Just another clichéd arranged marriage

It’s not that the storyline lacks plausibility. Some of us are all too familiar with the NRI engineer, MD or MBA grad who goes to India for 3 weeks and comes back married to a virtual stranger, the so-called ‘marriage junkets’ generally taken over the Christmas-New Year break. Never mind the desi women they may have befriended in the US, or been introduced to by family friends, it’s only in India that they can marry the Good Indian Wife. It’s also not a stretch to recognize the NRI who steps off the plane for the first time and vows to become as American as possible, as quickly as possible. While they can’t turn their brown skin white, they can change their name and avoid all things Indian—no Indian friends or food and definitely not an Indian wife.

Steeped in so much ‘reality’, why then does Anne Cherian’s The Good Indian Wife feel so contrived, even over the top, at some points? Like so much Indian women’s fiction, The Good Indian Wife crams every possible stereotype and/or cliché—Indian, Indian-American, and American—into one story.

Neel, or Suneel, proud owner of an American passport, wants a wife who will “fill in the gaps” of someone not born or raised in America. Luckily, Caroline, his blond, blue-eyed, white-skinned lover fits the bill, even if she is just a secretary and not a doctor like himself. Concern over an ill grandfather takes Neel back to India and, before he knows it, he finds himself engaged to Leila, a too-tall, 30YO school-teacher who speaks fluent English and knows her Shakespeare backwards and forward. Leila wants to be married, but she has her standards. A doctor from America? Well, that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Forced to marry Leila or be responsible for the inevitable shame his family would endure, the couple returns to San Francisco. Leila is the dutiful and mainly silent Indian wife; Neel is the sullen husband who resumes his affair with Caroline, waiting for the right time to file for divorce. While Neel is at work or at the ‘grocery store’ Leila wonders why Neel doesn’t want anything to do with her, explores her neighborhood, learns how to use a mailbox (all by herself) and writes home about the 50 channels on television. She wears the American clothes Neel wants her to wear but shows some spine by objecting when he calls her by an Americanized version of her name. Predictably, after 30 or so chapters, Neel sees the error of his ways and Leila reaps the rewards of being a good and patient Indian wife.

To be fair, the book held my interest, enough to keep reading. That’s not because there was anything new or different about the story – it’s obvious where it’s headed and Leila is not unlike other NRI women in South Asian women’s fiction—subservient yet noble, naive yet adept at using that Indian charm to get what they want. I kept on reading, hoping it would move beyond the cliché.

You have the trashy, borderline racist, Caroline who could only be interested in an Indian doctor because of his money, of course. There’s the ABCD student who befriends Leila (yeah, right) in a bookstore (of course) and then, in a light-bulb moment, decides to do her thesis on Indian arranged marriages based on Leila’s example. There’s the token independent Indian woman who looks upon Leila with pity but doesn’t really do much to help her in the name of the sisterhood. All this and I haven’t even mentioned Neel and Leila’s parents in India. Suffice to say there are the usual references to dowries, ‘what will people say?’ and emotional blackmail. It’s as if a western audience would be disappointed if all these elements were not mentioned in desi chick-lit.

Stereotypes and clichés aside, it was difficult not to cringe at the constant harping on skin color as in, white = desirable and ‘better’. Mention fair skin once, and we get the point; refer to it over and over again and it makes me wonder, who’s more fixated on skin color, Neel, Leila, or the author?

At times, The Good Indian Wife reads like a travelogue with its detailed, if cliché, descriptions of San Francisco—Union Square, check. Golden Gate Bridge, check, Alcatraz—well, you get the picture. It was much more difficult trying to figure out where Suneel and Leila were from in India. They were South Indian Hindus, Iyengars, but between the cow dung, and Shakespeare, were they from a remote village or a city? Leila certainly seems to be more urban, middle-class Indian than village belle. The way Neel obsesses over flies and filth made me think he grew up in a mud hut instead of brick house. The author seems to add elements that suit either setting. Leila speaks flawless English in this village (because that’s going to come in handy when the character lands up in the US) but there’s no TV or technology (because that’s useful to show how wowed she is by the appliances and gadgets in her husband’s San Francisco condo).

I keep hoping that after ten years or so of NRI fiction about arranged marriages, there will be something new, something different. Or, that Indian women’s fiction will actually move beyond arranged marriages. Something tells me ten years from now, I’ll still be hoping.

This review was first published on the now-defunct Sawnet (South Asian Women’s NETwork) website.