The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage Read online

  A HAYAT HOUSE book

  First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Hayat House.

  Copyright © Hayat House 2020

  The moral right of Halima Khatun to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

  Cover design by Felix Diaz de Escauriaza

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-9163183-0-4

  A CIP Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Just for you... Because there’s two sides to every story

  7th March, I’m getting married

  28th March, The pity

  1st April, Biodata

  5th April, Pictures in the park

  15th April, Thinly veiled marriage events

  10th June, The tease

  16th June, A rishtaa

  21st June, Tall-boy, small talk

  13th July, Stone-cold silence

  17th July, Claustrophobia

  29th July, Going online

  26th August, No shorties or beard-ies

  7th September, Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

  25th September, A date

  3rd October, A common ground

  29th October, An opportunist

  30th November, A tale of two rishtaas

  6th December, I hate weddings

  25th December, Familiar faces and new ones too

  29th December, Who said chivalry is dead?

  18th January, Not going back home

  23rd January, A new level of compromise

  1st March, Too good to be true?

  13th March, A revelation

  18th March, A curve-ball

  23rd March, Being bold

  7th April, Glass half full

  You’ve heard from Helena, now get the other side of the story....

  Enjoy this book? Want to read more? The power is in your hands...

  About the Author

  To my mother, a trailblazer in her own right and my husband, who never stopped believing in me, even when I doubted myself.

  Just for you... Because there’s two sides to every story

  This story is all about our heroine. It’s her journey, her struggles, her learnings. But of course, for every story, there’s another side. When you get to the end, you’ll get the opportunity to hear from the boys – the heroes, anti-heroes, false heroes... whatever you’d like to call them. But for now, enjoy getting to know our heroine. You’ll like her, she’s quite funny.

  7th March, I’m getting married

  I’m getting married and you’re invited. I can’t share too much yet, mainly because I don’t know where, when or who I’ll be marrying. But that’s just a minor detail. The main thing is, by hook or by crook... it’s happening.

  One may wonder... without a venue, save the date, or indeed a man, how can I be so sure? Well, I’m 25, I’ve finished my degree (and masters, I’ll have you know) and I’m having a good pop at this working lark, with a promotion on the horizon at my PR company. With education done and work bubbling along nicely, it’s time to think about something bigger. In fact, the biggest step of my life - finding a man and getting married.

  Most girls think about settling down at some point (unless you’re a modernist, feminist sort). But for me, marriage comes with a slightly greater sense of urgency than most. I’m Asian, you see. Bengali, if you need specifics. Being Bengali, finding a suitable suitor needs to come sooner rather than later, by whatever means possible.

  Welcome to the world of the arranged marriage.

  This is where we are matched up to an appropriate candidate based on education, occupation, family background and village ‘back home’. Despite sounding terribly old-fashioned, arranged marriages have come a long way since generations gone by. Nowadays, we’re allowed to get to know and like our prospective husbands. We even have a say in the small matter of the man we choose. How thoroughly progressive.

  As I embark on this journey, I thought it best to write my thoughts for posterity. I’d like to turn this diary into a blog one day (anonymous, of course). Or if I don’t find ‘the one’, I might burn it in an angry rage. Either way, I want to remember this time. The good, the bad and the ugly (and I don’t mean just the boys). Plus, writing is not only the foundation of my career, it is my therapy, my solace and route to rational thinking. I’m hoping I’ll come out the other side (hopefully) married, wiser and able to help the rest of womankind navigate the choppy waters of single-but-looking life.

  Another reason for writing (and maybe sharing) this is to tell my side of the story. The story nobody hears. The story I’ve been complicit in burying through years of denial. I know many people have a bad opinion of arranged marriages. Living in a white area, I grew up listening to negative opinions on the subject from people who don’t really know anything about it. To survive and fit in, I inadvertently fed the narrative by whitewashing what is a fundamental cornerstone of my culture. I simply don’t talk about it to my friends, because apart from one very worldly girlfriend whom I adore, most would be shocked that I’d even entertain the idea of being set up by my family.

  Work colleagues are equally oblivious to my impending manhunt. If they knew, I imagine they’d worry that I’m being forced into a backward, sexist tradition that has no place on British soil.

  I don’t blame people for thinking the worst. Every single book, TV show or movie that depicts arranged marriages paints a sad picture. At best, it’s seen as a last resort for desperate singletons. At worst, it’s a breach of basic human rights. And it always, always goes against the wishes of the girl.

  So with the safety of anonymity, I’d like to do something I’ve never done before. I’d like to talk about it, starting with some myth-busting.

  First, you’re not forced into marrying any old Joe (or more likely, Junaid) chosen by your parents. That’s called a forced marriage, hence force is applied. Nor are you made to marry someone you meet for the first time. The 21st Century arranged marriage affords you several meetings, some official (i.e. mum and dad know about it), many unofficial (though your mum probably knows about it) and a frequent exchange of text messages to boot.

