A Single Man

DOES THE END GAME ALWAYS HAVE TO BE MARRIAGE?

- Sandip Roy

Several years ago, I attended a same-sex wedding in California. Gay weddings were still not commonplace, and this one was even more unusual. My friends were both Indian, one Hindu, one Christian. They got married in a beautiful garden with a three-tiered wedding cake and a sacred fire. But the moment that truly stood out for me was when I watched one of their fathers bless them. He had flown out from India for the ceremony. As they touched his feet, I got a lump in my throat.

We are, after all, a culture built around marriage. When I went to the US for the first time, worried aunts clucked, “I hope you don’t marry a foreigner. I hope it’s a Bengali.” Over time that changed to, “I hope it’s an Indian.” Eventually it became, “I hope you get married before all our teeth fall out.” A single child, a son or daughter who was not “settled”, was regarded as a parent’s unfinished business.

I’ve often joked that India will warm up to the idea of same-sex marriage before we come to terms with gay rights. It almost feels less alien to us than homosexuality. At least it’s marriage. As a Gujarati gay friend of mine in Silicon Valley told me wistfully after some romantic debacles, he just wished his parents would find him a nice Gujarati boy from a good family he could settle down with. He would gladly settle for the gay arranged marriage.