Out of Order by Charles Benoit Page B

specifically the inherent instability of love marriages, and yet, without hesitation, the wife proudly declared theirs to have been the worst kind of love marriage possible. His files were chock full of data that foretold the sad and predictable end of their relationship. A sixty-seven point nine two percent failure rate for love marriages in general, even higher when their youth and their self-described “love at first sight” foundation were factored in.
    Question: Did you ask your mother for her assistance in finding a husband?
    Answer: (wife) You’re kidding, right?
    Each semester, Dr. Dharmadeep found himself having to defend the institution of arranged marriage, the students too easily seduced by the west’s deceptive liberalism. They would bring up the same threadbare arguments—free-will, independence, human rights—the brighter among them quoting Shakespeare and that Friedan woman, the others spouting pop-culture clichés, some finding a way to twist Gandhi around to their side. But it made no difference. He had the statistical proof to dismantle each argument, the weight of tradition and common sense on his side. And, despite what they said in class, when the time came for marriage, ninety-five percent of his students would rely on their families to make the arrangements.
    Question: Did you ask your father’s permission to marry?
    Answer: (husband) You mean ask her father?
    Note—question was rephrased and repeated.
    Answer: (laughing) My father would be shocked to hear I was married.
    Marriage is not a union of two individuals, he would lecture his students, but rather a union of two entire families. Who loves you more than your family, who knows you better than the people who raised you? Finding a perfect match for one’s child is the single most important task a parent must face. The process is not entered into lightly, the selection not the result of some chance encounter, some drunken meeting at a discothèque. An arranged marriage is a true marriage of love—the pure love of a parent for an offspring. This is why, he liked to point out, India enjoys a divorce rate of less than two percent, noting that that number included all the Indians living in the west, implying skewed results.
    Question: How long have you been married?
    Answer: (husband did not know and deferred to wife) Eighteen months.
    Question: How does it feel to know that, statistically, your marriage has less than one year before it fails?
    Answer: (husband—surprised) It seems like we just got married yesterday.
    What was this obsession with love in a marriage? He had spent a lifetime studying marriage and was no closer to understanding why, from culture to culture, people assumed that love was the sign of a “successful” marriage. No one spoke of responsibility or obligation, a few mentioned respect but seemed to equate the word with equality. His parents had raised nine children— nine —and he never heard the word used. And hadn’t he himself been married for thirty years now, raising two sons, both engineers, and a daughter, happily married to a barrister, all without once telling his wife he loved her?
    Although it was too late for them, he had taken a half hour to explain the superiority of the arranged marriage system, the husband interrupting with objections, the wife telling him to be quiet, her feminine nature sensing the truth.
    The chai vendor made his way through the car and Dr. Dharmadeep waved him over with a five-rupee note. He sipped the steaming tea as the boy fished in his pockets for change, recalling the intent look in the young woman’s eyes as she absorbed everything he said, nodding as she realized the logic of his arguments. In a way he felt sorry for her, forced by her culture into a marriage that she now saw for what it was—convenience and hormones, an exercise in myth-driven egocentrism.
    Maybe there was hope after all, he thought as he read over the last page of his notes. Not for her, of course but