An Arranged Marriage

For centuries now, marriages in India have been arranged by families. When the girl or boy is of marriageable age, feelers[along with details] are sent to all the relatives existing in every corner of the country or abroad. Nowadays it is ofcourse also advertised in the newspapers and on the internet.

First, details of the girl usually the horoscope or a cv and photographs are scrutinized by the boy’s people, if found compatible a meeting between the respective families is fixed. If all matters do not get sorted out in the 1st meeting itself a 2nd or 3rd meeting is allowed and most often than not marriages are fixed on the basis of these 2-3 meetings.

When non-Indians and India’s younger generation express shock or disgust the Karnavar[the elders] proudly boast that the statistics are good. While we may not have 100% success rates the divorce rates are wayyyy below every other countrys'.

Even today atleast 70% of India’s marriages are arranged this way. Incase you are wondering why the girl or boy don’t protest against this forceful way of marrying them off the answer is simple. We have been conditioned to accept this kind of arrangement from the time we were in kindergarten…….and the fact that we trust our parents to make the best choice for us.

Ofcourse love marriages are more common in the Cities nowadays but it happens after a lot of drama especially if the boy & girl are from different religions[eg. Hindu & muslim, Hindu and Christian, Muslim and Christian] or communities[both could be hindus but from different states - a Malayalee and a Punjabi].

Sometimes the girl/boy give into parental pressures and give up their desires, other times parents give in and its usually when children threaten to do something extreme. Very rarely do marriages like these happen with complete approval. Sometimes even if the parents themselves have no problems the relatives step in to make their lives miserable.

Actually I’m deviating away from my subject of Arranged Marriages here, so coming back to one particular arranged marriage I want to tell you about……

Round about 11 yrs back, a few weeks before her 25th birthday, while having dinner her father announced his plans to get her married off before the end of the year. When she loudly protested that she had a good 3 yrs left before putting her head through the nooze he waved his left hand like he was swatting off a fly and continued eating. Her mother offered her hope saying that these things take time to click, so she was not to worry unnecessarily and in the meantime go like a good girl to GK vale and click some pretty pictures so that she could send them to our relatives in the country and abroad…..”just preliminaries”, the mother once again reassures her “a good match sometimes takes years to happen.”

On her birthday as she was getting ready to go out with a friend her mom gets a phone call and she hurriedly tells her to wear something nice as a family friend was coming to visit them with ‘her friend’. Just a casual visit, my mother stresses giving me a meaningful look...oh what the heck....yes, this is my story.

A smart-looking lady, accompanied by the family-friend walks in sometime later. She scanned around the house critically, looked me up and down while I fidgeted with my bikes keys, even held my face to the light and commented on the marks I had on my face. I was not sure how to address this rudeness but my mother nervously hovering on the sidelines and also the fact that I did have marks on my face, held me back from…I don’t know what.

After some detailed grilling, she took a picture from her handbag & gave it to my mom just before leaving. As soon as she left the 4 of us huddled around that tiny picture. We were all impressed for different reasons………

My father[satisfied]: “He’s an engineer”
[It had been my fathers life-long ambition to get his daughters married to engineers]
My mother[impressed]: “They are Orthodox just like us”

My sister[approvingly]: “He looks good”

Me[looking for a fault]: But he stays in Dubai…….guys over there wear neon-coloured lungis. I don’t want to leave Bangalore.

It sounds corny now but 1 look was all I needed to decide I wanted to marry the guy. It was not about the looks…infact some of you may exclaim “What were you thinking….for God’s sake he’s got a mush”.

Aaaaah but decent Malayalee girls like me [yup the pansy types who’ve never dated] prefer guys with mush….. atleast on the guys we were going to get married to. And guess what, malayalee boys decent or otherwise often grow a mush precisely for the same reason. Go ahead ask any decent Malayalee girl or boy, you’ll get the same answer.

Coming back to what I saying…..even from the photograph, a sort of integrity radiated or maybe his personality attracted me. Whatever the reason, I was willing to see how it goes.

The Boy’s Mother had taken my pictures along with her to send it to her son. Seems like the son after seeing the pictures questioned whether I was really above 18 coz I looked more like a teenager in the photos.

Off I went to GK Vale, willingly this time to take pictures in a Saree. Again pictures were duly sent for Boy’s approval. I can quite picture the thoughts running thru many of your minds but the plain fact was that I liked the guy in the picture and wanted to give this proposal a decent chance. Oh well even if I had made a fuss my father was quite capable of dragging me to the nearest tacky studio & getting a picture of me taken with those fake sceneries as background…..so better this than that, right!!! And all this happens in January.

Boy was supposed to come in March, but it kept getting postponed for some reason or the other. My father in the meanwhile had kept a few other proposals on hold coz he was keen this worked……..nobody knew this but I too hoped this one would work out.

I was terribly sick with fever and a sore throat when the boy finally arrived in May. The timing was terrible. He was supposedly in the middle of some important project and came to India via his way somewhere else and so had only 3 days which meant they couldn’t afford to wait for me to recover. I dragged my sickly self up listlessly to dress my best. As the visit was completely unexpected, my father who was out of station was not able to make it on time.

Boy and family arrive, we all congregate to the living-room and general talks happen. Within 15-20 minutes conversation dries up and everybody went quiet, suddenly nobody could think of anything to say..….infact I clearly remember the boy’s mother humming a tune to cover up the awkwardness and his sister was examining the mosaic on the floor in great detail. My mother and sister[the rats] vanished to the kitchen to bring the eats. My father’s absence was never more felt.

From there it went downhill……the boy clammed up AND I WAS TALKING TOO MUCH. Well you have to understand my state of mind here………as I saw it nobody was making an effort and the room was so quiet. As a host I took it upon myself to keep the conversation going & my voice sounded like sandpaper being rubbed on the wall because of the sore-throat I had….you get the picture, right. Even today I cringe when I think about it.

As I saw them walking out of the gate the feeling was not very good. The visit didn’t at all go the way I had imagined. The Boy did not meet my eyes when he was taking leave. It was not a good sign. The Boy, in person was and behaved exactly like the guy I had envisioned in my thoughts.....you know, the calm collected types….whereas I, at my best, was a bit of a clown. I was quite sure he’d say no. I told my parents about my doubts and warned them not to habour any hopes.

Oh well, no point brooding about it right!!! The Boy, now that I had time to think about it came across as arrogant and the silent types which was just the opposite to what I was. And I had to leave my beloved Bangalore and my family to live in some desert. No way.

The other proposal my father had put on hold, that of an Army captain who had 3 servants helping around in the house sounded much more prospective suddenly. For a person who didn’t know how to cook and a couch-potato by nature it was looking like a more and more attractive option now. I went about the day normally though at odd times I became very quiet but blamed this on the viral flu which I had not yet recovered from.

…

This is stretching like a saga…..dont want to bore you out of your skull. So I’ll put the rest of it up in the next post :-D.

Now you tell me, was yours a Love marriage or Arranged?????

Part 2 continued here