Romancing The Orient

THE London radio station was broadcasting all the abuse from the British woman, and there was plenty. It was British men she was denouncing, the ones going out with Indian women. Cowards and bastards—this was some of her milder stuff. They did not have the nerve, she implied, to deal with independent white women, they were going for Indian women for all the wrong reasons, she was screaming. Going for the Indian women they are, as more and more British men are now looking East to marry, not much further than India usually. The numbers are not large enough to cause statistical anxieties for single white women. But the overtures of the white male are being splashed across matrimonial and 'connections' pages of Indian newspapers in Britain.

The change is reflected in Introductions, a new magazine published by Cupid (Worldwide) Ltd of Southall. And in Southall that simply means Parag Bhargava, son of Ramesh Bhargava whose Suman Marriage Bureau has arranged the marriages of 6,000 Asians, mostly Indians, over the last 34 years.

From the odd entry or two, the detailed forms of the Suman Marriage Bureau, the pages of Introductions and other Indian newspapers are beginning to show more white of late. White man looks for Indian woman—somehow white women never look for Indian males. The ads follow that eternal male search for guaranteed loyalty. Does Indian stand for loyalty? Some wife-hunting British men are beginning to think it might. It's an idea of Indian womanhood that makes many women angry, but others do go ahead and marry them.

Bhargava junior has found a novel style to match the new demand. Suman Marriage Bureau may sound old-fashioned, Cupid (Worldwide) Ltd is the trendy extension of the Bureau. Especially when he finds an e-mail address for it: Parag cupid. demon. co. uk. The demon describes the service provider, not Cupid (the woman on the radio might disagree). English e-mail, Indian female.

Take the 37-year-old white barrister who makes his living before their lordships wearing that powdered wig that still adorns legal eagles in English courts. Beneath that white wig he is thinking Indian. Hindu girl preferred, independent, ambitious, intelligent, slim, exceptionally attractive plus loyal. 'Plus loyal'—that is, plus the ideal concept that the Indian woman seems to offer.

The Englishman is beginning to fall in love with that image, and marry it. White male teacher, 31, own house/car wants Indian woman who is family oriented. The image can even be almost a picture. An accountant (own house/car) is looking for a girl with very long hair, the longer the better. To the growing number of British men heading towards Indian marriage bureaus and matrimonial columns, these growing Indian desires are more than a fetish. 

"Earlier they used to come to us after fighting with their girlfriend or wife," says Ramesh Bhargava, with a nod towards pictures of English grooms and Indian brides pinned on a huge board that takes up almost an entire wall in his office in Southall. "Now they are beginning to come first shot, not on the rebound."

 They might have come to the right place, because Suman Marriage Bureau and its offspring Cupid (Worldwide) are strong on preventive action. The first article in Introductions is Prevent Divorce Before You Marry. The reader is welcomed by a box inset in the article with useful information: one out of every three marriages now ends in divorce; over 25 per cent of divorces occur within 5-9 years of marriage; Britain has the highest divorce rate in Europe.

A fat little Cupid conjured up by the Bhargavas, dripping red hearts from his bow strings, is aiming to change all that. For the English Christian looking Indiawards for honest lady, the English single looking for the woman of Asian origin happy to be housewife and mother, the Irish single looking for the Asian woman willing to try hard for a relationship, the English divorcee who prefers kind and sincere Asian, the English widower who wants a south Asian wife who must be friendly, peaceful, faithful, understanding, not arrogant, for which he will consider divorced or widowed ladies without children but will accept up to one daughter. Eastwards is the way to go.

However, white does not necessarily mean English. An Austrian man asks for a loving and friendly Indian woman, with the advice, 'Don't let this opportunity go'. A Spanish professor has a double-sized ad for an educated, attractive Indian woman.

It's the kind of desirability that is making some Indian women angry. "This is just a lot of cliched rubbish," says Shumita Das, an active worker among South Asian women in Britain for more than 20 years. "They are humiliating us when they think of us as door mats, I hope those women show them that's not what they are."

 Englishmen as much as Indian men are suckers for virginity, she says. "The Englishman wants to marry an Indian woman, the Indian here wants to marry a girl from India, the men in Indian cities think girls from small towns are more likely to be virginal, the men there think the same about girls from the village—what's wrong with you men?"

 The men have no certainties, only an estimated score of probable loyalty, a tenta-tive belief in others' imagined values. If that is the game, Indian women could still score more than an Englishwoman of today. The search might say more about the insecure western male than the Indian woman supposedly loyal by cultural habit. But for a Suman/Cupid and for ad pushers in newspapers, it is a growing business.

It wouldn't have worked if a lot of Indian women were not thinking of white men. Much more than before, Asian women are beginning to ask to meet white men, says Ramesh Bhargava. Like all good markets, this one is growing on a two-way demand.

Many cross-cultural couples insist on speaking of one another as individuals, not ambassadors of the East and West out on a lifelong meeting. And when all is well, they speak of the cultural advantage. "The best thing about my marriage is that I don't have to deal with in-laws," says a Punjabi health worker who married a Scottish engineer six months ago. Her husband visits the Gulf often, but "the in-laws just leave me alone," she says. White men usually come family baggage-free.

Women are beginning to insist on this even with Indian men. "One woman recently told me she does not want to look at a man who comes to a marriage bureau holding his mother's hand," says Bhargava. "The bottomline is that our women now want a man who is independent and free from the joint family, dowry and all that," he adds.

The Indian groom has to become a little more English. But the kind of woman who knows her mind might just be the one that hunters of compulsive loyalty are not looking for. "That image they have of our women is faulty," says Bhargava. "Our women are not like that at all, they will not simply cook and clean and bring up children and shut up no matter what." 

But the cross-cultural marriage can be a great leap if you land safely. There can be enough culture to cross among Indians, let alone Indians and westerners. You have to accept these leaps your children might make, an article on cross-cultural marriages in the inaugural issue of Introductions advises. When D.L. Gupta's son disclosed his wish to marry a south Indian Brahmin girl, Gupta opposed the marriage. But when his son insisted, he had to agree. A suddenly enlightened Gupta figured that it was better to lose a bit of social esteem than to lose one's son. If an inter-state leap can be such a problem, what would Gupta have done with an international one? 

The magazine lists efforts at cross-cultural success and then suddenly concludes: in reality most marriages with the cross-cultural factor are not happy or successful. A clash of backgrounds can result in a thunderous union and lighting flashes of impatience can paralyse the relationship.

There is no information on the intensity of the thunder and lighting which may have pursued the East-West couples in the photographs adorning Bhar-gava's office. Birmingham is further from Rajkot than Alwar is from Madras, and probably needs many more arrows from Cupid than the number that had done the job for Gupta's son and daughter-in-law. "Many times they do not invite me to their wedding," says Bhargava of the couples he brought together. Not that he minds too much. A marriage is an extra £150 over the £175 each paid when they registered. After the fee of £650 to the Bhargavas, it's their business. They advertised, they met, they married.

So what happened after the smiling Englishman posing in the four by six photo with his arm slung cross-culturally around his sari-wearing bride left for home? Nobody knows. Cupid's arrows aren't aimed that far. Bhargava junior stops with the first lucrative shot. There's no money back if you divorce.