(Note: this one is more like a what-I-was-reading-and-just-forgot-to-post)
I also feel like I should explain these excerpts; I’ve chosen to share them because it highlights the prevalent opinion of the Indian community about marriage and its sanctity. ‘You aren’t happy in your marriage? Well bloody well adjust because you’re a woman’ is the general consensus, especially amongst the older generation, for whom the d-word is totally dirty and blasphemous. I don’t agree with that viewpoint, and I hope women (AND men!) realise that being unhappy for your whole life is no way to live, just to keep “society” happy. Society be damned, they are not living your life for you.
Anyway, read on!
Book: One-And-A-Half Wife
Author: Meghna Pant
Excerpts:
“Biji dismissed her concerns, saying, as if the crime had been pardoned before trial, ‘Marriage like that only. Don’t be asking more than you deserve. And don’t be talking bad about new family in front of me or other.'”
“She chanted the marriage mantras that Biji had taught her: ‘Don’t expect anything. Don’t say anything. Your husband is always right.'”
“Love? What love? Marriage is not love. It be duty. Love is meaning you pick one person and no one after him,’Biji replied acidly.”
“Why blame country? It is our daughter. She have let us down. Woman must adjust in marriage.”
“… those are the people who left India thirty or forty years ago. They’re still holding on to the cultural norms of an India-that-was.”
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