Nevertheless, I can't see that he has ever been given the chance to properly fall in love with anyone. With his courtesan there was romance and flirting and no sex, with Bilqueece there was sex but no romance. It is as if he is happy for the few fleeting moments in the beginning where the notion of love and of being in love filled up all the hours of his thoughts and dreams (Mehro was the same, dreaming dreams of handsome princes and then was married off to someone opposite), then came expectations and disappointments. I think it's fair if you say he's completely self-centered for whining for his misfortunes, I think the fact of being the youngest and never having to love anyone until Bilqueece makes Asghar egocentric.
Bilqueece's education made her a "simple Indian girl, and did not know the ways of love...." (p. 186). Even her love for Asghar is not a completely a romantic love, rather, it's a combination of or something between love and worship of a higher being. I sympathize with her, Asghar, and the others who were simply denied a natural progression of love. Instead, they were sexually repressed and then made to enter into something they never completely understood and had to learn of their disappointments when it's too late.
I do not think that Ashgar ever truely loved Bilqeece but more like he lusted after her. What he thought was love for her seemed more like a high school relationship where they think they love each other but once they are together for a while they discover that the other person is not who they want to be with. He wanted her to be what he imagined in his mind instead of how she was in reality. He had created this false image of her in his mind and was disappointed that she was not flirtatious as he hoped she would be. Also I strongly believe that if he was in love with her he would not have gone out and cheated on her. But I do agree that he was never given the opportunity and time to truely fall in love with someone since his parents were about to marry him off to someone else, so he had to act quickly to marry Bilqeeece.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like both men and women face difficulties with the whole arranged marriage system. I wonder if we, as (I presume) American students are seeing this objectively or from a culturally biased perspective. It's possible to find pros and cons between any two ways of doing things, but I have to wonder if arranged marriages ever work out the way everyone hopes they will. If so, it seems as though no one ever writes stories about these relationships.
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