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Forty Years of Marriage
My Parents Love Story Endured
My parents had an arranged marriage. That was normal for their generation in India.
My mother was 26 years old. That was considered old for an unmarried woman. But she had never wanted to get married at all.
She told me she was happy living with her parents. She painted exquisite art on silk or palm leaves, helped her mother, gardened and went on walks. When she was 24, her parents took her and her younger sister hiking in the Himalayas. She loved that trip.
Her father would have been happy to keep her with them forever but relatives and friends pressured him. What would happen to my mother after he died, they asked. Grandfather caved. He knew that, in those days, a woman alone in India was vulnerable.
So he found a dozen eligible boys, presented my mother with their information, and told her to pick the one she wanted.
Mom chose my dad.
Four years older, he’d gotten his Master’s degree in America. He was thin and serious but had laughing hazel eyes. He was also fastidious — he always kept two clean handkerchiefs in his neatly pressed pockets.
The first time they met was at the engagement party. The only other time they saw each other before the wedding was on a date to the…
