MARRIAGE

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”

This opening line from the most famous book of all time, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen perfectly explains the typically narrow minded Indian mentality.

In India, marriage is not an activity of choice but a 20 something event that must happen before its too late. We created these stupid norms that certain things need to be done/achieved by certain age. Marriage should happen before the age 30, definitely 30, if not, that boy will be treated equivalent to an ISIS terrorist and that girl…. (well, I’ve decided not to use expletives, so I’ll leave it to your imagination).

Unlike the universal principle of “choosing” the mate which most people (including all animal species) in this world and all parallel universe does, we do not choose, SORRY, we are not supposed to choose our life partner. We have our parents to do that for us.

Match-Fixing: This is always discouraged and even illegal to do in sports. But in Indian marriages the society takes up the responsibility to fix our match. Boys and girls are treated as goods and advertisements will be posted for their sale. Girls with deep pockets can buy the groom of their choice. Discounts available depending on the Fairness, Job, Bank balance and the hair left on the head of a guy.

Do they even realize for a single second that we are the ones who would spend the remaining of our life with our life partner, so it will be better if we choose them based on our interests, mind-set, comfort, the space we are ready to provide each other?

No, they do not want us to do that because we might choose to be with a person of a different region, religion, caste, creed, sex and nationality. They want their so-called heritage or genes to be continued in their own religion or caste. Seriously even in the 21^st century, in the time of technological revolution, people are still saying NO to love marriages based on caste and religion.

Simply saying, the word “LOVE’ is a taboo and should be prohibited as per the society’s view.

I really don’t understand why people choose something in groom’s salary or daughter-in-law complexion or similarity in caste over LOVE.

These should be changed. Lack of open and free communication between parents and children in this country is widening the generation gap.

Marriages should be an act of love, instead they are often converted into transactions by exchanging dowry for the seven- figure salary of groom. The unnecessary importance given to the fat weddings is also a waste of money, at what cost? The funding is mostly done from the education the bride could never have.

Arranged marriages are largely overrated and marketed in a more glamourous way than they deserve. There are two alternatives for this, live-in relationships and Love marriages. The domestic violence act applies to both marriages and live-in relationships, and in the eyes of law, they are both equal. Hence maintenance laws, inheritance of property laws are applicable to both.

We have achieved liberty and equality as a constitutional right, but are we really free if there is no freedom to Love?

We proudly say that the rate of divorce in India is very less because of arranged marriages. Of course, let’s assume that most arranged marriages pass and most of the love marriages fail, but the difference lies in the amount of freedom one experience. If they are not happy with their partner, it is always better to take a divorce and move on with their lives than to live the entire life dying.

The very greatness of arranged(loveless) marriages can be observed in the silence of the many Indian households, where husband work overtime to spend less time at home and the wife spend time in the meaningless worship of god or in the naivety of television soaps, both still together only for the sake of children.

So finally, in the words of Oscar Wilde “Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.”

Dedicated to Hiphop Tamizha.