A Good Indian Wife

Suneel is certain he can resist his family’s attempts to wed him to ‘a good Indian wife’ to take back to America with him. Unfortunately, he is not as wily as he thinks and finds himself married to Leila. Bitter and angry, he takes her back to America, where he has a thriving practice as an anesthesiologist, and a nice girlfriend on the side. He has no room for a wife, American or Indian. Leila does everything she can to please him, but seems to have little results.

I really liked Leila and disliked Neel, as he calls himself. He is so shallow, he doesn’t take an interest in Leila until his friend’s approval makes him sit up and take notice. Leila deserves better.

I was able to relate to Neel (Suneel) because I struggle with managing two cultures, and though I don’t try to shake off my heritage, I understand his frustrations. Some of the characters in his family seemed uncomfortably realistic to me, and the author did a great job of letting me know that they have good intentions. I was disappointed because the indian wife’s journey was either bland or nonexistent. Neel himself seemed to all of a sudden snap out of it, and perhaps I had missed his growth and realization. I ordered this for a low price, and paid more for shipping and handling. If you come across it, read it. I am taking it to Goodwill and perhaps you will be able to buy it there. However, I don’t recommend going out of your way to purchase this.

This book was a great introduction into the Indian culture and provides an indepth look into the values of family loyalty, respect and the traditions of arranged marriages, which still happen in today’s society. The central characters; Suneel and Leila are brought together rather forcibly through their family’s hands. It is surreal for us in America to have two people who did not want to marry/get married to each other do so, but through the cultural expose that Cherian offers us, we come to understand it.

The reader fluctuates from feeling badly for both characters, to wanting to defend one against the other. Leila’s character blossoms upon meeting Suneel and we get to see her transform from one who had self esteem issues into a more confident and acclimated woman once she settles in America and in her new life with Suneel. Suneel, once resigned of his new life, realizes all the things he thought he didn’t like in India were still with him; his love of family, loyalty to his family and most importantly he comes to recognize his love of the country from which he was born.

This was a first time read for me by Cherian and I will check out her other works. This was an easy and quick read, so give it a try if you want to be entertained as well as learning a bit about a new culture.

I bought “A good Indian wife” and read it in two nights. It was hard to put down. My heart went out to Leila who was extremely brave and more tolerant with the Simpleton Neel than I ever would have been. He was what my parents referred to as an ‘educated ass.’ I kept wondering when she was going to open up her eyes and realise that she was no longer in India, but in the dog eat dog world of the USA. I just loved the way she toppled Caroline’s cart when she called to proclaim her love for Suneel or Neel as he liked to be called. This story rings so true. Indian men are not the only men who consider having having a white trophy as reaching the epitome of one’s life. It is an everyday occurence among men of all races. Neel’s infidelity was absolutely hard to read about and I kept hoping that Leila would find a handsome man, for the payback would have been sweet; but she was too good a person to enter into such a clastendine affair and won in the end. Was it worth it? I can’t say until Miss Cherian brings the sequel to the market.

Anne Cherian has tried to portray a sensitive story of an unlikely couple with highly polarized personalities – on the one hand, the Indian born American educated Neel wants to be entirely American without fully understanding the cultural context he is thrown into and therefore is obsessed about marrying an American woman; and on the other hand a traditional southern Indian girl who has only trained to be a wife and knows of no other identify to aspire to. The story unravels a rather unlikely plot that brings them together, and even if one is forced to swallow it, one hopes for better things to follow.

The author clings to the extreme cliches about the two cultures she depicts – American and Indian. Although her ability to write from both perspectives is impressive, her lack of ability to go beyond the superficial routine cliches is not. MUST Neel be the extreme wanting to be all-American villager-Indian, MUST Liela (his imported wife) be the typical on-the-shelf-desperately-waiting-be-married woman, and MUST the American secretary (Caroline) that Neel is having an affair with be the gold-digger-wanting-to-marry-a-rich-doctor Midwestern from a red-neck family? There are too many, way too many, shades of cultures in both India and America, to look at this story as anything but simple minded. I kept reading this book because the author can write a reasonably flowing (albeit simplistic) prose, but mostly because I was hoping for a less typical ending.

I kept waiting for the story to take a turn where the all-but-deserted Liela takes charge of her life and flowers into an independent individual, leaving her so-called husband behind. But of course that does not happen, and the story unconvincingly leads to a deterministic ending living up to the cliches that this book is full of. I found it difficult to find any character in this book likeable or genuine except Neel’s friend Sanjay and his wife Oona, who aren’t driven entirely by tormented goals thrust upon them. Liela herself would be more likeable if she was depicted as a less typical woman dying to obtain a “married” title, dependent, and just waiting for her husband to come around. The story builds towards glimpses of that pluck in her character but never fully develops it as if it is entirely unimportant, as if the main objective is in fact that the husband comes around to his senses.

Looking forward to more liberal and open-minded books by immigrant authors revealing an exposure a bit more diverse than this.

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