Carvalho wrote:
> Frankly, I'm always surprised when men who have been
> raised in the West want a bride from "back home". What
> is the logic behind this? Marriage is surely meant to
> bind two people who have the same points of reference.
selma,
Life's greatest moments usually have no logic.
About ten years ago I asked a friends wife why I had not seem them at a dance.
She replied, "because I did not get a new dress". When I enquired further, she
said that when her husband was courting her, he told that he would buy her a
new dress for every dance they went to. Puzzled, I later asked my friend if
this was true. He replied that he wanted to make sure he would marry her and
thus said what was required. The dress offer sealed the deal. They had their
reference point.
> This attitude of wanting to marry "girls from back
> home", is so regressive and patronising to "girls back
> home". It somehow puts them on a pedestal of
> expectations such as "domestic diva, faithful, demur,
> will treat son like the God he is supposed to be", and
> in large measure manages to dehumanise them as
> individuals.
When I was ready to get married, I asked my friends how I could get myself a
bride (to be) from Goa. They instructed me to go down to Mapusa on Friday,
stand outside the State Bank of India and hold up my Canadian passport. Sadly
enough, even though I attempted to do that twice, it did not work. Just before
the SBI is a little pit stop called Bertsy's. I would pop in there to see if
there was anyone I knew and invariably get distracted and not make it to the
SBI stop.
> The funny thing is when the girls come to America,
> they are supposed to "American" on the outside and a
> bad caricature of black and white Hindi movie heroines
> on the inside; dichotomy many of them are unable to
> sustain.
When I was desperate to get married, I put my advert on Goanet. I married the
first person to reply. My wife still insists that it was an arranged marriage
since all I did was show up. After replying to her reply and corresponding with
her for two weeks, I met my in-laws (for the first time) late on a Friday
night. They being from Texas, came prepared with an offer of twenty cows, which
seemed like a good deal at the time. My wife, being extremely well organized,
straight away whizzed me to the licencing office. It was one of the weirdest
twenty four hours of my life. There I was at 1.00 am in Vegas. Instead of being
at a roulette table, I was standing in line for state permission to get
married. The weird part being, I, of all people, was the only sober person in
line. I kept telling myself that this was happening only because it was a leap
year.
Since I was still thinking on the day I got married, I wondered if I had not
really courted my wife. Since I did not want to embarrass her too much, I told
her the sweetest words I could think of i.e. I told her not to worry as if
anything went wrong, I would give her half a million (good) reasons to leave
me. Her reply stunned me. Only then did I realize why that line never worked
for me before.
When I returned to Toronto, I started getting more replies to my advert. Three
months later the replies turned into a flood. Six months later, I was still
getting enquires from India. I guess things move at a difference pace in
different parts of the world.
As some of you have already guessed, yes, I am writing this on a Friday night
with one hand on the honey jar. I am only going to post it if it still seems
funny (to me) in the morning. Well Selma, I married an "American" thinking I
would get one both inside and outside the house. Guess what? The IT
professional from Silicon Valley suddenly turned into a Goan housewife. She
wants to stay at home with the baby, calls me "the light of the house" AND buys
me all the beer I need. She claims she does the later only because I am an easy
person to please.
So NRG men, not all is lost. There are a lot of good folks out there to meet,
connect with, and marry.
Mervyn3.0
PS. I later found out that I was courting my wife before I sent in my advert on
Goanet. She had been reading Goanet and found Mario's posts and the replies to
them funny. That is what caught her eye. Once again, life's greater moments
usually have no logic.
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