The story I have chosen for my assignment is `Everything's Arranged' by Siew Yue Killingley. It is about arranged marriages practised by the Indian communities.The story is centered around Rukumani, a young maiden from the Ceylonese Tamil community whose family has settled in Malaya. Probably her father or grandfather was brought to this land by the British those days. Though Rukumani, is sent to study in the university (`MU' as stated in the story ), the thinking of her parents is just like how it was back in their motherland, Sri Lanka. The Ceylonese, however educated, still hold to their tradition, beliefs and family values so adamantly. Education failed to change their thinking. Social life is a taboo for their young sons what more for a daughter.
Rukumani, the protagonist is studying at the university and has fallen in love with a guy named Devanayagam, also from the same community as she is. So what is the problem one may think. Oh No! Rukumany has created a big problem. She has ruined her family's dignity and respect to an extend that her parents could not face the other members of their community ; Yes, falling in love is a great sin, according to her parents.
So goes this story and tells us how the poor Rukumani suffers to hide her love from her parents, how she suffers to get away from the arranged marriage her parents are planning for her, how she suffers without seeing her lover Devanayagam and worst of all what happens when she finally tells her parents about her love.
The External Conflicts
In this story, Rukumani, the protagonist faces a number of external conflicts; the conflict between her and her traditional Ceylonese Tamil family, the conflict between her and her mother, the conflict she has with her younger brother who messes up things for her, to name a few.
Conflict 1
Rukumani's parents are very old-fashioned in their ideas about marriage. The only one type of marriage which is accepted by them is the arranged marriage. Parents of the groom and the bride meet, talk about their background, status and materialistic things such as dowry and so on and then fix the marriage between their children.
Miranda thinks she is in love with Dev but in reality she is not because she doesn 't know him as a person at all. She soon realize this after the child tell her the meaning of Sexy. It because of her innocent and lack of knowledge of good relationship with people. She finally lets go of the romance when she knew that it would not change at all because he is a marry man. The main character seem to not be in love with Mala even though they have meet several of times before, It just like how Miranda does not know Dev in any way and is in love with him. They are arranged to be married to each other and force to live with each other. He even mention how he was not touch by her words when a letter was sent to him. The main character did not even kissed or hugged his wife. He just knew that she was the perfect wife do to the explanation given to him by his older brother.” The only thing I ws not used to was Mala.” (Lahiri 's 190). I think he was afraid to get to know someone he didn 't know about. It may be because he grew up in a different way than his wife. It was something he could not get used to. Shoba fell out of love with his wife even though he tried to get back with her. He did not know that he was not in love with her anymore. He assume that they would be together after the second day of the game they played. It was like he was getting things
Love and affection is an indispensable part of human life. In different culture love may appear differently. In the poem “My god my lotus” lovers responded to each other differently than in the poem “Fishhawk”. Likewise, the presentation of female sexuality, gender disparity and presentation of love were shown inversely in these two poems. Some may argue that love in the past was not as same as love in present. However, we can still find some lovers who are staying with their partners just to maintain the relationship. We may also find some lovers having relationship only because of self-interest. However, a love relationship should always be out of self-interest and must be based on mutual interest. A love usually obtains its perfectness when it develops from both partners equally and with same affection.
Rukmani and Kenny’s conversations show how Easterners value respect and reverence, while Westerners put and emphasis on equality. After Kenny helps her conceive, Rukmani bends down to kiss Kenny’s feet, thinking she is showing respect. Kenny doesn’t like it: “He withdrew [his feet] quickly and told me to get up. ‘I am not your benefactor’” (Markandaya 32). Similarly, Rukmani is hesitant to ask about Kenny’s family because it is personal: “Of himself he did not speak… I held my tongue, for I felt to ask would be to offend him” (Markandaya 33). Both of these events show how the two cultures misunderstand each other. Kenny doesn’t like when Rukmani kisses his shoes because he doesn’t feel above her, but she is just trying to be nice. And Rukmani doesn’t understand what will and won’t offend Kenny because her culture doesn’t encourage asking personal questions.
The main character is Mrs. Das whom is flirtatious, careless, and needy. She and her husband take their family to see the country India for the first time. The tour guide Mr.Kapsi whom is curious, understanding, and quite aware. He sees something unusual at the beginning of the trip, but does not say anything. As the children continue their site seeing, the husband takes picture with his camera as if he lost in his own world. Meanwhile the wife gets to know the driver instead of site seeing. Mr.Kapsi is aware that the family is not like most Indians which lead him to be attracted to Mrs.Das. It states, “The family looked Indian but dressed as foreigners did, the children in stiff, brightly colored clothing and caps with translucent visors (29). This quote shows the difference in cultural clash as well the difficulty of communication. Mr.Kapsi tells Mrs. Das that he is an interpreter for a doctor which makes her believe she can discuss her personal business without him telling anyone. It states, “He decided to begin with the most obvious question, to get to the heart of the matter, and so he asked, “Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?”(39) Made the wife realized what she was truly feeling about her mistakes. After the conversation Mr.Kapsi did not look at the Mrs.Das the same way. The unusual
First, her relationship that Rukamni established with Kenny becomes apparent when she goes to him with the problem of infertility. She gives birth to her first child, a daughter named Ira, but when a year and a half comes and she has not become pregnant with a child and more importantly a boy, she becomes fearful that her husband might leave her. That’s when she goes to Kenny, a doctor from Britain doing missionary work in India, with her problem. He helps her and quickly she becomes pregnant and later gives birth to her first son Thambi. Second, Kenny helps Rukmani's family through Ira hard situation. The first issue was when Ira was first married and she was also having trouble getting pregnant. But unlike her mother's situation her husband returned her to her family. When Ira is returned to Rukmani she frantically brings Ira to Kenny for a treatment. When Ira becomes fertile it is to late however, her husband had already moved on and married another woman. This drives Ira into a serious depression that only the birth of Rukmani's last child Kuti brings her out of. But when the famine comes to her family Kuti suffers the most. With the starvation and diseases Kuti suffers, no medicine Kenny can give the baby will allow him to survive. Kenny being a European doctor represents the complex relationship India has with countries l...
