Story transcript

The last time Nashra Balagamwala was approached by an older woman seeking to marry her off to an eligible Pakistani bachelor, she retorted: "Nuh uh, not happening. Just Google my name and you won't want your son to marry me.'"

Balagamwala is the creator of Arranged, a "funny, lighthearted" board game that pokes fun at arranged marriage in her home country.

"The political statement that I'm trying to make is that there is a big problem in Pakistani culture — just the society, the way our norms are, where they expect girls to get married off at a young age to someone their family has picked for them based off their wealth, their social class or other superficial factors," Balagamwala told As It Happens guest host Jim Brown.

"And these girls then become essentially the property of their husbands, who control everything about their lives, who tell them what they can and cannot wear, who they can be friends with, whether or not they can work, and I think it's a big issue that needs to be addressed and nobody ever talks about it."

Nashra Balagamwala says creating and promoting her board game Arranged has helped her to avoid having an arranged marriage herself. (Nashra Balagamwala/Kickstarter)

In the four-person game, you play either the aunty/matchmaker, or one of three teenage girls. The aunty's goal is to arrange marriages for the other players, who must try to avoid her at all costs.

"And they can do that by, say, talking about going abroad for college, or getting a tan because dark skin is considered to be unappealing, or being seen in the mall with boys," Balagamwala said, admitting she ripped a few ideas out of her own playbook for avoiding an arranged marriage.

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"And the aunty at the same time is chasing them around trying to get close to them. So she sees a girl who uses Fair & Lovely, which is a skin whitening cream, and therefore she moves closer to her. Or she sees a girl who has child-bearing hips and therefore moves closer to her. And so it's highlighting all these issues in Pakistan."

Nashra Balagamwala's game Arranged is lighthearted, but has a deeper political message about arranged marriage and women's rights in Pakistan. (Lucas Vasilko/Nashra.co)

The game ends when all three girls are married, either by the aunty or to a suitor of their own choice — "but the chances of that happening are very, very slim."

"There's no such thing as winning in this game, because I wanted it to be true to Pakistani culture," she said.

Balagamwala lives in Pakistan, but she honed her game-making chops in New York at the Rhode Island School of Design, and briefly worked at game giant Hasbro.

Her parents, she said, are supportive of Arranged, though she said they didn't initially grasp its deeper political message.

But her newfound fame — or, in more conservative circles, infamy — has its benefits.

"Recently, reading articles and hearing interviews and things that have happened with this game, they've started to understand the deeper meaning behind it," she said.

"And the minute I landed [in Pakistan] my father goes like, 'Well, nobody's going to want to marry you anymore now that you've spoken up about this. You're unmarriable.'"