  There’s none of this get-married-to-the-first-boy-that-comes-along nonsense either. Most girls I know have met several prospective suitors before getting married. My sisters met quite a few, while my cousin Rashda – who’s a brown Angelina Jolie lookalike - went into double figures. Such was her revolving door of men (in a non-slaggy way) that she started getting their names and occupations mixed up (again, in a non-slaggy way).

  Yes, the mechanics of an arranged marriage are a bit formal but it’s not quite as bad as non-Asians are led to believe. And here’s the real revelation - the bit you never get to hear about... many of us Bengali girls are open to being set up in this way. Shocking, I know.

  Now I’ve established what it isn’t, here’s what an arranged marriage actually is...

  An arranged marriage is basically the precursor to Tinder and Match.com. While Match.com thinks it’s a market leader with its complex algorithm helping determine who is the right partner for you, us Asians have been doing this since time began. We’ve long had someone else decide who is right for us. We didn’t even need a computer.

  It starts with our parents, who put the word out that they are ‘looking for someone’ for their son or daughter. They ask their extended family, though said family rarely like to recommend someone, as they too are looking to get their daughter married and don’t want to be pipped to the matrimonial post. Or, these competitive aunties may offer their cast-offs - boys that are too fat, too short, too ugly or too uneducated for their darling child.

  After exhausting that option, parents then cast their net wider. Luckily there are many busybodies in the community, who are more than happy to fix us up with some random whom they know nothing about but have heard they’re from a ‘good family’.

  Nowadays, there are even professional busybodies. They play matchmaker as a side gig, charging willing (read: desperate) families a small fee for their efforts. These busybodies are usually middle-aged, bespectacled men who have an admin job in an all-Bengali office. Yet they somehow find the time to cultivate an excel spreadsheet with the names of people who are on the shelf, waiting to be plucked from single obscurity. They usually advertise their services in the local Bengali newspaper. They have a website that is always under construction and an email address that never works. Snail mail and telephone are their preferred modes of contact. I shouldn’t really take the piss out of them though. The professional busybody enables us girls to meet more prospective boys than our mums ever did, in a short space of time, too.

  Simultaneously, us youngsters do our own hunting. We go to thinly veiled marriage events, which are usually marketed under the guise of charity fun
draisers. So much has been raised for Gaza by us singletons alone, we’re likely to be the largest donors.

  The more brazen of us go the whole hog, attending racially discriminate padlock and key events. My uni friend Reena, who is Hindu Gujarati (read: way more modern than us Muslim Bengalis) has attended a few of these events. She’s not impressed, as she’s found herself forced into conversation with other singletons that she doesn’t remotely fancy as they may hold the key to her padlock. Apparently it’s kind of like a business-networking event but with more pretentious twats.

  The last resort, of course, is the Internet. Shoes, car insurance, courgette recipes and now husbands. Is there anything you can’t find online?

  There is one small issue, however. I’m caught in the middle. I’ve never fully fit in with my friends, colleagues or even my family. Big sis says I’m too westernised, as I don’t like fish curry (it’s the smell that gets me, and I don’t like fiddly bones). My friends have likely cottoned on that I’m absent from every booze-fuelled night out but turn up with a spring in my step for lunch dates. While my work colleagues have noted that I duck out of socials at 11pm, just as Peter gets drunk and ‘handsy’. How nobody has raised this with HR yet is beyond me (Peter’s misconduct that is, not my unsociable ways).

  I know I’m a misfit, but I don’t know if there is anyone like me of the single and male variety. From what I’ve seen, most other Bengalis are either very cultured or not cultured at all. So there’ll likely be some element of compromise. But at this stage, with my somewhat limited life (and boy) experience, I’m not sure what’s got to give.

  So there’s the challenge...

  I don’t want to be single forever. I want to stop sharing a bedroom with my teenage sister. I want the big Bengali wedding with the sparkly lehenga. I want to have kids at some point.

  But in terms of who I wear the lehenga for and who I have kids with, is a harder one to call. Beyond knowing that I want to get married, I don’t really know what – or who - I’m looking for.

  28th March, The pity

  Living in a small town outside Manchester and working in a PR company on the outskirts of the city, I have always found myself to be the only brownie in the village (and office). Therefore, I am inadvertently the spokesperson for arranged marriages and I am quizzed on the subject in the most random, unexpected and brazen of ways.

  Just last week I was having a conversation at work with Peter, who is every inch the serious PR Director when he’s not had two glasses of Prosecco, about the upcoming Christmas lunch. We were lamenting the lack of food options when Fiona, who’d just returned from the kitchen with her third cup of black coffee that morning, piped up and asked: “So will you have to have an arranged marriage?”

