“Why look for a match outside the family when we already have one inside?” Heard that one before?
As one drama throws us the negatives of cousin marriage, another shows how love makes the world go round across generations, while some stories seem to pair up cousins as a dreamy bond made in heaven, others headline how growing up together as ‘apparent’ siblings, turn into husband-wife, the bhai is dropped overnight, just as soon as the ring slips through her engagement finger – and just like that, they’re wedded, in a lifelong bond that sticks the whole happy family together. Copy that. It’s a true story.
But what appears even more bizarre is how Pakistani drama scripts call out the same relationship they’ve thrived on for centuries. Marrying your cousin was always a thing in our drama scripts. If anything, often writers have attempted to move away from the traditional trope, Hasina Moin for one, as we recall Ankahi, Tanhaiyan and Dhoop Kinare. But in general, the essential cousin marriage has come full circle and survived the test of drama time. The union has proven to be more resilient than the dated yet reliable Nokia phone and even newer and improved versions of Iphone and Android smart phones. So much so that even Microsoft Windows might come out with a new update but cousin marriages have, yes, you guessed it, stood the test of time – no sir, they don’t even need a software update. Old is gold.
So what is the secret behind this forever product life cycle, you ask? They’re convenient, like we said. Why look outside the family when the match lies within, for one. For another, it’s easy for families to stay tied in to their own traditions – no new concept weddings or lifestyles to deal with, on a lighter, yet real note, pick your family photographer and makeup artist too, wedding event planners tie in instantly, imagine the ease of life transitions as your daughter weds your sibling’s son – it’s all in the family, even the aaloo gosht recipe stays exactly the way you remember it, years ago, the way your ancestors made it – these cross-cultural weddings are such a pain. Why invent a new way of eating, sleeping, conversing (the language), or even raising children, when one can perfectly well carry on with the old, comfortable ways. Are cousin marriages then, an easy solution for our parents and their parents to keep it all in the family?
But here’s the catch. Enter Biology and genetics – multiple generations of inter-marriages might keep the family recipe and property intact, but will certainly end up diluting and even damaging the gene pool. And that’s not the only catch. What if you end up like a Gul Meher and Meeran from Biryani, who just can’t switch off their sibling-maternal bond, or Nisa and Rashid (bhai) who can’t drop the bhai from Rashid, or even Zeeshan and Sidra, who, forced by circumstances, might end up tying the knot, well, because it was convenient for the elders to arrange a union between them – how disastrous is that?
Currently on-air Pakistani dramas are attempting once again, to flip the script. It’s a revolution of sorts, as they serve up stories counter to whatever we find convenient in drama literature so far. Biryani sparks conversations, not taking a side but nudging us into taking one. Where Tanvir is happily engaged to her cousin, with a hint of romance in the air, it is also because she has really lived apart from her fiance most of her life, hence the sibling-cousin bond was absent, leaving space for a romantic relationship to thrive. Nisa and Rashid on the other hand, have grown up in practically the same house, and although Rashid has been conditioned to see her as his future wife, Nisa cannot bring herself to consider him a life partner. She has submitted to the engagement, but that’s another story altogether. On the other end of the spectrum, Gul Meher too, might have consummated her marriage with Meeran (our guess), but Meeran regards her as anything but a wife. Hence, the disorientation continues. Cousin marriages might be a great option, as Gul Meher explained, where no other option exists. But even then, one questions, is it because we know this option is so convenient, so easy, to find a match in the family, that we never try to seek a life partner beyond our community?
Urdu speaking communities have traditionally stuck to marrying within, so have Sindhis, Punjabis and all other ethnic communities, with the result that we continue to inhabit our community bubbles – imagine the cultural fusion if Punjabis and Sindhis were to tie the knot more often – would it lead to more social and ethnic harmony and less discrimination? Our DNA would definitely give it a five star review but beyond that, what about the quality of the relationship this couple enjoys?
And what’s stopping us from venturing beyond our communities? Are we so used to seeing loveless marriages, a string of children as a natural result of living together, not necessarily as a result of two people falling hopelessly in love, but more through practice, tradition and that final and decisive signature on the dotted line? Have we accepted that this is how it will be, that love or even deeper feelings towards your partner, and the laws of attraction have no business in a bond sanctified by a Nikah Nama with multiple witnesses – that’s all we need to procreate and live in peaceful co-existence, right? Who needs to have an adventure in a marriage?
On the flip side, a meeting of two people from entirely different cultures and languages might create a third culture – richer, more wholseome and bound together by a genuine meeting of minds and hearts as two young adults choose each other beyond language, culture, lifestyle and how they make Biryani.
Imagine a love that might not be forced, or boring, or suffocated by a past relationship based on sibling feels that prevents us from forming a new, romantic one. Or, then again, love might actually feel deeply challenged as two people from vastly different backgrounds try hard to understand, accept and celebrate the differences between their families, upbringing, traditions and lifestyles – don’t forget recipes – Biryani might just be the deal breaker.
Recent dramas, not just Biryani or Jama Taqseem, but even Goonj and Pamaal are dismissing cousin marriages in their plotlines as one of the persons involved views the relationship from an unromantic stance.
Cousin marriages or cross cultural marriages – the debate is not really about which is better, although genetics has cast the die here, but rather, about consent. Two young adults must be given a chance to choose – if love blossoms elsewhere, so be it, and if it finds root in the same earth as before, that too, is a celebration – as long as both realities are allowed to live side by side. For now, cousin marriages run as a single common thread across our communities. We might speak a different langauge, cook different recipes and proudly don our traditonal outfits to stand out from the other, but we cling to our comfort zones when it comes to lifelong partnerships. Considering any other option might set us up for failure, just like Nisa’s and Meeran’s love story. Unless of course, love finds a way in between all the chaos that resides in choosing a different language, accent and family recipe – can we even begin to do that?
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