest bid to secure my eternal happiness, have been trying to marry me off to, well, just about anyone lately.” Vs. “Like most Indians of their generation, my parents believe there are only two legitimate professions: doctor and engineer (not medicine and engineering, but doctor and engineer).”

I think I needn’t elucidate further on how this is a contradiction.

3. Generalization: “Our prospective husbands have to be rich and socially conscious, hip but down-to-earth.”

Which invisible populace is Ms. Jain conjuring up by using ‘our’, I wonder? Those are her expectations and not any general “Indian” woman’s!

4. Generalization/Identity Crisis: “So while we, as modern Indian women,…”.

Again she claims to be speaking for many modern Indian women, while not bothering to define which demographic is she speaking out for? Or is she like Walt Whitman, and contains multitudes within?

5. Unreasoned Judgment: Speaking of her brother, who had had an arranged marriage, she writes, “he’s very happily married, with a baby daughter, but he also never had a girlfriend before his wedding day”, almost implying that her brother’s happiness is somehow marred, or is defective, by the fact that he did not have a girlfriend.

I am out of breath here, and I am just done with the first page. So for the rest of the screed I will just give two or three word responses, and you can take it from there:

6. Lack of Integrity: “to go on the first of these “introductions,” though I agreed to my parents’ setup mainly with an eye toward turning it into a story for friends.”

Are all the men she was “introduced” to, merely fodder for her gossip mill?

7. Identity Crisis/Unreasoned Judgment: “Before long, though, I gathered that he was of a type: someone who prided himself on being modern and open-minded but who in fact had horribly crusty notions passed down from his Indian parents.”

If Vikram is Indian, will his parents not be Indian? Perhaps, he could have had those horribly crusty notions passed down from his Martian parents? Also does he have to necessarily get those horribly crusty notions from his Indian parents? Is he not a homo sapien?

8. Ignorance: “To an Indian, marriage is a matter of karmic destiny. There are many happy unions in the pantheon of Hindu gods—Shiva and Parvati, Krishna and Radha.”

Does Indian equal to Hindu? What about the many Indians who are Christians, Muslims etc?

9. Blunder: “Far from being a novel approach to matrimony, these sites are a natural extension of how things have been done in India for decades. Even since well before the explosion of the country’s famously vibrant press in the fifties, Indians were coupling up via matrimonial ads in national papers (“Match sought for Bengali Brahmin, wheatish complexion,” etc.).”

If Ms. Jain knew her India, she would have known that a matrimonial ad was, and in many cases still is, usually viewed as strategy of last resort for the truly desperate, and that most arranged marriages are ‘setup’ via the extended family grapevine, and not through newspapers.

10. Abdication of Responsibility: “My father also wrote my profile.”

If she was going to meet men via these various matrimonial websites, which she indeed did, if only out of, as she implies, resignation, shouldn’t/couldn’t she have taken more responsibility for the process?

11. Contradiction/ Incompleteness: “Since moving here a few years ago, I’d hardly describe my dating life as successful.”

What would Ms. Jain consider a successful dating life? One that ends in marriage? Considering the summary of her dating life (or as she put it “escapades”), I would certainly say that she did (and does) have quite a successful dating life!

12. Crude Caricatures: “He was wearing pants that ended two inches before his ankles.” “And in their tone-deafness, some of these men resemble the parents spurring them on.” “I’m left cold by e-mails with fresh-off-the-boat Indian English like “Hope email is finding you in pink of health” or “I am looking for life partner for share of joy of life and sorrowful time also.”” “Within seconds, his shaky command of English and yokel line of questioning—“You are liking dancing? I am too much liking dancing”—told me this man was as much a brain surgeon as I was Madhuri Dixit.”

I think I needn’t add that clothes doesn’t maketh a man (or woman). Or that bad English is not the exclusive domain of “fresh-off-the-boat” Indian men. Or that “shaky command” of English does not equal “yokel” as she seems to imply. I doubt if she would have called the line of questioning yokel, if the person could have said, “Do you like dancing, because I do?”

13. Generalization/Contradiction: “They would like a woman to be sophisticated enough to have a martini, and not a Diet Coke, at an office party, but, God forbid, not “sophisticated” enough to have three. Sometimes I worry that I’m a bit too sophisticated for most Indian men.

14. Generalization: “Though she’s long favored pubgoing blokes, Divya, like me, doesn’t discount the possibility that the urologist from Trivandrum or the IT guy could just be the one—an idea patently unthinkable to us in our twenties.”

I know a fine neurologist from Tirchy, who is also a “pubgoing bloke”. Paging Ms. Divya in London!

15. Misuse of Terminology: “With other forms of dating the options seem limitless. The long kiss in the bar with someone I’ve never met before could have been just that, an exchange that has a value and meaning of its own that can’t be quantified. Ditto for the one-night stand. (Try explaining that one to my parents.)”

If something is said to possess value (or is a virtue, or is sinful) it certainly can be quantified, as well as qualified. What she, perhaps, meant (and should have used) was not value, but pleasure, or thrill, or some synonym thereof.

I know this article perhaps wasn’t intended to be argued against, or deconstructed, as I have done, very briefly, above. But in a world full of weapons of mass distraction, falsity must be fought, and virtue defended. So that was that. I hope you are getting to have a somewhat restful weekend.

Joy!
S

PS: Should we send Ms. Jain a copy of Primo Levi’s Periodic Table? She needs it.

My email of Ms. Jain:

Hello Ms. Jain,

A friend had recently forwarded me the New York Metro article of yours on the subject of arranged marriages, and I couldn't help but deconstruct it in my reply (which can be found here: buoy.antville.org ) back to him.

While I understand that you might have wanted to write a loosely autobiographical and, perhaps, humorous article on the subject, the degree of 'badness' (contradictions, generalizations, outright blunders, caricatures etc) contained, and expressed, within was too much for me to take it lying down. And hence these two bits to let you know of what I (unlike you, I won't claim to speak for all dissenting "Modern" "Indian" men) thought of your piece. Perhaps, in future, you can write a more fairer and reasoned article, on the same subject.

Thank you.
S

PS: And yes, all the best, in your marriage endeavours.

Sashi, what a caustic rejoinder! I was rolling about laughing reading it (which is more than could be said about poor Ms. Jain's desi piece)...

Monica