June 17, 2004

Love is hard to define but we know that the concept of romance and marriage has changed. Whether one wants to accept it or not, young men and women meeting on the quiet exists. However, as N.M. Khan writes, changing lifestyles, courtesy the IT revolution, is the main culprit behind how society perceives all things associated with love

As this year’s outpourings of love on Valentine’s Day proved, society seems to be coming to terms with public displays of affection. But, as expected, there is a paradox — one section of society can afford to put up large banners on roads or in the classified section of newspapers declaring their love for the world to see, while others can face death should they dare to pursue love.

For every couple whose romantic relationship ends with a “happily ever after” there is one Shaista Almani story that haunts society — a woman who married for love, but whose husband divorced her for fear of a backlash from the warring tribes. And even though the couple was ultimately reunited, look at the hardship they faced before their story could have a fairytale ending. These two examples coexist and happily, but the consequences can be devastating.

Against the conservative backdrop in this country, men and women fall in love dodging the attentive and disapproving eyes of parents, school administrators, law enforcement agencies and so forth. A walk into any of the cafes and eateries anywhere in the big cities is testament to a “dating” scene, but it is not something we want to talk about.

As events like Valentine’s Day gain more prominence and popularity, the “elders” are disturbed. “My daughter came home with a bouquet of roses on this stupid day,” said a visibly peeved mother of her university-going daughter. “She said a girlfriend gave it to her but I am no fool. This love-shove day is a publicity gimmick and respectable girls will get ruined in the process.”

The problem is that like dating, love, is associated with sex. And as Pakistanis, we don’t want to talk about anything related to that taboo. It is feared that by opening up society for discussion on contentious issues, it will ultimately lead to us condoning promiscuity. However, the flip side is that silence on the topic leads youngsters to warped views on what is essentially a healthy feeling called love.

Trying to define love is perhaps one of the hardest tasks and one that psychologists and anthropologists have tried for time immemorial. The Oxford Dictionary has a host of definitions for the word: from “warm liking or affection” to “God’s benevolence towards” to “passion”. But how can one word cover so many forms of affection — loving your parent is different to loving your husband/wife or pet or even food — especially food?

In the West, scores of psychologists have tried to get their grip on human behaviour in love. Freud said that love was just a blocked sexual urge. Even biologists tried to get their hands on it when they worked on identifying chemicals that attracted people to their mates — for your information they are: dopamine, phenylethylamine and oxytocin.

Early this year, in the US, anthropologist Helen Fisher in her book Why we love, presented a unique approach to understanding how love is addictive. When in love, a person’s brain responds the same way it is does in a person suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder. Perhaps not too comforting a notion.

But for all the academic discourse on love, it seems meaningless when it is unable to capture the emotions of love itself. There is a certain amount of craziness to love according to Kamil, 20, who says he is madly in love with Fatima, 20, a young woman in his biology class at university.

What may appear as normal “puppy love” at first glance — the notes passed to each other in class, the hushed up meetings around the campus, the messages sent through intermediaries — becomes all the more intriguing when Kamil says that he has never seen Fatima’s face. “I fell in love with her eyes,” he says with a huge sigh, that would put off the anti-romantics immediately.

Kamil wants to propose to Fatima and is hoping to rope in his elder sister to do the task of approaching Fatima’s family. “Fatima is scared that she will get into trouble with her family who will want to know how we know each other,” he said. “And I know I am very young but we want to get married in three years time.”

When asked if he considers Fatima his girlfriend, Kamil got visibly agitated and said that such “labels” are western notions. “We love each other and have not done anything against our values.” This clearly demonstrates that men like Kamil associate love with physical acts.

Theirs is perhaps a common love story in Pakistan as love always thrives on university campuses. But 20 years ago, it was not common for couples to be seen sitting together so openly on campus, their interest in one another quite clear for all to see.

Irfan, 62, narrates his experiences at university in the Punjab in the ‘60s. “Even though the atmosphere was far more liberal in those days, and boys and girls intermingled freely, there was a certain curtain that separated us from expressing our interest in one another. Perhaps a good word to use is a kind of shyness that surrounded the issue.

“We didn’t go around declaring our love for one another in a loud public manner, but we still managed in a quiet way,” he said with a chuckle. His wife, Kulsoom, 59, echoed his sentiment. “It was far more private. Irfan was my brother’s friend, and we got some time together, but never alone. And we still fell in love and got married without ever going on a date.”

In most stories that TR encountered, there was this concept of sharam or haya that couples referred to when narrating their personal experiences. Whether it was meeting each other in secret, or sending letters to each other using messengers, there was this sense of privacy that prevailed which many adults say does not exist today.

One common problem in discussing a story on love has to do with the idea that love equals marriage. Even today it is not uncommon to find people asking whether a couple had a love marriage or an arranged one. Scores of young educated middle class boys and girls are no longer ready to entertain the idea of an arranged marriage, as they see it as on outdated custom. This is not to suggest that arranged marriages are passe; a cursory glance at the classified matrimonials is testament to the high demand for “good boys and girls”.

As more and more young women are getting jobs and thus exposing themselves to opportunities like never before, there is a desire to choose suitors for themselves as well. Many have met their husbands through their work and even those who are single, speak of not wanting to settle for just anybody.

It’s not just financial positions that rate sky high. More and more women cite wanting independent lives, away from their in-laws when they talk about marriage. They also insist on wanting strong men who will support their wives’ decision to work. Men too want to be able to choose for themselves although we found that they were more willing to “settle” for wives chosen for them by their mothers.

