Arranged & Love Marriages Part-IV

///In Mumbai, too, more and more children of parents I know are leaving it to mom and dad to look for the right alliance. ‘My mother knows me better than I know myself,’ a young man confessed, ‘I trust her judgement. My dad has seen the world, he has more experience. They know what’s good for me.’ And these are guys in their mid-thirties, who have studied in foreign universities, dated a few girls, done the party circuit. And yet, when it came to marriage, they were more than happy to settle for a conventional, old-fashioned match. Much like their grandparents!

It was my generation that stupidly rebelled against a system that had worked perfectly well for centuries. A lot of us paid the price for letting our impulsive hearts decide who our life partners would be. No regrets. Just that I fear we were blindly following the West and taking our cues from Hollywood, just to prove to our parents how ‘liberated’ and ‘modern’ we were.

Our kids are smarter. And more realistic. They’ve seen too many marriages collapse and they definitely don’t want repeat performances in their own lives. Force-fed on romantic drivel from countless movies, it’s a generation that laughs at the old Mills and Boon version of marriage. They ache for performance and stability. If an arranged match can provide both, they’re not averse to considering it.

My own girls receive proposals from suitable (!) boys, through well-meaning intermediaries. So far nothing has clicked. But at least the girls aren’t scoffing. Ditto for the boys, who shrug ‘whatever’, which translates to ‘It’s okay’. Which is perhaps why I wasn’t caught entirely by surprise when I met those desi young marrieds in the US.

They were refreshingly candid while talking about the methodical manner in which their parents had gone about the whole thing. The girls were all educated, attractive professionals who looked happy enough as they adapted to an entirely alien culture with an entirely alien partner.

‘ We got to know each other only after the wedding. But it has worked out,’ they insisted. Some had had earlier relationships, but claimed that fact did not colour their decision. They’d made informed choices and expressed no regrets.

On the other hand, I also met alarmingly young divorcees (some with babies), who lamented the day they’d said, ‘I do’ to a boyfriend of long standing. ‘We thought we knew each other so well. We were used to each other’s ways, too. God knows what went wrong after we got married. It reached a point where we couldn’t stand the sight of one another.’ Can happen. Does happen. Love . . . passion . . . desire . . . madness . . . where does everything vanish? Nobody knows.