A Wedding Arranged

Hi everyone, this is Sakina, the Indian student  this post is a taste of India… …It’s my personal experience, read on…

As one of our classmates plunged into wedlock this week, I think of my wedding to Salim last december. A marriage arranged in heaven, I still can't figure out why and how it happened, I am still finding the answers.

I was 25, and my parents were worried, I had a circle of friends (some of them boys) but nobody I wanted to say ‘I – do, do, do, to’. I am a Muslim by faith, and girls get married in my community at the age of 21- LATEST!
The pressure of my mother and her life raising four girls weighed heavily on me-
“You have two unmarried sisters after you Sakina, think about them, and get married.” There were many nice boyzzz to choose from in the community, my mom would tell me now and again, comparing me to my older sister Aiman, who has three kids at 30!

It was on the 2nd of May that Salim, his dad… his uncle and …his brother came to my house to see me. I was still trying to look presentable, with my short hair, clad in a traditional Indian outfit, I quite frankly looked silly. My mom managed to keep the guests busy with small conversation, sherbet and sweets.
It was not the first time; I was to handle such a situation. I was a pro at it, an expert. Having seen close to fifteen and up suitors, I was in a way tired of getting myself set up for a marriage. It just had not worked for me.

Salim had his own story which I got to know much later, a construction engineer working in DC, he had big brown eyes, I thought of them as X- ray quality eyes, which could look through a person and hid behind glasses. I walked into the room and I could feel them scanning me.

I sat down on a chair next to my mother, and the room dropped to pin drop silence.

I took my own time to look at him, his hands, his smile, his cleft on the chin, his feet (hahaha!)…that was all that was permissible. LOOK!

He was looking at me too, until our eyes met.

“Will you come to America with me?” He said breaking the silence.
He did not wait for a reply, Salim was nervous.

“May I take your daughter out tomorrow, aunty?” He asked my mother.
My mother looked at me, I looked at her, and I agreed.

Salim and I both are cosmopolitan youngsters from Mumbai, educated abroad and traveled extensively; both of us were put into this situation, that one would imagine happens only in rural India. Arranged marriages do exist and are a custom that will never die as traditions go through a revamp in now globalised, Mc Donalised India.

It was a Tuesday when we first met. The chronology of events that followed are still crystal clear to me;
On Wednesday I met Salim’s mother,
On Thursday he met my father,
On Friday he proposed to me,
On Sunday we were engaged
….and on Monday, Salim had to fly back to DC.
We got married after six months, in December.

Today after eight months of being married, it is very common for both of us to say to one another,
“I can’t believe, you’re the same guy/ girl I married.”

We argue everyday, we want to kill one another already, and then we remind ourselves…we are in love.
We have nothing in common! He’s not the sporty kind, I ‘m not the dancing kind. I like him with a beard; he likes me with long hair. He likes coffee, I love tea.

It seems we were mismatched from the start and when people ask me how I met Salim, I just tell them, “It was a miracle!”