Predicaments of an Arranged Marriage

* It is remarkably phenomenal that how we have started considering Marriage and Wedding as synonymous to each other.

1.        Artificial Micro-Dating System: Parents/Relatives/Marriage negotiators, etc invest their extra ordinary event management skills for arranging a first artificial date for the boy and the girl. More than a date, It is the most important viva where high performance has to be delivered with extreme and acute caution and prudence. You get only 15 to 20 minutes to decide whether the other person is worthy enough to live with or not.

2.        The Parliament/ Wise Disposition : Who will go with the boy/girl except for parents on the first meeting becomes a sensitive matter mostly, not because of any logical reasons but your precedence of importance in the family is determined through this. If you are taken, you are important and if you aren’t taken, you are not important. I have experienced many such incidents in my family where a person stopped talking to the other one as he/she wasn’t invited to the first meeting.

3.        Advance Procession: Sometimes people in the first meeting are so much in number that you feel like you are attending some advance parade or procession. Recently, once of uncles took 1 and a half dozen people (18) to see a perspective groom for his daughter. I became enraged when I came to know about this insane act. I telephoned him up next day and ended up saying “ Baarat lekar gae thein ya ladka dekhne? (Did you go to meet the groom or to marry him instantly with marriage procession?)

4.        Legitimacy: Most of the time your opinion is buried in the grave. Bhua,(Paternal Aunt) Chacha, (Paternal Uncle) Mami, (Maternal Aunt) or some far sighted relative becomes the supreme judge for you. The most senior or experienced (as per family standards) is administered with the charge of doing a cost-benefit analysis. He/she has to come up with such an arrangement/decision that intra-family ties and people are not agitated specially the Fufas,(Husband of Paternal Aunt) who are famous for their notorious behavior during any marriage. (North Indian Punjabi Context)