Arranged Marriages!

“It’s amazing! I still can’t believe that it’s successful there. May be it’s a cultural difference. But, how can someone marry a complete stranger? I am just baffled! Well, explain...”

This is generally how a conversation goes right after the few-minute silences between an American and an Indian in here. Most of the time, they are astonished, amazed, awed….after witnessing and understanding its success or the ‘sucks-us’ rate!

“So your brother as well as your sister got married this way! Do you have someone waiting on you there to go and tie a knot?” is the general question I try to dodge diplomatically, else would lead to ‘true love’ and eventually to the ‘lord’ discussions, which I hate from the bottom of my pants!

Anyways, coming to think of it, it’s true that my brother as well as my sister are married to almost complete strangers then, and now celebrating life of reasoning and adaptation as happy as anyone! How in the world does it work?

What an arranged marriage is? It is something, which is fixed by someone other than the couple themselves, usually the parents. The cruelest are the ones which are forced by them sans the couple's interest/concern. While, the liberal ones, which is the way it is nowadays, start with just an introduction of the couple through their parents and the rest is up to the couple. Anyways, I think that it’s not a good idea to get in to the development or the definitions of the formal procedures that seems to be ever changing. There are various different kinds of arranged marriages. However, it’s too broad a topic to delve in to especially after realizing the truth on the level of cultural knowledge that I posses on the places like Japan, Bahrain etc, that follows it. Nevertheless, from an Indian perspective, I think I can drop my penny based on the reason that I have been exposed to it for the major part of my life education.

I had this same thought, but it was one of my friends who laid it in better words, before I could. It all boils down to behavioral pattern.

You belong to a certain religion and to a certain caste and in some cases, to a particular sub-caste just as your parents do. Interestingly, there are many other people with the exact same background. So, by choosing someone from that pool you have already achieved compatibility on an important level. In addition, if the two of you have a similar level of education and financial status, and have compatible interests also, then you are a long way into finding the ideal partner.

I think this is amazingly true. Well, let’s see from a behavioral perspective. It is hard for the other half to understand the behavioral pattern of families and relatives if he/she is not exposed to it in the first place. Right off the bat, the question pops up…Marriage is between two people… isn’t it? Well, excellent question! Accept it or not, regardless of what culture you are from, the truth is that Marriage is just not between two souls but between two families. So it is highly essential to understand and articulate both sides’ behavioral pattern to extract harmony. By marrying someone from a similar cultural background, any possibility of difference of opinions with respect to behavioral patterns is denied and henceforth happiness and peace prevails with respect to that.

On the other hand, the most important part that people think it fails to address the ‘true-love’ story. I am not taking sides here. I don’t want to dive in to this ocean where I would end up talking more on the definition of love, rather than positives/negatives of arranged marriage.

According to people who are successfully married through this arranged marriage system, Love is something that they extract by understanding and appreciating marriage.

“Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry” - Tom Mullen.

The arranged marriages of these days hope and fight to make the second part of the quote true and in most of the cases, it works. It also assumes that the first part of the quote can be achieved by trust and faith.

Okay, from a common-man perspective! If I assume, true love is all about extracting from each other! What if there is no resonance?

The possibility of having people from the same cultural pattern with completely different perceptions is not low. I still remember one of my friends telling me about her husband hopping in from a totally different planet with no common thoughts and completely blank when it comes to areas of her expertise, even in common life situations. Hence the complaints on this being a high-risk system, is not a surprise. This is what the parents or the people who arrange these have in mind when they start looking for grooms or brides. The concept of behavioral patterns comes within the framework of choosing someone from the similar cultural background. The resonance and thought pattern comes from the scrutinies that are involved with the education, family background etc. So, when the so-called formal introduction of families/couple happens, be in any form of setting, with a snack with families around or as a date, each other’s thought patterns are almost predicted well by the couple and henceforth are looking forward to surprise each other by revealing something that would generally involve long term perspectives on the future or haunting past if any. In both cases, they are educating each other in what happened and what they expect. If any of it disturbs anyone of them, the process is thought over time and so are the chances of an amalgamation and hence the answers follows based on the amount of compromises involved. So once the preliminary process is over, they step in to the institution called Marriage assuming they will stand by as well as surprise each other as they progress and understand life. If you think, isn’t this the same way you step in the case of a love marriage, except for the surprising part.

I have a whole bunch of friends who proclaim that they hate this system called arranged marriage. Most of them say, that no matter how long it might take, they would find the one as long as he/she can satisfy the set of rules they have. If you examine them, you would definitely find one addressing the behavioral pattern. I will fall in love, but I will make sure that she is Tamil Iyer from a different gothram…I have heard these as well. I truly don’t have the right to criticize individual thought processes, but I certainly have the right to say that I don’t want to think like that. Again, I am not taking sides here. I can certainly understand people, who say, what if I can find true love with all the constraints I have..? It is highly possible and its happening, but to assume that it is impossible to derive true love by reasoning and adaptation is something that I hate to perceive. Yet, if happiness is what everyone seeks, love or arranged, Marriage will deliver if you believe in it. And by the way, the person who thought her husband was from a different planet is living happily now, with the same person.