Frankly, this is my effort to have a humorous take on the pre-wedding arranged marriage customs & traditions followed in some castes in India to date. Its drawn from various interactions, observations from various people (friends, relatives, strangers). It may or may not be true in all the cases. I must add that its not intended to offend anyone either.....
Scene 1A friend of mine is about to get married. The whole house is exited that their son is going to get married. Especially the mother of boy.
(* The mother always thinks that the day that she gets her boy married is the day that her responsibilities are over). The sisters are all visibly exited cause soon a new entrant is going to come to their family. The little nephews of the * Waiting to be groom, don’t understand what the fuss is all about. The sisters have told them that soon their uncle is going to find an aunty & they are happy enough to be exited on hearing that news.
So the news is marketed as if it is one of the most important priorities in the world. Every close relative along with close Tom, Dick & Harry’s are told to kindly suggest if they find any suitable girl for their boy. The funny thing is everybody wants the perfect girl inspite of the kind of circus buffoon the guy is. That’s an irony followed across continents. Then after a lot of marketing the groom gets marriage proposals from the brides family. There is an interesting aspect to the bride side of sending a marriage proposal. Generally it’s observed that the bride’s father does a lot of preliminary enquiry before sending a proposal to the prospective groom about his dear daughter. In these days of the Gen-X becoming a rage the bride’s father has the full right to do it & so does the groom’s family.
My friend got a lot of marriage proposals. I can’t comment on how well he looked but he was pretty rich so naturally any girl father wouldn’t like to marry of his daughter to a beggar. Then comes the
sorting, selection & rejection program. What I call the
SSR program.
One gets to come across a lot of interesting perceptions during this time. A lot of people related or unrelated try to poke their noses during the SSR program. The boy wants to have the most beautiful wife. His mother wants the perfect daughter in law & his father is just thinking about the money he would have to spend on his son’s wedding. There is some thing about arranged marriages that is perplexing.
In an arranged the boy & the girl not only marry each other but marry each other’s families too. Whereas in a love marriage commitment exists only between the boy & the girl especially when the parents do not consent to the wedding. Both have their own good & bad virtues. I personally think that it’s impossible to decide about weather the person whom your going to marry is perfect for you within a hour of meeting each other. Indian society even as it stands today is cruel to post engagement break-up’s & even merciless to divorces. So in a way in a love marriage you atleast know the other person before to marry him or her.
There are various criteria’s the girl has to match during the SSR program. The general criteria no-1 is the girl has to be fair & beautiful. You will never read a matrimonial add in the newspapers where the demand is for a dark & ugly girl. Even if the guy looks like a dork he & his family wants a princess, whether he gets one or not is for God to decide. We all live in a group, which we call society & it’s the consciousness of society that ends up influencing decisions (right or wrong) in life. So all parameters along with beauty, education & mostly importantly HOROSCOPE matching is done in a majority of the Indian homes.
One thing that can override everything is the Horoscope. If the guy end up liking a girl looking at her photo in her marriage resume & the pundit says that the horoscope does not match then the
Horoscope becomes a
HORROR SCOPE for him. No one wants to take a chance in a marriage. The pundit’s opinion at the end of the day becomes the final decision criteria in most Indian marriages. One more important consideration in most perverted families in the kind of money the girl’s father has. Somehow or the other everybody thinks about the amount of money that the boy will get when he marries a girl.
The disgusting thing about this is such things become evaluations of social status.
So in the entire bunch of proposals a few girls are short listed (just like a company chooses its employees) & then comes the real fun part. Personal Interviews at 3 levels of FM ( Family Management). First the girl is visited by some of the boy’s relatives who are just there to pass opinions & have a good time. They comment on every stupid thing from the house to the color & breed of the dog, to the furniture & generally the last comment is about the girl. Such people comments are totally based on family, money & life style. The last comment which is a brief comment is a loosely based affirmative or negative about the girl, which is in-turn, is based on House & furniture observations. Then come the parents. Parents are generally more focused on their direct counterparts i.e. the girl’s parents. They 1st analyze what treatment the girl’s family gives to them & also talk to the girl but if they are disappointed with the family they overlook all the good qualities of the girl. The final interview is the most interesting & the most fascinating one. This takes place after the girl family & the girl clears the first two interviews. This interview lasts for around 30 minutes to an hour though the preparation for this interview both from the boy as well as the girl’s side is at least done before 24 to 48 hrs of the actual appointment.