Exposure to satellite television and the internet has certainly played a major role in changing attitudes, but it has brought with it what many detractors call a “deterioration in values”. Samina, 23, a graphic designer, is the youngest of three daughters and is choosing to remain single, much to her parents resentment. Her two elder sisters, both educated, were married by the time they were 22 and are happily settled in their own homes.

Samina, who laughs when she says she was clearly the unplanned child (born after a gap of six years), narrates how times have changed, but her parents’ attitude hasn’t. She has so far refused to meet any of the potential suitors that have come her way, and insists that she will only marry a person once she has got to know him herself over a good period of time.

“My parents and family refuse to believe me when I tell them that there is a divorce rate in Pakistan,” she says, adding that the perception is that separations only occur in the elite strata of society. “What bothers me most, however, is this idea that when it comes to marriage, love is not important. My sisters too tell me that you grow to love your husband. I refuse to buy that.”

Samina’s mother says she is at her wits end and worries that her daughter’s “Bollywood romance ideas” will only hurt her in the end. “By the time she realizes that there is no Shahrukh Khan in the real world, she will be old and no one will want to marry her then.”

Samina’s sentiments resonated with many young women TR spoke to. But when it probed them on how they defined love, or whether they had loved at all, we were met with two types: the hopeless romantic or the cynic. The latter seemed to have many bitter stories to share, of experiences that didn’t translate into marriage, of being “cheated” by boys at college, of being “dumped” by manipulative women and so forth.

What we found surprising however was that amongst this 20-something group of both men and women was the notion that love did not necessarily lead to marriage. Equally surprising was the cynicism with which “marriage” was discussed — perhaps this is why there are so many more single women in their late 20s today then there were say 10 years ago. Many spoke of “not wanting to settle for just any man.”

Many of the young men and women we met, from the upper middle class to the middle class sectors, admitted to having been involved in relationships. Many middle class women also said that the trend had changed within the “proposal route” where it was not uncommon for boys and girls to go out a few times on their own before making a decision to marry.

“There’s a greater desire to really get to know the person you are going to marry on your own time and turf,” says Naila, 23, who turned down a proposal from an America-based doctor because she didn’t want to get to know him over chat.

So when young people do fall in love, what do they do?

Here are some examples that cause parents much dread and fear.

A talk show on a private TV channel recently aired an episode on the goings on in internet cafes. Apparently, couples meet at such cafes where they are guaranteed privacy in cubicles where they can spend time together alone — which is rare to do in any public place, be it a park or a restaurant.

This TV show aired footage taken by hidden cameras of couples in such cubicles at internet cafes. The show caused much outrage and became a cause for concern, but sleazy as it may sound, it also opened a debate on dating: who decides what is right or wrong when two consenting adults are involved?

If it’s not the behaviour inside the cafes that worry society, it’s the goings on in the chat rooms themselves. Type “dating Pakistan” into a search engine and you’ll be surprised by the number of websites that are devoted to providing match-making services.

It should sound as a healthy alternative to being hooked up by aunts and uncles,but as many people pointed out to us, there’s a seedy element even within that option. “If you go inside a chat room, you’ll be shocked by the sexually explicit material and conversations taking place,” said one young man.

But, according to a few young college students we met at one internet cafe, the media only focuses on the “sleazy” aspect of internet cafes or dating in itself. They argued that when TV channels air programmes that show couples in internet cafes or boys watching pornographic material, they forget to add that a vast majority of people at the cafes are there for legit purposes. “If you watch or read what the media has to say, you’d think that all of us were perverts,” said one.

Attitudes towards dating are a contentious issue as TR is well familiar with. In 2002, when the magazine ran a cover story on dating, it was swamped with angry emails and phone calls from irate people, who interestingly enough did not disagree with the contents of the article, but were upset that we had chosen to cover the story.

The vast majority of those who wrote in, or called, said that the magazine was promoting vulgarity and promiscuity. The debate, in the magazine’s letters section, was one of the longest running in which both sides of the argument were covered. However, those who wrote in to say that a healthy debate is needed on what constitutes good “behaviour” in dating were few and far between.

It this desire to turn a blind eye to contentious issues like the ones now being openly and boldly discussed that society is having a hard time digesting. The immediate reaction, for example, to hearing what goes on in internet cafes is to ban couples entering cubicles at all. There is no middle ground solution.

When TR went to such internet cafes to get its own perspective, the owners said that they were running a legitimate business through which they were providing a service, and if a small section of society was misusing that space, they should not be faulted.

This notion of a small section of people abusing something is a commonality we found in every argument — for instance not all students come to university to fall in love or bunk class, or that not all burqa-clad girls go to cafes with their boyfriends, or that not all boys and girls who spend time together are in love.

Roughly translated, in order to gauge society’s views on love, one needs to separate love from sex. At the same time we need to see it within a socio-political context and analyze trends and changes in lifestyle — the advent of the satellite cable culture being the most obvious indicator.

That has a trickle down effect into the rural set up as well where it is not uncommon to hear stories of women seeking shelter at homes because they were not allowed to marry the man of their choice. Then there are the horror stories of honour killings and other hate-related crimes on women.

We need to recognize the parallels that run deep in society. One section is learning to tolerate the changes in lifestyle — allowing their children the latitude to date — while another is simply unable to come to terms with it — hence the rise in crimes against women for example.

As one young teenager put it: “Live and let live also means love and let us love.”

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