Love stories are not new to our country. Be it movies, TV serials, participants of a reality show falling in love, anything; cupid never fails to strike! On screen, in books; it seems very gay so much so that we’d cry if the ones in love do not have a happy ending! ‘They lived happily ever after’ is a mandatory climax!
However, when you go back in time, cupid has been successful, but fate intervened and had in store some very bad things. No, it is not just about Romeo-Juliet, but our very own Laila-Majnu, Devdas-Paro and so on have either met tragic deaths or succumbing to self-imposing death.
In India, the system of ‘love marriage’ did not exist at all till up to 2 decades maybe. Only actors and actresses could fall in love and get married. Otherwise there was no such concept at all. Reasons were plenty; women were never allowed to study. So where could men actually find their soul mate in someone? And most families preferred to find prospective grooms/brides within the family so that the ties in the family prolong. In the case of child marriages, if the boy was to die for some reason, the poor girl child was confined to her in-laws’ house for the rest of her life.
Reasons can be plenty, but when it comes to love marriage, the change from then and now can be attributed to women education. As mentioned earlier, women were not allowed to be sent to schools, or if they ever did go, not beyond class 10. Hence the concept was almost nil. Parents would find the entire process of groom/bride searching very exciting and innumerable ‘tables’ with the 9 planets’ standings would be exchanged and matched. Unfortunately, the people in question had to make do with mere looks, sometimes at the time of the marriage even! Some even today stand by this tradition, calling it a system with lots of excitement in store!
Next came the trend of women being sent for higher education where interactions with the opposite sex began. What may have stated as something new, had turned into a daily affair now. Amidst the concept in question came platonic relationships, one night stands and what not? This reminds me of Chetan Bhagat’s latest read, “2 States: Story of my Marriage”, where, in four simple sentences, explains what love marriage is in India. It could not have been portrayed better.
“Boy loves Girl. Girl loves Boy.
Girl's family has to love boy. Boy's family has to love girl.
Girl's Family has to love Boy's Family. Boy's family has to love girl's family.
Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.”
In general, the above still holds good today. Parents are open to their kids falling in love but with a lot of strings of course! For example, I knew of a household whose parents would advice their son that he was free to find his better half provided she came under the main umbrella of the caste! Ex: A Brahmin was mandatory; a Tamil or a Kannadiga didn’t matter!
This is not the end however! Trends are changing further! Just recently I overheard my mother and her friends chatting. One of them was in the process of groom searching and she was supposedly having a tough time. If the boy had looks, his income wasn’t enough and vice versa. Further, the girl was clear that will not be marrying if she was to live with her in laws, was not allowed to work and so on. The poor mother suffered from peer pressure, family pressure that she was not marrying off her daughter at the right time, pressure from her own daughter who had her own list of terms and conditions.
What she said at last surprised me instantly! “How I wish these girls just find their own men. These days they get mature so soon, I am sure they would not make the wrong choice when they have already made their conditions. It saves us all the trouble of having to find a groom, making sure his family is good and so on.”
Though what the mother said is not applicable to many families in the country, the trend is surely changing. More and more parents are now open and are ready to take a chance of letting their kids choose their partners. In the world of live-ins and homosexuality, those who choose to be straight and make plans of living with the opposite sex, marriage options are surely becoming broader in our country!
3 comments:
"In India, the system of ‘love marriage’ did not exist at all till up to 2 decades maybe."
You have an amazing lack of insight.
If you do not have the lack of insight, feel free to give me an insight! If I am wrong, i will gladly accept it and make corrections!
:) Merely the expressed thought that India had been a stranger to love marriage till as late as two decades ago cracks me up.
Does it not strike you as odd that our country had no 'system of love marriages' earlier? What were people living before the two decades doing? Not loving and not marrying?
Be that as it may, I do not want to sound harsh. I am only trying to highlight the fact that people before two decades ago were well in love and had a well established system of love marriages.
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