The question of arranged marriages, or “arranged-cum-love” marriages isn’t that apalling anymore to the mind of a so-called young, liberal-minded person. Journalist-author Anita Jain’s book reflects this reality quite well. As a last resort after years of seemingly meaningless dating in New York and other cities, Jain writes about how and why she chose to move to India. She realised that she wasn’t succumbing to her parent’s incessant demands for a son-in-law, and that the demand to settle down, once in her 30s, was her own. She takes the opportunity to meet eligible Indian men, gently tweaking the traditional hunt for matrimony to suit her liberal thought and lifestyle.
Marrying Anita begins on an interesting premise, which makes it an easy, breezy read at the end of the day. It is highlighted with refreshing, honest accounts of the author’s years in the US, an Indian woman with conservative parents whose worry about her impending marriage looms large in every conversation. Her journey as a journalist takes her to London, Singapore, Mexico City, but a lasting relationship seems to elude her, and marriage even more so. The text is lively, subtle and amusing and Jain cleverly brings out nuances of being an NRI. As they say, you can take them out of India but you can never take India out of them.
What started out a few years ago as Jain’s four-page article in the New York Magazine expanded into this 300-plus page book, commissioned also to explore “lives, voices, trends and possibilities of the New India”. From small-town sensibilites of her parents to her own; the product of a more cosmopolitan culture, there is something about Jain’s writing that is very relatable, especially to a woman. But as far as Indian readers go, they may feel a sense of disconnect with Jain’s descriptions of modern India, coming as they do from an NRI perspective.
Once Jain arrives in Delhi, the narrative on her finding a “New India” may seem interesting and insightful to the book’s non-Indian audience. However, for an Indian audience, observations like nosy landlords and meeting strange suitors on matrimonial sites are dull. So halfway through the book, you lose steam and feel an annoyance at explanations such as “In India, the car becomes a crucial site for physical intimacy since few young people live on their own and society forbids public displays of affection apart from hand-holding — still frowned upon in smaller towns.” Or “Every weekend, they (malls) are packed to the rafters with canoodling couples and families with tots on tow, ordering lattes and catching the lastest Bollywood flick at the plush PVR cinema.”
For someone who has grown up in India, these findings add no value to the narrative, instead breaking the flow of the storyline far too often.
What starts out as a lively personal account filled with amusing anecdotes (like one of her father’s stories, very reminiscent of large families all of our parents had; many siblings and shared resources) becomes tedious towards the end for the slightly forced socio-economical statistics of India delivered from an outsider’s point of view.
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While one will not be quick to judge the rights and wrongs of such observations — because they are, after all, wholly personal, the fact that the book is strapped on captions such as “One woman’s cross-continental journey in search of a husband” and “A quest for love in the New India”— threatens to make it a saga of a rather “needy” woman on a dreadful mission.
MARRYING ANITA
Author: Anita Jain
Publisher:Bloomsbury
Price: Rs £12.99
Pages: 307