The factors of arranged marriages are chiefly superficial. The most important factor to consider is the reputation of the family. The marriage needs to be respectable without any scandals attached. The goal seems to be to marry into a more prestigious family than one’s own. People who marry down in class, especially women, often disappoint their parents. Some parents will even disown their children if they do not agree with the child’s choice of a partner. In Mr. Smolinsky’s case, he ridicules his daughters into arranged marriages and even criticizes them after they are married. Even though his daughters’ home situations are terrible because of him, he does not take the blame for his matchmaking but rather turns it around on his children. He brought it upon himself to marry off his children by going to a matchmaker in town. He thought a diamond dealer named Moe Mirsky would be a good choice for a son-in-law. His original intent was for him to marry Fania but his daughter, Mashah who was forever heartbroken, agreed to marry him instead. After she married an...
Chinese Cinderella is a compelling autobiography by Adeline Yen Mah, a struggling child, yearning for acceptance and love in her dysfunctional family. In this novel of “a ‘secret story of an unwanted daughter”, Adeline presents her stepmother Niang, as a violent, impatient, biased, domineering and manipulative demon. Analysing the language used by the author, we can discover how effectively she does this.
Both of these marriages may be unhappy but the cultural difference among them, which results into shattering the idea of Mr. kapashi’s friendship with Mrs. Das. Mr kapashi felt the cultural difference between him and Mrs. das was way to vast and hence he did not even wanted to think about having any further personal conversations. This teaches us how two entirely different people can carry one mutual heritage but being brought up into different cultures can be very different and UN mutual. Looking back in the story we realize and feel how important it is to keep our cultural believes when it comes to interact with different people as we are not only representing
In the essay “Everything Now” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, author Steve McKevitt blames our unhappiness on having everything we need and want, given to us now. While his writing is compelling, he changes his main point as his conclusion doesn’t match his introduction. He uses “want versus need” (145) as a main point, but doesn’t agree what needs or wants are, and uses a psychological theory that is criticized for being simplistic and incomplete. McKevitt’s use of humor later in the essay doesn’t fit with the subject of the article and comes across almost satirical. Ultimately, this essay is ineffective because the author’s main point is inconsistent and poorly conveyed.
The first difference between American culture and Indian culture is marriage. A wedding is a great social event in our society, which establish a new bond between two individuals and families. Marriage is a joyful occasion with plenty of music, dance, partying and merrymaking. It also brings together a long-lost friends, relatives and acquaintances. In India, the parents choose the mate for their child, which is called an arranged marriage. In most cases, the bri...
An adamant believer in the effects and validity of fear, Rukmani views this emotion as nonexistential and consuming of one’s mind. Various elements, such as the syntax and her overall characterization, portray Rukmani as selfless and possessing genuine concern for others. Her resulting internal strife confirms this when she deliberates, “the thought, imprisoned in the brain but inc...
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy tells the story of the communist state of Kerala and the forbidden love between two castes, which changes the lives of everyone. In the novel an ‘Untouchable’, Velutha is a carpenter and works at Paradise Pickles and Preserves for much less than he deserves because of his status as an Untouchable in the caste system. Velutha falls into a forbidden love with a divorced woman, Ammu who is associated with an upper caste Syrian Christian Ipe family. Marriage was the only way that Ammu could have escaped this life, but she lost the chance when marrying the wrong man, as he was an alcoholic and this resulted in them getting a divorce. Ammu breaks the laws that state ‘who should be loved, and how and how much’, as their affair threatens the ‘caste system’ in India, which is a hierarchal structure and social practice in India in which your position in society is determined and can’t be changed. Arhundati Roy portrays the theme of forbidden love within the caste systems and shows how they are t...
...e.” (K. Markandaya, 98). Rukmani unwillingly adapted to Ira’s decision to be a prostitute and her disobedience in the end. Rukmani adapted to many of the hard changes life put before her.
Urvashi Butalia in her book, The Other Side of Silence, attempts to analyze the partition in Indian society, through an oral history of Indian experiences. The collection of traumatic events from those people who lived through the partition gives insight on how history has enveloped these silences decades later. Furthermore, the movie 1947 Earth reveals the bitterness of partition and its effect of violence on certain characters. The most intriguing character which elucidates the silence of the partition is the child, Lenny. Lenny in particular the narrator of the story, serves as a medium to the intangibility created by the partition. The intangibility being love and violence, how can people who grew up together to love each other hate one another amidst religion? This question is best depicted through the innocence of a child, Lenny. Through her interactions with her friends, the doll, and the Lahore Park, we see silence elucidated as comfort of not knowing, or the pain from the separation of comfort and silence from an unspoken truth.
Each marriage comes with a different perspective and story, whether it is an arranged marriage or love marriage. Arranged and Love marriages are very similar yet different. Love is the pure feeling of attachment. Arrange marriage is like a blind date in hopes to find love. It could be love at first sight or love after a while so in somewhat way they end up being a love marriage after all because the end result is the same as they get married or find love. In this essay there will be comparison done on love marriage and arrange marriage. Each country has a different perspective on each type of marriage. I will be comparing both marriages in America and India. Love Marriages come with a responsibility of their