A Woman's Choice(s)

Grimaced at the plot in 'The True Margaret' by Karan Mahajan published in The New Yorker on August 7, 2023. Set in 1959 London, this wasn't a kind era for women, much less Indian women married off to London. Between this scenario and that, what could a woman with no financial means do?

British-Indian doctor Ravi is already married in England, to Margaret, who is a nurse. Yet he hid that from his family back in Amritsar, India. He married Meera and brought her back to London. He told her about Margaret and made her accept a husband who would only be there for half the time. Apparently Margaret knew too, and understood that he had obligations to his elderly parents in India.

Meera wasn't sure of what to do. Her doting Uncle Harish tried to persuade her to go home instead of helping her. Meera's father was a powerful figure in the community, a respected retired government Minister. But with the geographical distances, social prejudices and no internet, help for Meera is far away. 

But with the help of the London landlord's daughter and the sale of her wedding gold bangles, she fled in the dark of the night when Ravi wasn't in the flat, and made it back to Delhi. Her father was surprisingly understanding and helped her annul the marriage. Then because it's 1960, promptly married her off to an older, widowed mid-level railway officer with a weak heart.

It was understood that she had to go back into the world, even if it was as damaged goods. And so the shambles of London gave way to the shambles of India—a more lower-middle-class existence than she’d ever imagined, a union with a man she had nothing in common with, and who, strangely, had no interest in her famous family and instead asked her questions about England, as if she had been there for her studies rather than for a wreck of a marriage. 

Was that really me in England? she sometimes wondered, remembering the first night Ravi had spoken to her about Margaret, and how that conversation itself had seemed like a dream. A dream upon a dream upon a dream: her life. There was, however, one sobering, bracing dose of reality: Ravi. 

Ravi never vanished. Ravi kept writing to her for years. He said he loved her deeply. In the letters, he was apologetic and morose, he wanted her to see his position, asked how she was, how her son, Anand, was growing, and so on. He wanted Meera to forgive him from afar. He wanted India to forgive him for marrying a British woman. 

She never replied. 

Either life for Meera isn't ideal. Her life's choices aren't even choices at all. Her life is either dictated by her father or her ex/now husband. I don't know if I could even judge that both her life trajectories aren't ideal. But in that era, in her circumstances limited by a severe lack of finances and education and worldliness, what could we expect a young woman to do? 

In an interview with the magazine, the author said he is also flagging an immigrant's dissociative feelings in this story. Ravi as an immigrant of color, even as a college graduate and a professionally trained doctor, faces racial and class discrimination, and of Meera, as an immigrant who is a dependent, being thrown into a grimy and freezing metropolis, completely alone.

Meera feels herself at the mercy of so many men in this story—Ravi, her uncle (who lives in London but can’t or won’t help her), her father (who arranged the marriage). Yet none of the men come across as truly powerful. Does Meera, too, slowly come to this realization? 

Meera is at the mercy of these men because she is so isolated in London. She would have been isolated anyway, as a new immigrant, but Ravi has every incentive to keep her shut up in an area with a (then) low or nonexistent Indian population, and to not induct her into his social circle. Southall, then a new Indian enclave, is far away, as is the London Hospital, where Ravi works. Like many victims, Meera is ashamed of her situation. Her world is reduced to Ravi, her neighbor, her memories of her father, her fantasies about Margaret. Her realization that the act of possessing two wives is not a measure of power but of weakness is a key turning point.