When I broke the news to my parents that I was dating somebody, my father asked me the basic questions: “What does he do? How did you meet? Do you have the same food habits?” (In a gastronomically diverse country like India, this is a very significant question, believe me.) My mother’s reaction, on the other hand was a lot less subdued and less accepting. Above all, her main cause of irritation was this: “My only daughter and my only child, and I am deprived of the right of choosing a husband for her.” Please don’t get her wrong. My mother is a smart, very highly educated (a Doctorate), career-driven ambitious woman. But as Indian mothers go, she felt left out. She didn’t get the opportunity that even 60 percent of Indian mothers today take for granted.
Arranged marriages are supposedly a part of our “custom and tradition.” Thankfully, I grew up in a nuclear family where it was just my more cosmopolitan parents and I, with almost no contact with our more conservative relatives, save the token presence at the weddings or funerals. For the more “Indianized” relatives I have, choosing your spouse, dating before getting married, or god forbid, falling in love with more than one person is not even an existing concept.
For generations as far as any of my elderly relatives can remember, marriages happened between happened between “known” families. In a country where networking is so vast where your mother’s second-cousin’s sister-in-law’s brother’s son’s friend is considered a “known” boy, girls definitely have plenty of “options” to choose from. But to throw more clarity, let me explain a rough “outline” of the procedure. Not the actual one followed through ages, but the modern day one (even this relatively modified version would shock a lot of people in their 80s—for some, this is simply too “forward.” For people like me, it’s almost primitive, but the fact is that the more austere method was followed until probably even a mere thirty years ago).
Typically, the boy’s parents come forward with the request. For some families, it’s still a matter of dishonor if the girl’s family is proactive in persuasion. Then, the parents first meet, to see if the families will gel together. If all is okay until this stage, horoscopes are exchanged. (Although these days the more liberal parents will skip this stage to respect the sentiments of the non-believers.) The next stage involves the guy and the girl meeting. Some parents will merely give the children token information about the prospective other, and encourage them to meet. Some families insist on the youngsters being chaperoned (by someone their own age, maybe a cousin or very close friends), while other families prefer to have the guy and his parents over for maybe a round of tea, or dinner. If all is well even now, the girl and the boy will be allowed to probably talk a few times to know each other, but there is always a deadline for their engagement looming.
