Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Of knots 'n' safety nets
|
Let's not blame the entire time-tested system if some arranged marriages are going awry, pleads Swetha Haasini Chakravarthy
|
FOOLPROOF SYSTEM`You get to know a great deal about a person by checking out his family background'
I am a young unmarried girl, working as a software engineer, who believes we belong to a generation guided by logic and broad mindedness. So, when we say that arranged marriages are bad, I wonder if we are blindly accusing a system or logically analysing it to see where it is going wrong.
Arranged marriage is a concept developed over the centuries. It's been working fine so long. If there seems to be a problem suddenly, there must be something wrong with people implementing it rather than the whole concept itself.
Risk management
We all agree that when it comes to an event being planned, there is always a part devoted to risk management. This applies to every field, be it IT, banking, finance or personal decisions. The basic concept is just that when you have the time to plan, you would try and make it foolproof. Arranged marriages follow this very principle. Family affects a person's thought to a very great extent. So analysing the family of the prospective bride/groom makes sense. The things you get to know by getting the family details might not come through even in a year of courtship, where people involved always try to be positive about whatever the other person does because the initial attraction is good fun.
In an arranged marriage, after the initial enquiries by the families, the girl and the boy are allowed to exchange views. At this point, if either of them is not OK with the idea, the whole affair doesn't proceed. This is how it has been working for my grandparents, my parents, my sister and, I'm sure, will work for me too.
The whole concept is very similar to a dating service, except that a dating service would find a match and then let you be, but in an arranged marriage, you have a family which scrutinises details to the maximum to ensure lesser risk. Why is Gen-X, which claims to approach every issue logically, unable to appreciate this?
Some things, of course, have gone wrong in the implementation of the system in recent years. Parents often seem keen on just "unloading responsibility" and have become too fixated on phoren boys. Parents may often thrust their opinions on the son or daughter, just as the son or daughter might assume that the parents are incapable of finding a good match because of generation gap.
No dialogue
All these point out to the fact that there is a lack of dialogue between children and parents, rather than a fundamental problem with the system of arranged marriage itself.
On my recent trip to a foreign country, I met a woman who told me that we Indians are lucky to have families to fall back on. And it's entirely in our hands to protect this system from decaying.
Sound Off! is your space. Anything bugging you? Get it off your chest by mailing us at bangaloremetro@thehindu.co.in.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
