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Across Your Own Great Divide

The couples who strode onto the stage that evening had at least one thing in common: in each pair, husband and wife were from different communities. No surprise; this was, after all, an "inter-community gathering." But that in itself was not at all what made it such a thought-provoking evening for me. Instead, it was the sheer range of meanings this word "community" took on, and thus the range of marriages that were considered to bridge communities.

In turn, each pair stood up there a little shyly and told us how they had had "no problems at all in adjusting." Or: "his mother is the one who has really had to adjust to me!" ("Adjust" was a word I heard many many times through the evening). There was much more such inspiring talk. One couple spoke of the "roller-coaster" that they had found marriage to be; though even so, they stressed, they had had "no problems at all!" Someone made a short speech about how such couples, such marriages, promoted national integration and formed bridges across divides that we are otherwise so easily trapped in.

I was intrigued by what the couples said were the issues they had to resolve when they married across communities. There were two critical ones: food and language. No others found significant mention. If it was the wife, she had had to learn a whole new style of cooking because of what her husband wanted to eat. If it was the husband, he invariably said that after years of wolfing down fond maternal cuisine, he had taken some time to get used to fond wifely cooking. But of course, they would both then hasten to add, "it's been no problem adjusting!"

Language was a whole separate business. If they spoke different ones growing up, it was often the wife who had learned her husband's language after their marriage. But there were at least a few diligent husbands who had learned what their wives spoke. And one woman told us happily about the effect her marriage had had on her grandmother. Her (the grandmother's) English had improved no end, simply because it was the only way she could communicate with her new grandson-in-law.

Despite the silly scepticism I had arrived with, it was all quite deeply moving. And as I said earlier, most interesting of all was the vast breadth of this word "community." That was apparent from the number of marriages that had qualified that evening as crossing community lines. There were couples who were two different kinds of Saraswat Brahmins. There were couples in which the husband and wife were from different areas of the country. Some came from differing religions -- Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity were represented. There were even two marriages that had components from abroad, an Armenian wife in one case and a French husband in the other.

Really, on that stage, "community" was purely what each of these couples chose it to mean for themselves. I found it fascinating, again, that the man who had married an Armenian woman felt a link to the couples that were Chitrapur Saraswat married to Goud Saraswat, and that link was what had brought them, and the rest, here. In getting married, each of these otherwise normal people had leaped some kind of barrier that, for whatever reason, is not easily crossed.

So as I sat there, my mouth watering at the different foods finding mention as part of the process of "adjustment", I chewed on this notion of community.

In the sense all of us who were there understood it to be, community is a measure of identity. Which community we belong to defines who we are, tells the world something about us. Our food habits and languages, yes. But also a little bit about how we might behave in certain situations, values we might have, rituals we might follow, people we might know. Many of us derive our identities, our image of who we are, from these things and more. And it all adds up to this intangible idea of "community."

No significant insight there, of course. But it gets very interesting when you think about how fluid this identity really is, how the idea of a community applies and changes in different situations.

For example, take the couple who were both Saraswats, the husband a Goud Saraswat and his wife a Chitrapur Saraswat. Outsiders might find little to choose between the two kinds of Saraswats. After all, you might say, both these people are Hindus, both are Brahmins, both speak Konkani at home. But to the couple, and to others in the two communities, there are significant differences. Differences that are relevant and apparent to all Saraswats.

It is those differences that made this couple's marriage such an unusual event in the two communities. This pair walked on stage that evening because each felt the distinct identity their own particular Saraswat clan gave them. It mattered to them profoundly. And yet they had consciously reached out to each other across those distinct identities. The community gap they represented was quite clear to all. Nobody needed it explained.

Later, a Hindu woman walked on stage, trailed by her Catholic husband. She was Saraswat too, as it happened, but in this case, that was not important. For them, the barrier was the one between their religions. That's what they spoke to us about: their church wedding, their temple wedding, opposition from both families that had now melted away. This time, it was clear that it was her identity as a Hindu and his as a Catholic that was the issue in their marriage. Again, nobody needed this explained. We all understood without even thinking about it: here, there were slightly broader identities at work.

Later still, we heard from the two Indians who had married foreigners. Now the tales were all about how much the foreigners liked India and Indian ways and Indian food despite an initial hesitation; their fascination with the Indian marriage ceremony they had been through; the exposure the Indian spouses had had to the respective foreign cultures. There were specific issues that arose because husband and wife were French and Indian, or Indian and Armenian. Much amusement, empathy and wonder ensued.

And as it did, nobody noticed or cared that we had moved along smoothly and without question to still other identities. This time, of nationalities.

I had arrived for the event with the assumption that by "inter-community", the organisers had meant marriages across religions. No particular reason for this assumption, but it's what I had in mind. So given my distaste for religion, I also was nurturing a faint, inexplicable scepticism as I turned up.

But as I watched the couples come and go, I realised how much broader the idea of a community is. And broader in a strange sense: for it can be much narrower as well as much wider than a specific religion. It also struck me how small and empty is the appeal of those who try to slot us into one or another little hole. For your identity, your community, can be just as wide or as narrow as you -- you -- want it to be; it makes no sense for it to be dictated to you. Communities and identities really mean so many different things, depending on your perspective, your marriage, your situation in life -- and much else.

Which, it seems from this sceptic's corner, is nothing but a celebration of being human. Of life itself.

Dilip D'Souza