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I’m annoyed working women feminists are not supposed to talk about their “love” lives because the biggest impact on my career is the decision I made 9 years ago.
I had an arranged marriage.
Arranged marriages are complex and take constant nurturing, like all relationships.
I had an arranged marriage.
Arranged marriages are complex and take constant nurturing, like all relationships.
I find sharing this uncomfortable but I remember talking about this in my class, something about how I pitched a story in an internship about arranged marriages and a student came up after to thank me, coz her culture also had this tradition & she always felt she had to hide it
Marriage as an institution is problematic. Arranged marriages largely propagate casteism, colourism and elitism. They often propagate misogyny too. But there are a plethora of stories and I do hope we all see more nuance beyond the exoticism of it all or the outright criticism.
As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said in her amazing TED talk: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
So yes, you can be deeply ambitious and also marry early because that’s what was expected of you. You can want to shoot for the moon and still make a decision to marry someone determined at least in part by the fact that your mum adored them (and met them even before you did!)
And...you can do all of the exact opposite and that’s fine too. Let’s normalise different journeys, choices and seemingly opposite or conflicting experiences.
