How about Bollywood? What is its take on love and romance? Bollywood movies, promote love in a way (when they aren’t showing the cautionary tales of what happens when you cross the boundaries), but the love they portray tends to be skin deep: the hero and heroine meet and fall in love, often at first sight and then, after a few songs and some chase scenes, become romantic partners where it is understood that they will marry. Never mind that the hero can often act like a stalker and can often act abusively—that must be ignored. But then, once the girl has been attained, the romance and all the dancing in the backdrop of beautiful mountains and waterfalls ends and the other stuff happens. Entertaining, but where is my romance hero? And then, once they marry, the Indian serials will explain what happened next (torture from the female in-laws). Married couples are often the butt of jokes in Bollywood movies, too. It is rare to see happily married couples. Love is the heady emotion of youthful hormones reacting to hot bodies, and not the comfort and security of a long-lasting, loving bond.
I’ve been speaking of marriage in terms of monogamy. In the East, however, there is a rich history of polygamy, harems, and concubinage. Where is the romance in that? What happens when familial duty (producing an heir) forces a man to marry another woman? Does he stop loving you? Do you stop loving him? So not romantic. Or, what happens when you are in an arranged marriage and fall in love with a courtesan and then marry her but still must visit your first wife? Not romantic. This is where you need the milkman, or the husband’s younger brother—but—where is the romance in all that? No.
There is a parallel here, though, between Eastern and Western experiences: mistresses and adultery. A while ago, when it came out that a certain movie star married to a high-status politician had committed adultery with their maid which resulted in a child, a few of my friends were discussing it. My Christian friend said to my Muslim friend, “You are lucky. When your man is going off with another woman, they tell you. Here, they have affairs behind your back.” I do not know how lucky my Muslim friends are, but there is some truth in that statement. Muslim men can and do inform their first wives that they are about to take on another wife. Some laws require the first wife’s permission, others do not. Definitely not romantic. The opposite of romantic. Terrible. Painful. But when the law of the land allows multiple marriages, harems and concubinage, what is a girl to do?
Read my future blog for how Chivalry softens the edges of patriarchy, and my challenges as a writer of Romance from an Eastern Perspective