Love and Marriage

Call me a hopeless romantic, but almost all of my conversations with the Indian contacts inevitably circle around one of their most important traditions – arranged marriages. The immense complexity of Indian society, including (but not limited to) the caste, clans, tribes, social standing and so on, require all families to do a lot of planning rather than allowing their offsprings to bring a complete stranger into the household.

I learned that father of a bride is responsible to seek out the appropriate candidate for his daughter. The process consists of asking around, creating a short list, and doing the Indian equivalent of the American background check. The list of qualifications is long and complex – the boy must be of the same caste as the bride, have the appropriate astrological chart, belong to a solid family, be free of alcohol / drug dependency, have no criminal past, enjoy good education, promising carrier and so on.

I know more than a few pot-smoking, beer-guzzling, under-employed juvenile delinquents in the US, who would not even make it out of the starting gate!

The bride’s father then contacts the short-listed families and initiates the negotiation round of this critically important process. The families may even allow the future bride and groom to see each other’s photographs and go for a movie and ice cream a few times.

Hopefully everyone is pleased with the parents’ choice and everyone both families get busy with the prenuptial details. The wedding date is carefully chosen based on both parties’ astrological charts, as well as the preferences of the appropriate Hindu god, whose job will be to look after the new family for the rest of its days. Note that we haven’t even started to talk about the usual boring stuff, such as paying the dowry, renting the reception hall, buying the wedding sari, inviting guests, decorating the elephants, choosing the menu, but I am getting tired already!

Perhaps we should introduce a new concept to India – running away to Las Vegas with a person one just met in the bar a few hours ago? This will do wonders to the traditional family values!

Keep on traveling,

Lenka info@lenkatraveler.com

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