新视野大学英语读写教程听力 第四册 课文 4t05c

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[00:00.00]喜欢hxen.net，就把hxen.net复制到QQ个人资料中！ An Indian Arranged Marriage
[00:-1.00]We sat around the dining table,my family and I,
[00:-2.00]full to bursting from yet another home-cooked South Indian dinner.
[00:-3.00] It was my younger brother who asked the question.
[00:-4.00]“Shoba,why don't you stay back here in India for a few months?
[00:-5.00]So we can try to get you married.”
[00:-6.00]Three pairs of eyes stared at me across the width of the table.
[00:-7.00]I sighed.Here I was,at the tail end of my vacation after graduate school.
[00:-8.00]I had an airplane ticket to New York from India in 10 days.
[00:-9.00]I had accepted a job at an artist's colony in the U.S.
[00:10.00]My car and most of my possessions were with friends in America.
[00:11.00]“It's not that simple,”I said.“What about my car…?”
[00:12.00]“We could find you someone in America,”my dad replied.
[00:13.00]“You could go back to the States.”
[00:14.00]They had thought it all out. This was a plot.
[00:15.00]I frowned at my parents angrily.
[00:16.00]Oh,another part of me rationalized,
[00:17.00]why not give this arranged-marriage thing a shot?
[00:18.00]It wasn't as if I had a lot to go back to in the States.
[00:19.00]Besides,I could always get a divorce.
[00:20.00]Stupid and dangerous as it seems looking back,
[00:21.00]I went into my marriage at the age of 25 without being in love.
[00:22.00]Three years later,I find myself enjoying my relationship
[00:23.00]with this brilliant man who talks about the yield curve
[00:24.00]and other financial statistics,who prays when I drive,
[00:25.00]and who tries bravely to remember the names of the modern artists I adore.
[00:26.00]My enthusiasm for arranged marriages is that of a recent convert.
[00:27.00]True,I grew up in India,where arranged marriages are common.
[00:28.00]My parents' marriage was arranged,
[00:29.00]as were those of my aunts, cousins and friends.
[00:30.00]But I always thought I was different.
[00:31.00]I flourished as a foreign student at an American university,
[00:32.00]where individualism was expected and women's rights encouraged.
[00:33.00]As I experimented with being an American,
[00:34.00]I bought into the American value system.
[00:35.00]I was determined to fall in love and marry someone who was not Indian.
[00:36.00]Yet,somehow,I could never manage to.
[00:37.00]Oh,falling in love was easy.Sustaining it was the hard part.
[00:38.00]Arranged marriages in India
[00:39.00]begin with matching the horoscopes of the man and the woman.
[00:40.00]Those who prepare the horoscopes
[00:41.00]look for balance so that the woman's strengths balance the man's weaknesses
[00:42.00]and man's strengths balance the woman's weaknesses.
[00:43.00]Once the horoscopes match,the two families meet
[00:44.00]and decide whether they are compatible.
[00:45.00]It is assumed that they are of the same religion and social level.
[00:46.00]While this eliminates risk and helps to insure
[00:47.00]that the man and woman will be similar in background and outlook,
[00:48.00]the theory is that the personalities of the couple
[00:49.00]provide enough differences to make the relationship interesting.
[00:50.00]Whether or not this is true,
[00:51.00]the high success rate of arranged marriages in different cultures
[00:52.00]—90 percent in Iran,95 percent in India,
[00:53.00]and a similar high percentage among Hasidic Jews in New York
[00:54.00]and among Turkish and Afghan Muslims — gives one pause.
[00:55.00]Although our families met through a mutual friend,
[00:56.00]many Indian families meet through advertisements placed in national newspapers.
[00:57.00]My parents made a formal visit to my future husband's house
[00:58.00]to see whether Ram's family would treat me well.
[00:59.00]My mother insists that“you can tell a lot about the family
[-1:00.00]just from the way they serve coffee”.
[-1:-1.00]The house had a lovely flower garden.The family liked gardening. Good.
[-1:-2.00]Ram's mother had worked for the United Nations on women's-rights issues.
[-1:-3.00]She also wrote funny columns for Indian magazines.She would be supportive.