Knot Now Darling

From their modest farmhouse in the midst of verdant fields, for years the most inspiring sight for Jaspal Kaur and her family has been the half-a-dozen or so concrete aeroplanes which double up as water tanks atop the prosperous mansions of their fellow villagers. They are the most visible symbol of the dollar riches the owners made in foreign lands. But when she and her family tried to get on to the same one-way ticket to prosperity via a marriage to a US-based salesman, she became the latest victim of marital hit-and-run in the Doaba region of Punjab.

Just over a year ago, she married 26-year-old Amarjit Singh in a hurriedly arranged ceremony at her native village Baleran in Kapurthala district, and left home to set up a new life at her husband's village. Just 15 days later, Amarjit left for the US with the promise that he'd send for her within six months. What she got instead was a set of divorce papers from a Virginia court. And thus began an endless round of court and embassy officials as she joined the burgeoning ranks of 'holiday wives' scattered all over the region. What was earlier restricted only to a stray case off and on, the phenomenon of NRI grooms entering into casual wedlock has become a major social problem in many parts of Punjab.

"Since tighter immigration rules have made that old route to prosperity in the West that much tougher, the increasing desperation of rural Punjabis to send their kith and kin abroad has made it that much easier for such unscrupulous men to make hay," says Mandeep Singh Sachdeva, a lawyer who 'specialises' in such cases in Jalandhar, the heart of Doaba, which leads in migrations from Punjab.

For the Canada or US-based gas station attendant, taxi driver, or even farm labourer from Punjab, a holiday visit to his native village now holds the promise of a temporary liaison with a village belle for the duration of his visit, besides a handsome dowry to boot. Many have no intention of taking their new wives to the promised land, as many are already married there. Never mind if the groom is a couple of decades older than the bride. Cashing in on the migration bug, these bridegrooms demand a hefty dowry in cash and gold.

Jaspal Kaur's father, a small farmer, spent about Rs 12 lakh on his daughter's wedding, much of which he borrowed from his brother. "In their eagerness to net foreign bridegrooms for their daughters, the parents give the go-by to formalities like verifying the credentials of the prospective bridegroom or taking the precaution of getting the marriage registered," says Sachdeva. The issue at hand is to somehow get the girl settled in the West so that she can later send for her parents and the rest of the family.

Take the case of Rajwinder Kaur of village Khera Dona. In 1996, she married Teja Singh, who told her father that he was a green card holder and would soon get US citizenship. After living as man and wife for about two months, he left her behind. He came back again on holiday the next year and stayed with her. But since then, all she has got is a few phone calls and promises to send her the migration papers. Rajwinder's marriage may have soured, but her father's investment in his elder daughter, Manjinder Kaur, has paid off. Manjinder, who has settled in Canada, has now initiated proceedings for the migration of her parents and minor siblings. But even as the family is rejoicing over the maturing of their dream to migrate to Canada, Rajwinder faces a bleak future.

Former Rajya Sabha MP Balwant Singh Ramoowalia has formed the Lok Bhalai Party, which has taken up the increasing incidence of NRI grooms deserting their wives in Punjab. In a memorandum signed by 60 MPs which was submitted to the Punjab chief minister recently, he has suggested that registration of marriages with NRI grooms should be made compulsory to provide a legal safety net.Lawyer Barinderjit Shelly also feels that the law should be amended to make it mandatory for a divorce to be filed in the same place where the marriage takes place. This, he says, is because in many such cases, the grooms take ex-parte divorce in the foreign country and the wife can do precious little about it.

If marriage is a favourite ticket to El Dorado for Doaba residents, divorce too is seen as a handy method. It is quite common for a wife in Punjab to consent to give divorce to her migrant husband to enable him to marry a foreigner and thereby get citizenship of the adopted country, says Harjinder Kaur, a social worker heading the women's wing of the Lok Bhalai Party. The pact is usually with the understanding that as soon as the man becomes a citizen of the foreign country, he will divorce the second wife and return to re-marry his original wife in Punjab. But in most such cases, this rarely happens and the wife in Punjab is left to fend for herself with her children.

In yet another variation of divorce as a vehicle to migrate, advocate K.S. Randhawa details one of his cases. Balbir Kaur and Kulbir Singh (names changed) got married in Jalandhar in 1995 and migrated to New Zealand the next year. After a few years, Balbir Kaur persuaded her husband to divorce her and go to Jalandhar to marry her younger sister, to enable the sister also to migrate to New Zealand. But Kulbir, on returning to Jalandhar, married another girl. Balbir filed a case in the Jalandhar district court seeking an injunction to prevent Kulbir from marrying again. But when the lawyer dug into the case, he was confronted with allegations of Balbir Kaur having had a registered marriage with her own brother. Having failed to get her sister to New Zealand, she apparently tried the marital route to get her brother in, says Randhawa.

All this then is fertile ground for scores of Jalandhar lawyers, many of whom are making a living out of marriage and divorce-related litigation. Tarsem Singh Matharoo and his wife work as a team—she sends him business from England where she is based and he attends to the Jalandhar end of the cases.

Marriage bureaus too are doing roaring business, particularly where 'exchange marriages' take place. The exchange marriage is one where an NRI family seeks a match for their son or daughter only if there is a marriageable NRI boy or girl in the family of the prospective in-laws. The catch is that if we are enabling your child (and by assumption the entire family) to migrate, then you too must ensure that at least one or two members of our clan be brought out in the same way. If NRI grooms come to marry Punjabi girls, similarly, NRI brides too come and marry Punjabi men on a "contractual basis", says lawyer Shelly. What gives away such matches is the relative disparity in the social status or age of the brides and grooms. One such groom is 21-year-old Jaspal Singh (name changed) of Nakodar, who is presently cramming up for the embassy interview. Last year, he married 26-year-old Manjit Kaur, who is settled in the US. While she is a graduate and is working in the US, he is unemployed after clearing class XII a couple of years ago. He says his brother, who is now in Canada, went the same way after an NRI bride came to take him there.

Where concrete aeroplanes and flashy cars serve as inspiration, it's no surprise that a marriage in the Punjab heartland is often a mercenary means to presumed salvation. But for many hapless nowhere brides, it turns out to be no less than a road to purgatory.