"Non-Resident" Marriage

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open. ~George Bernard Shaw

Marriages are strange contracts,
and they're always arranged;
between needy folk who think that
'two is better',to find the pathways,
of least resistance,
in life's confusing maze.
So we have the boudis,
in ethnic wear, immaculately slicing
fruits for the devi's prasad,
sometimes stopping to reminisce :
the matches of caste and creed,
the fantasy of a "foreign-based" groom,
the meeting on bharatmatrimony.com,
the hurried vows of a fire ceremony,
the forcibly forgotten college romances,
the large family gatherings in the desh;
but otherwise moving on,
with heaving bosoms and waddling gaits,
filling the air with chatter
on matters that are circulated
again and again, with their girlfriends,
finding comfort niches with strange
womanly ease, that seems to abound, and bounce,
in them like subcutaneous wads of fat.
The uneasy men filed in another part
of the hall, talk recession and cricket,
or maybe cleavage. But they are
trained to observe the invisible purdah
of the desi party. Finding your feet in
a new country, riding the slaveships of
globalization, learning and unlearning,
has not been easy, and it tells on their
floridly hypertensive faces and clogged arteries.
These are the survivors, the ones who stayed,
survived the lonely years on dvds,
and gentlemen's clubs; chasing money,
and occasionally Caucasian women.
Their ambition and fantasy shaped by the West,
their sense of security invested in the East,
these men had to be uneasy. They are
adept at hunting for hilsa in Houston,
newly slaughtered goat in New Jersey,
when not writing reams of code.
They still stray sometimes, from habit,
into an adult entertainment bar
where money can buy an hour's escape.
The women could guess but are trained
by culture to repress; who knows what they
do to survive. Do they care for american telenovelas?
Such people meet at home everyday,
go on weekend trips and parties, cook for friends,
read Lahiri when not indulging in Tagore,
go to bed together, and raise angry kids
they do not understand.
Perhaps it does take
two to dance life's absurd tango?