It is approaching Valentine’s Day and, although romance means different things to different people, for me it is an absolutely fascinating concept to follow in the South Asian culture. Traditionally taboo in everyday life and conversations, it is abundantly displayed in Indian poetry, cinema and literature. In real life, young men and women are expected to reign in their passions and pretend they don’t exist. But feelings are effusively expressed in cinema, art, sculptures and even Hindu scriptures created in India. It is almost as if love and romance are an elusive ideal just to be seen, never to be touched. Although these contradictions in the culture have existed since time immemorial, the concept of real life romance has evolved over the decades. Talk to Punjabi grandmothers and they will describe romance as the clandestine encounters they had with their husbands in traditional Indian villages. Many of them were not even allowed to share a bedroom with their spouses. Women in large extended families slept in one general area and the men slept in another. Romantic interludes were described as stealing glances at each other in front of the kitchen fire while everybody sat and shared a meal. Children were born out of sneaky sexual encounters when others were not around the house. Some women had a ritual of getting out of the house on the pretext of delivering food for their man working hard in the fields. That would turn out to be the daily intimate time they would have with their husband. Surprisingly, some of the old ladies can still blush while telling these tales and say that they found their era incredibly romantic. I still have to get someone from that generation to confess that they felt a suppression of feeling in those settings. The next generation — folks like my parents — were finally sanctioned shared bedrooms, especially in urban centres, but they had very little choice about whom they shared the bedroom with. The governing philosophy was ”parents know best.” At age 17, my mother was simply told that she was engaged. The details — like to whom, and why — came later from bits of information through her siblings. Luckily, the fellow was no stranger. A student of her father’s, he had visited the family home many times. Although she had never talked to him directly, she remembered watching him come and go while she swung back and forth on the front gate. As for my dad, it took him a few weeks to find out which one of the sisters he was actually engaged to. My mom can still blush when reminded of the cautious eye contact she and her future husband exchanged while she was swinging on the gate. Her generation still has trouble uttering the word ”love” in a romantic context. An uncle once described the epitome of romance to me as a lover staying up half the night singing songs for his beloved, on his own in his room. He was convinced that the beloved would have telepathically known. To him it was the subtlety that mattered. It is these previous generations, with their quaint and archaic idea of love and romance, which the present generation fights with. We want the freedom to decide for ourselves who our heart will beat for. Needless to say, that difference has caused confusion and problems. For example, the seniors can’t fathom how there can be any charm in a relationship which lacks mystery and has been openly explored. The new generation is appalled by the seniors’ antiquated ideas of a thrilling romance. Move all these generations to Canada, and you have both a generational clash as well as a cultural collision. Surrounded by friends who explore relationships through dating or by living together, younger people just can’t comprehend how they are supposed to go through life waiting for their parents to turn up with Mr. Right. Romance or physical intimacy without marriage is scandalous for the older generation. Marriage without caring and passion is unacceptable to the younger folks. Most families have now struck a compromise where both the parents and their children have a voice in selecting marriage partners. The arranged marriage system has now become the introduced marriage. But the idea of romantic relationships without marriage is still highly volatile and unresolved among South Asians. Whether the older generation acknowledges it or not, younger people feel the stirrings of love many times before the final Ms. or Mr. Right comes along.
