In 2016, the Pakistani designer Nashra Balagamwala attended her best friend’s wedding in Karachi. She was approached by an older woman, who asked about her relationship status. “You’re 22 and you’re still single?” the lady gawked.



“She was in shock I wasn’t getting engaged any time soon,” said Balagamwala, who now lives in New York City. “It infuriated her before she walked off.”

Pakistani women can face incredible pressure to wed at a young age. Balagamwala has worn fake engagement rings to weddings, cut her hair to look less feminine and even “become more tanned and therefore more unappealing”, she said.

Now she wants to shed light on arranged marriage in a new board game called Arranged!, which will be released on her website on Wednesday.

The strategy game follows three young Pakistani women as they try to avoid a matchmaker. There are escapist tactics and genuine ways to finding Mr Right.

“My parents have tried to have me married off multiple times,” said Balagamwala. “I want to avoid an arranged marriage without upsetting my parents too much.”

In 2012, Balagamwala started studying at the Rhode Island School of Design. Since graduating last year, she has worked at Hasbro, which makes Monopoly and Jenga, but her parents want to her to return to Karachi, just as her one-year work visa expires.

She is selling her board game for $30 online and the funding will go toward a new work visa and a flight back to America. “If I am ever in the situation where I have to get married, I want to have enough funds to be able to leave,” she said. “It would take a few months but the goal is to come back.”

Photograph: Lucas Vasilko

Some families have forced their daughters to return to Pakistan for arranged marriages – one woman was drugged by her parents on a plane; an 18-year-old girl was attacked with acid for refusing an arranged marriage proposal. One Pakistani couple were hanged in Chakwal for eloping together and their 16-year-old friend who helped them escape was burned alive. Free-will marriage was legalized in Pakistan in 2003.

Balagamwala has seen her own friends suffer. One was kept in a room by her parents and given a minimal amount of food until she agreed to marry a stranger. Another friend married a gay man who didn’t come out until a year later.

Balagamwala anticipates her family pressuring her to marry. “It was a struggle getting to college. I keep begging my parents, ‘Can I at least wait until I’m 21?’ When I turned 21, I had to meet some guys.”

As her family introduced her to potential suitors, Balagamwala said she would have one-on-one talks with future husbands. “It’s a case of girls asking what rights they will have in their marriage,” she said. “Will you allow me to wear a sleeveless shirt? Am I allowed to drive? How many kids must I have?

“I don’t think anyone should agree to spend the rest of their lives with someone when they’ve only known a couple of weeks,” she said. “I am too much of a hopeless romantic to end up in a situation like that.”

Nashra Balagamwala. Photograph: Barron Webster

In the Arranged! game, a deck of cards pushes the plot forward. As male suitors are scattered randomly across the board, there are three female protagonists and one “auntie” who attempts to marry off the girls to every boy they can find.

The game is inspired by the creative ways Balagamwala has avoided arranged marriages – whether Photoshopping alcohol into Facebook photos to displease elders, or gaining weight and talking about a career.

The male characters in the game represent stereotypes of Pakistani men – shy mama’s boys or womanizers Balagamwala says “think they’re God’s gift to humanity”.

Balagamwala says it taps into her view of a misogynistic attitude in Pakistan, with men “who are all about women belonging in the kitchen and have this male dominance about them. They dominate your entire life.”

The goal of the game is to escape an arranged marriage and find true love, which is found in the “Golden Boy” card. This dreamy Mr Right – who all the girls love – has them swarming the auntie for a marriage proposal.

To attract the Golden Boy, the girls start “flaunting all their talents”, said Balagamwala. “They say: ‘I pray five times a day, I spent all day at the salon.’”

The real goal is to spark a conversation around arranged marriages. “I hope to get people talking about this issue that is so pressing,” said Balagamwala. “Some scenes seem ridiculous or comical, but its darkness is masked in lightness.”

Balagamwala says arranged marriage needs to be resisted by women who can fight it. “Most will accept arranged marriage as their fate. They’re too afraid and they’re not educated enough to know they don’t have to go from their dad’s house to their husband’s house.”

The day after she lands in Karachi next week, Balagamwala has to attend a wedding. She is prepared – and has cut her hair short. “They will question my sexuality or think I have become too modern and westernized,” she said. “It’s mentally draining to have to fight an arranged marriage every moment.”

Though she wants to get married and have children one day, Balagamwala wants to meet someone naturally.

“Before coming to America, I thought the perfect man would allow me to work and wear what I want, but now it’s much more,” she said. “I want someone who supports my career and someone I fall in love with, absolutely.”