  You couldn’t make it up. I mean, where the hell did that come from? It’s not like we were talking about cultural norms in Bangladeshi society. How did we go from garlic mushrooms to arranged marriages? There wasn’t even a smooth transition. In fact, there wasn’t even a transition. Even the smallest of segues would have helped.

  Clearly, Fiona had it on her mind and felt she just had to ask. It was like a knee-jerk reaction. A spontaneous burst of invasive nosey-ness. She couldn’t wait until a relevant subject came up. Nor could she afford me the good will of waiting until we were alone. She had to shout it across our open-plan office. The makeshift walls separating each desk offered no privacy, or in this case, dignity. Everyone heard.

  I felt my face heat up. If I weren’t so brown I’d be bright red at this point. My corner of the room fell deathly quiet. A few people looked up from their desks. Peter, whose ruddy cheeks were now brighter than his salmon pink shirt, seemed to do all the blushing for me. He stared at me with what looked like a combination of pity and genuine intrigue. Obviously this was far more interesting to him than my food choice for the Christmas party but he still felt sorry that I was singled out. Others looked like they were just relieved she asked, as it’s something that had been bugging them ever since the brown girl joined the team. Which was two years ago, by the way.

  I nervously took a sip of my tea, forgetting that it’s piping hot. I nearly burned my tongue. I was embarrassed and mortified. A ‘difference’ had been identified so publicly and not the first time. All my life I’ve been reminded of my brown-ness with such blatant disregard to my feelings. Fiona’s imposition sent me back in time, to my teenage self – awkward, reserved and trying to fit in...

  In school, I remember Carly, the only mixed-race girl in our Year, wanting to know the names of each of my sisters. An innocent enough query, you may think. Except, like Fiona’s unfiltered line of questioning, this came left of field and was shouted from the other end of the classroom. When I responded, she repeated each name, painfully slowly, struggling to pronounce each syllable. And honestly, their names aren’t that difficult to say. I’d tell you what they are but that would blow my cover. More to the point, Carly couldn’t give a toss about my sisters' names. She had an ulterior motive.

  To fit in herself, conniving Carly was adopting a rudimentary tactic - pick on the other ethnic minority. You know, the one who’s even browner. The one whose navy school jumper is a size too big. The one who’s never allowed to get drunk in the park, go out with the boys, or any of the other stuff that she could do. It wasn’t quite bullying, it was more of a sport.

  The worst thing of all of this was the pity that came with it. The looks from other kids. The looks that said sorry you’re being picked on, sorry you’re different. I could almost, almost cope with being singled out, if nobody else would notice, or even care. But they noticed and they felt bad for me.

  It was only Julia who defused the tension by saying: “I love your sisters' names. They beat ours – Julia and Jem-my-ma. They go with the matching outfits mum made us wear since the day we were tiny. Which wouldn’t be so bad if we weren’t FOUR YEARS apart!”

  Julia always had my back and I laughed a little too heartily as a thank you. I think it was at that point that I learnt my best form of defence was humour.

  These incidents peppered my school life. I was asked whether my parents could speak English (for the record, they can, in a very broken way). Another popular one was whether I had curry every day (and I did, except on oven-chips-Tuesday and the occasional fish-finger-Friday). It was only when I moved away for University and made some Asian friends, that suddenly my differences weren’t so different. Yes, my friends had less strict and younger parents but the fundamentals were the same. At the very least, we all had funny foreign names.

  Alas, university was a bubble. I graduated, came back home and now I work for a company in the sticks. Life has come full circle. Here I am once again – awkward, trying to fit in, and fielding stupid-ass questions from people who really have no business asking. Even the looks of pity, in adults instead of pre-teens, are the same.

  I should be used to it by now but I’m not. Each time I’m ambushed feels like the first time. That stomach knot. That face flush. It doesn’t get any easier. For my sins, I responded how I always would – with denial. My parents can speak the Queen’s English. I don’t eat curry every day. And I most certainly won’t have an arranged marriage.

  Fiona was visibly relieved by my response, which she then followed up with an anecdote of her own. “There was an Indian girl that I used to work with at my old company and she had a boyfriend but she couldn’t tell her family. She said they’d hit the roof if they found out, as they wanted her to have an arranged marriage. I remember feeling really sorry for her.”

  This then prompted other eavesdropping colleagues to chime in with their two pence worth of “oh, that’s awful” and “how unfair.”

  And it is awful. But like everything else I’ve seen on TV and read about in books and newspapers, this only shows one side of a whole unknown world.

  ‘Love marriages’ have been quite the norm for years and I’m planning on doing my own hunting. But arranged marriages do still very much exist. And I’m going into the process with open eyes and an open mind. However, I wasn’t about to let nosey cow Fiona know that, nor anybody else, for fear of highlighting what most people see as a problem with Asian society. Though I’m about to poke holes in this viewpoint. Arranged marriages are NOT A PROBLEM.