Bangladesh Diary: The Mechanics of Arranged Marriages

Dear reader, here's this week's questionnaire.

Delete as appropriate: are you
a) happily married
b) happily divorced
c) happily single
d) unhappily any of the above
e) on the lookout
f) on the rebound
g) unsure
h) none of the above?

Whatever your current position, what we back home all no doubt share, whatever generation we belong to, is the unquestioning conviction that our choice of life partner was/is purely our own to make, regardless of whether it all ends in fairy tale happilyeverafterness or in tears. So how would you feel if your parents had simply informed you one fine morning that you were to marry someone they had chosen for you?

Let's take a typical example of what happens here. A father, let's call him Miah, sets out in search of a wife for his son. He visits Riazul, an old friend, whose daughter has a similar social and educational level. Together they more or less seal the deal, pending agreement from the couple themselves. Miah's son has a good education, grooming and prospects, so let's disregard for now the fact that his teeth are terrible and he is losing his hair. Riazul's daughter will just have to live with that...

The simplest difference between attitudes to marriage in our two cultures is that we expect to fall in love first and then get married (if at all). The idea of someone choosing for us is pretty inconceivable - surely no one else could possibly know what we wanted. We are simply too jealous of our rights. But here, you are married off to someone and then fall in love. My friend R. patiently explains what is of course obvious to her. "Perhaps the difference is really this - that you are choosing someone for yourself, whereas we are choosing someone for our family." An interesting insight, but at the same time some hurdle. How many of our partners would have passed this stringent family test?

Ever since Plato we have grown up with the clear notion that there is one person out there who is ideal for us - a soul-mate who will make us happy in every way. Every film, advert, and a thousand pop songs encourage this chimera, from our earliest teenage years on. You're the one that I want. And this seems the only way to us. But of course friends here only have to point to the divorce rate in the West as easy proof that all is not always well in the shining land of Love Marriages either.

What's more, I respect and admire the marriages I have seen here - in the majority of cases this whole system seems simply to work. It's just a bit difficult to imagine selling this idea back home...

For a start there's the way our happy couple are introduced to each other here, in a living room at home, under the watchful eye of their entire families. Not much of an icebreaker as situations go - although these days the more daring may ask for at least an evening alone, or perhaps with a discreet chaperone. Either way they have to decide more or less on the basis of this one encounter whether to accept each other for ever.

The questions that might spring to our Western minds don't really apply here. For example, how to know after a single awkward evening whether she will sing tunelessly and gratingly every morning for the next forty years? Whether he will drop his socks on the floor or snore in bed? It's a longer-term investment here - the questions revolve more around security, finance and children - can this person care for us and be solid enough to offer companionship for the rest of our days? But still, it must be quite a tough call to look at this stranger across the table and realise that this is it. A hubby's not for Christmas, he's for life...

On top of this lack of choice, there's the extra burden of perfection placed on the woman. Consider the idea (still common in poor rural areas) of a whole delegation of the bridegroom-to-be's family turning up at the potential bride's house, to be entertained with a lavish meal. The hapless girl is then invited into the room to stand in front of this examining committee. The length of her hair, the way she speaks, the pallor of her complexion, and even the way she walks -all these are fair game for these exacting judges. Somehow I can't imagine my own dear wife, or any other woman I know for that matter, submitting to this sort of inspection, like a prize pumpkin at a country fair...

However, young people's own voices are being heard more these days in Bangladesh - a son or daughter who is very unhappy at the prospect before them can at least make their feelings known. Things are moving quickly in the middle classes and in the cities, and people are even beginning to set more store by Bollywood notions of romance, with love marriages on the increase. And the whole commercialism of February 14th is now taking off in a big way, with Hallmark swinging into action with cutesy cards and balloons every year.

It certainly wasn't always this way: all my female colleagues - mostly the same age as me - tell me they simply had to defer to their fathers' greater judgement. And then, over the years, began the process of sinking slowly into a love comfy as bedroom slippers, and as familiar, solid and undemanding as the furniture in your living room.

But all things change. A look back at the curtain-twitching Britain of the 50s is enough to suggest that attitudes to divorce, single parenthood, sexuality and sex have all changed hugely in these few decades. Will the same revolution happen here after centuries of custom? Will these venerable traditions also disappear, in years to come, under a deluge of Valentine's hearts and love songs? And should this be celebrated or lamented?