It's A Myth In America That You Marry For Love, You Learn To Love Him

My father emigrated to Detroit in the late sixties. I was born in the early eighties. He worked for GM as a metallurgical specialist. When I was fourteen my mother talked to me about someday finding a husband for me. I was fourteen, and that didn't sound too bad. I never expected it to be a real thing, I was seventeen, still in high school when my mother announced that a husband had been found for me. And I would make my first trip to India to get married, leaving the next weekend.

I was a valuable commodity, I had a natural born US Passport. I met my husband's mother, but not my husband until the day of my wedding. Indian affairs are large and take several days. He was in costume and so was I, and I could not really figure out what he looked like. He was from Mumbai, proper. A software engineer, but he needed a visa to get to the States for a better job, paying real money. It was a matter of convenience, I would have a professional husband and he would have a nice Indian wife and a Green Card.

I remember our first night together, back in Detroit. We were in a hotel room. I sat on the side of the bed, he sat in the only chair. We did not speak. He was tall, I'm short, but proportioned. After a long while he stood and said he was the husband and he expected a wife. I did not give myself to him, I did not go forward willingly. He had sex, if you call it that, enough anyway to get me pregnant. It was important for me to get pregnant, it verified the marriage.

I still had a year of high school. I went to another school, one that allowed pregnant girls. I graduated with a two months baby, and I was pregnant again a month later. That's when I also found out that he asked for his parents, using my passport and his green card. And they would be living with us. Since my mother in law moved in with us I was able to attend college, while she baby sat. I got a degree in Nutrition. My husband got a job offer for an important company so we moved to Texas.

He commuted and I stayed home. I had young children. I was by then a wife, you have to dance to the dance you are brought to. My parents would not take me back, I had been married off. Live with it. I have two daughters, neither one of them has agreed to be married to someone in India. It is a problem, they insist on finding their own husband, but they are not looking and they are already out of college. Several good husbands have come and gone to other girls.

My husband is beyond angry with the situation. I feel that they need to have a strong hand put to them, he needs to enforce his authority with them. If they don't want to go home to India, then we will bring a husband to them. The Temple is full of young women who are twiddling their thumbs and not getting married. I do not want to be an old grandmother.