The girl’s family goes completely out of its way to please the boy. They buy so many sweets in such quantities, most of which would take them at least a month to eat themselves. The reason of keeping a dozen of sweets is that there is no intention of hearing a No from the boy’s side. The thinking especially in conservative families is that if the boy eats a lot of sweets then the chance of him disliking the girl are miniscule. The girl’s father & family pull out all stops to impress the boy. There is constant serving going on & if the boy brings his relatives or friends with him which happens a lot in India, they have to be given VVIP treatment too.
Beneath all the serving & the show what goes on is observation. Each & every moment is observed. If sweets are served on the table for the boy & his company- the boy is under test. The test is how much does he eat. ! The basic rule is the less he eats from the table the better person he is. It’s what people call the table manners test. If the boy makes the mistake of consuming sweets in the girl’s house over a limit, he becomes a sure rejection candidate. The girl father thinks “vow- Is this guy eating so much because he doesn’t have the money to eat it or is he a free loader ). Both perceptions ensure sure rejection.
The girl’s family is also under severe test. If the treatment meted out the boy & his company does not match up to expectations then there is a chance that the boy would reject the marriage proposal. Finally the girl is bought to the hall, dressed in her best costume & her best make up & her best attitude to create the better impression. This by the way applies for the guys too. Society has changed. The fear of rejection lies not only with the girl as it was before but due to changing times lies on the boy too. Everybody at the end of the day fears rejection. Though times are changing, the predisposition of rejection in vast sections of Indian society still lies with the boy’s family but in relatively educated & affluent middle & upper middle class the chance of being rejected is equal in most cases.
So the very elegantly dressed girl comes to the hall generally with a tray that always has something good one it, which is always a pretext as the girl has come basically to showcase her self. The boy who has seen the picture of girl in her marriage resume looks to first see if she is as beautiful in the picture & if she is good looking in real. In my own observation 75 % of opinion in a 30 minute interview is completely based on presentation. So the guy has already formed an opinion about the girl just by looking at her. This is general male mentality. Then comes the important interview stage where the boy & the girl go & talk to each other alone. They have 30 minutes to decide if they are right for each other or not.
As I said the boy & the girl have already formed opinions of each other based on each others presentations. The thirty-minute interview in most Indian families is completely dominated by the boy. It is made to look like the boy is the employer & the girl is the prospective employee. In very few cases do the girls generally speak out in the interview & counter question the boy. The boy will ask all kinds of stupid questions ranging from the likes & dislikes to seeing how talented the girl is. If she can sing, dance, do painting & write poetry at the same time though there is a fair chance that he possesses none of those talents. No 30 minute conversation is enough of make a life changing decision so after a lot of consultation with family as well as some predisposed opinion of the girl in the limited conversation that he had with her, the boy generally takes an intuitive decision. The problem with most intuitive decision is most people aren’t gifted with intuition & the decision is more based on physical appearance & presentation, which can often be referred to as misguided intuition.
Most women are most perceptive & sensitive by nature. Most decisions taken by women are always in terms of keeping their parents happy & most of them for emotional & social security more than anything else. That is one of the reasons why the decisions taken by the girl in Indian society are more influenced by parents opinion & judgment rather than their own. That’s why the fear of rejection lies more with girl than the boy in major sections of Indian society.
Perceptions change along with time & way India is emulating the west, growing urbanization & increase in standard of living will bring about a change in age old values & perceptions. The change is inevitable; it would just take a little time.
With this I come to SCENE 2. The girl & the boy like each other & decide to get married.A date of marriage is fixed. The entire period between engagement & the data of marriage is observed in scene 2.
