Discovering Brides

Book excerpt: An Indian-American anthropologist, whose own dramatic marriage was arranged in his non-vegetarian polygamous priestly family background, struggles to find a vegetarian and sexy bride for his U.S.-born lawyer son. The long journeys from America to India move the bride search, through social-cultural ups and downs, with girls after girls, and their spicy episodes, stirring up the anthropologist抯 own bittersweet memoirs. A wife begs a man to spare her abusive husband抯 life; a bride at the altar refuses to marry due to greed; a woman drinks cow urine because a low-caste man saved her; a man urinates over a wild tiger; a girl disappears minutes before the parents want to introduce her to the visiting bride searchers; a bridegroom is beaten by his relatives hours before the marriage; policeman on orders to stop marchers beat, rape and shoot women; and deeper discoveries. Some are highly controversial as they involve big political, historical and international names and events. Then the search takes an abrupt turn. Overall, this provocatively entertaining novel offers intercultural education by interweaving religion and mythology, folklore and literature, historical accounts and personal philosophy of fair human contact. Anoop Chandola, born in India, presently a professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. His last two degrees are from the University of California (Berkeley) and of Chicago. He is the author of several scholarly books and articles.