Devinder's blog: A Question For My Father

After I finished university, my parents immediately began searching for a suitable match for me. It didn’t take long. One day, while shopping on our local high street, I saw my cousin and waved to him. Coincidentally, he was with a friend. A year later, I was married to that friend.

We followed the arranged marriage process. Our first formal meeting was at my cousin’s house, where we talked privately. I had a list of questions for him, and he gave answers that, in hindsight, were exactly what I wanted to hear. Our second formal meeting was at my family home, where both families met. I was engaged at 20 and married at 21.

Marriage gave me something I yearned for – freedom. At least, I thought it was freedom. I didn’t really understand what “love” meant at that time; I believed you loved your husband and lived happily ever after.

During our marriage, eating out as a vegetarian was challenging – restaurants didn’t cater to different dietary requirements as much as they do now. On our honeymoon, we went to a restaurant where there wasn’t a single vegetarian option. I ordered nothing while my husband ordered chicken satay skewers for himself. As we waited for his dish to arrive, he kept questioning why I was vegetarian and grew increasingly angry when I wouldn’t eat the chicken skewers. Tearful but composed, I recalled our conversation at my cousin’s place – he knew I was vegetarian and had said he was fine with it. Yet here he was, getting aggressive because I wouldn’t eat meat. Why couldn’t he understand and respect my decision?

I was raised very conservatively. I walked to school in the morning and came straight back home afterward; I wasn’t allowed friends or even become friends with family members. We were an “alcohol and meat-free household”.  Most of our relatives were the opposite, so we were seen as different or the “odd ones out.” At parties and weddings, we were treated as though we were boring.

Then my parents made the worst decision ever – they married me into a family with values completely misaligned with those they had instilled in me from birth. Their only aim was to get me married, and they succeeded without considering how their daughter would live with a man and a family whose beliefs and moral compass were the exact opposite of how they raised me.

I was never allowed to have a social life; his friends were at our home every day. I never drank alcohol; drinking was part of my husband’s everyday life. I never ate meat; they cooked meat daily and eventually expected me to cook it for them.

Other issues also surfaced during our marriage, such as our beliefs about work, money, and drugs. I was taught to save money and invest; he spent more than he earned. I went to work every day; he went to work if he felt like it. His family laughed at me and called me “a lamb to the slaughter.”

I was an innocent child who had always listened to her parents and was handed over to this other family without a thought.

Why, Dad? Why did you marry me into a family with such opposing cultural and moral views? Wasn’t it obvious that it would end in disaster?

Devinder works in the financial services sector, is mum to a beautiful boy and is on a constant quest to understand the world and everything in it.

Tags:
• Inclusion