by NAMRATA JOSHI
In Indo-Pak marriages, the State often becomes the tyrant mother-in-law
It was at a residency programme for South Asian artists in the capital, appropriately called Khoj, that Masooma Syed and Sumedh Rajendran found each other, seven years ago. As their relationship blossomed, they ingeniously discovered ways to spend time together, in places as far apart as Manchester, Sri Lanka and New York. Then, bypassing their respective religions, they went through a Buddhist wedding in Sri Lanka, followed by a legal marriage in a Delhi court two years ago. Finally, after all that travelling, the woman from Lahore and the man from Kerala found a place of their own in Mayur Vihar, in East Delhi; a place that Masooma isn’t hesitant about calling home. “Life is the same whether you wake up here or in Lahore,” says the 39-year-old.
The recent hullabaloo over Sania Mirza marrying Shoaib Akhtar made it seem like this was the first Indo-Pak marriage in the history of the two nations. The reality is that there have been thousands. Indians and Pakistanis, mostly from families divided by Partition, have been marrying each other ever since Pakistan came into existence.
The modern twist, however, is that these marriages are no longer tightly framed within the comfort zones of family and community, as the Masooma-Rajendran story vividly illustrates. Mobile young Pakistanis and Indians, meeting on holiday, at foreign universities, in professional settings, and even on the Net, are thinking the unthinkable, and marrying each other, undaunted by the fact that they are not just from countries that habitually snipe at each other, but do not even share the same language, regional background, or even religion.
Outlook for more