Marriage on the cards

Before you start getting any ideas, let me make it very clear that my marriage is still quite a few years away. What I'm going to talk about is the people around me who have attained the "marriageable age" according to some people (parents & relatives) and are now the most eligible bachelors/bachelorettes around. The thing that makes it interesting is everything except the actual marriage.

I come from a background where a marriage doesn't involve just the bride and the groom. It's got more to do with the rest of the family and everything they do or don't do rather than the two central characters. Love marriages are a strict no-no and so are inter-caste/religion marriages and I'm not even exaggerating. The whole process looks so.....for the lack of a better term - primitive.

It starts with a simple telephonic conversation or a chat over tea where one person happens to mention how worried he is about his/her son's/daughter's marriage. Assuming that the other person is not that familiar with the family in question, he/she goes on to ask what the son/daughter is doing, how old they are, what their qualifications are and most important of all how much they are earning at the moment (even more so in case they're talking about the son; I'm not gender biased, the people I'm talking about are!). Then they suggest the name of someone they think will be a suitable match. Then the first person inquires about the same stuff for the other side, this time they want the details of the parents as well as the immediate family too. Now, the bride's parents ask what the other person thinks the expectations of the groom's family would be and in case of the groom's family, they just ask how much the bride's family would be able to shell out. For the uninitiated (my Australian friends), these people are talking about the total money which is spent during the entire traditional Indian Wedding including all the rituals and ceremonies leading up to the Big Day which in turn has to have the biggest bill of the lot.

Then come the 'other demands' which are otherwise known as Dowry (PLEASE keep in mind that I'm not sure about this practice too much, this is just based on what I see(perceive) or overhear at the weddings I attend). This looks like a normal and mutually agreed upon and understood practice. There is nothing illegal about it. People are not forced to gift the groom a new car or other appliances to put around the new house, it is something that is understood and need not be mentioned, almost like a ritual. It's just a token of gratitude for accepting the daughter of someone, who is in desperate need of getting rid of the burden of marrying her off into a nice family (NOTE the use of the words '...into a nice FAMILY'), into your home and letting her become a part of your family.

Then the talk wanders off to the exotic marriages the people have been to, of the obscene amount of money that was spent during that wedding and so on and so forth. Sometimes they also talk about the marriages that went wrong or about the marriages that weren't supposed to happen (inter-caste etc) and how they turned out.

Another big issue is of the bride being able to carry on working (if she is working at the moment) or wanting to take up a profession after the marriage. Some people want keep-at-home daughter-in-laws who do all the housework and take part in other social activities and rituals, some don't have a problem with them working (extra income is always good), some want a combination of the two.

Anyways, I can go on and on, and I will to if I'm feeling particularly cynical at some other point of time, but the reason I even mentioned this topic was a little conversation I witnessed between a few of my relatives. They were discussing the prospects of marriage of a cousin brother and sister of mine. It was very amusing at some points.

I don't agree with most of these practices, but since I've grown up around these things I don't know how I will turn out when my time comes. Learning how to beat the system while staying within it requires a lot of time and skill. It's better to leave it to the elders for now.

Points:1000 points to me for the new and improved look of my blog. Hope you like it.

Can't think of any other things to give points to. Sigh....

**NEW FEATURE**
One-Liner: What is the point of wearing a helmet when you're sky-diving?