The period between engagement & marriage is a great period in the lives of the boy & the girl. People tell me it’s usually the best time in ones life. Especially in an Indian Set up which are mostly based on arranged marriages, this period acquires the utmost amount of significance. This is the period where the boy & the girl get to really know each other.
The come to know if the decisions they took to marry each other were based on misguided intuition or they were just meant for each other. Even reasonably broad minded people allow interaction between the girl & the boy at this stage. I have seen a lot of couples taking to each other on the phone for three-four hours non stop on a daily basis. Everybody wonders how is it possible for people to speak continuously on the phone for that period of time but they say “when your time comes, you will do the same thing too”. And the funny thing is a lot of people who think it’s absolutely insane to talk on the phone for over 2-3 hrs on a daily basis still willingly resort to the same insanity. This is a stage what people can describe as a parent come society-authorized friendship. Though there is still a conservative section of society that look at the “to-be-wed” couples in a skeptical way but a major of the moderately liberal society do not have any qualms about it. Generally the girl’s father does not mind his daughter going out with the boy as he is going to be his future son-in-law, though timings of going out are generally restricted is most middle class reasonably modern sections of society. There is always a time by which the girl should come back home. In old days such a liberty of meeting each other before marriage didn’t even exist so we can say as times changes, society on a whole become modern in thinking & the process of evolution in value systems continues.
Now to the important part, Other the having fun to-gether there is always a big risk of the two not getting along so well & the engagement breaking up. As easy as it is, to break relationships in western society, it is as difficult to do that in India. At times Misguided Intution is really misguided & the problem in India is somehow the families try everything in their bit to mend the relationship. As I have said before Indian society is really cruel to post engagement break ups. The chances of any of the two getting married any time sooner become bleak. The gossip mongerors & the impression formed in the minds of the people about a break up is always very skeptical one in nature. Even in these days of relatively modern Indian society, the power still lies with the boy. I have heard of very few instances of engagements broken off due to the girl saying that I do not want to marry this guy. Some girls are firm but most girls in India have been bought up with family values that still place the happiness of family before themselves. The cost that they might up paying of it practically for the better part of their lives does not ring a tune with them.
Getting back to the fun part, in this period the boy & the girl go to various places like Restaurants, movies , gardens & even Museums to-gether. Generally the period from engagement to marriage is about 6 months. If the boy & the girl happen to stay in the same city then the chances of knowing each other really well before getting married increase a lot. If they don’t happen to be in the same place then they end up meeting twice or thrice in the whole period of six months & most of the communication that goes on is generally though phone calls or various modern means of communication like the internet with each other. People respond differently to different situations. So there is a chance that both of them pretend to play the perfect couple until they get married & later show their true colours. As much as disgusting as that sounds these things still happen in India. In my own opinion the post-engagement to pre-marriage period is a period where both the guy & the girl are in their goody-goody selves. They are practically like the perfect boy-friend-girl-friend without the excess society baggage that comes with it. It is sometimes because of this the true nature of both the to-be-married couples may not be revealed to each other because they are being perfect in a perfect situation.
As I said before, any period before marriage is always a period of evaluation. So the boy & the girl will search for compatibility within each other. They will look for things that they have in common. The dilemma in Indian society is suppose after the engagement the to-be-married couple finds out that they are not that compatible with each other they still stick on to their marriage decision cause of parental & societal pressures. Still its comparatively easier for a boy to say no post engagement than the girl. Something that will definitely change in the times to come. I have never seen an engagement breaking from the girl’s side because the girl does not like the nature of the boy. Its exactly the reverse . Most of the time the only engagements that are broken off from the girl’s side are either due to parental pressures for implied dowry demands & gross misbehavior from the boy’s side. Boys in Indian society are a highly pampered lot. Most of them have this thinking that its cool if they have had an affair but if the girl they are going to marry has had some history, its completely unacceptable to them. Unless they end up liking the girl so much that they are willing to let-go of the history part, they will invariably always find ways to reject the girl during in this period. This is one of the reasons why some parents speed up the marriage of their kids so that there is no scope for a rejection.
