Shoma Narayanan's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"
Arranged Marriages vs Falling in Love
My first blog post, and the title sounds like the subject of one of those interminable GDs we used to have in college. GD stood for Group Discussion, and was a favourite with interviewers trying to short-list candidates for a job or for admission to a post-grad course. In retrospect, it makes sense- poor things, they must have got thousands of applications, and hundreds of students cleared the written exams – there was no way they could interview all of them. So they’d separate us into groups of ten or fifteen, and hold a Group Discussion. Too argumentative – you’d be out. Too quiet – out. Overly radical opinions – out. And so on and so forth. No wonder we held mock GDs to practice. “Arranged marriages vs ‘love’ marriages” was a favourite topic, even among recruiters (I wonder why – entertainment value? Free dating tips?). I usually argued in favour of falling in love – in my head it was closely allied to freedom of choice, independence, living one’s own life, etc, etc. Being terribly opinionated, I was very contemptuous of arranged marriages – the only reason I tempered my arguments was because there was a high chance the interviewers had had arranged marriages themselves.
Arranged marriages are quite as common in India today as they were fifteen years ago when I was terrorising recruiters. Something about them obviously works. Maybe it’s the whole social acceptance thing – parents, relatives, neighbours and pretty much everyone you know has a stake in making the marriage work. And the families are usually similar, so there are fewer adjustment issues. And unlike in the Dark Ages, the couple is given some time to get to know each other – any basic incompatibility is ruled out.
Why would an independent, intelligent woman agree to an arranged marriage? I spoke to a lot of people when I was doing the research for my book “Take One Arranged Marriage”, and a few broad themes emerged. Traditional, conservative family, and the girl doesn’t want to upset her parents. Someone who’s had a bad break-up, and doesn’t want to risk the whole ‘falling in love’ business again. Someone whose biological clock is ticking – she hasn’t met anyone she really likes, and an arranged marriage is her only shot at having a family. When I finally wrote the book, I used a combination of the first reason, and another reason that is very specific to Tara, my heroine (I’m not going to say what the second reason was – I still want people to go out and buy the book!).
One of the most common arguments the “arranged marriage” faction used in those long-ago GDs was – “more ‘love-based’ marriages end in divorce”. Where that statistic came from I have no idea – last I checked, the Census Bureau didn’t collect data on marriages being arranged or otherwise. So I’d argue that a) quite as many arranged marriages ended in divorce, and b) people in arranged marriages, women especially, were bound by convention, and wouldn’t file for divorce even if they were deeply unhappy. What I couldn’t explain was why thousands of people who had arranged marriages with people they barely knew still seemed perfectly happy. I think I understand it better now – in enough cases, trite as it may sound, love does come after marriage. And in others, even if you can’t call it love, there is enough respect and understanding to make the marriage work.
Would arranged marriages work in countries where there’s no tradition supporting them? Maybe. Maybe not. Singles clubs, blind dates, matrimonial websites – they’re all ways of meeting people with the express purpose of finding someone you could have a relationship with. So not that different from arranged marriages after all. I’d love to know what other people think.
Arranged marriages are quite as common in India today as they were fifteen years ago when I was terrorising recruiters. Something about them obviously works. Maybe it’s the whole social acceptance thing – parents, relatives, neighbours and pretty much everyone you know has a stake in making the marriage work. And the families are usually similar, so there are fewer adjustment issues. And unlike in the Dark Ages, the couple is given some time to get to know each other – any basic incompatibility is ruled out.
Why would an independent, intelligent woman agree to an arranged marriage? I spoke to a lot of people when I was doing the research for my book “Take One Arranged Marriage”, and a few broad themes emerged. Traditional, conservative family, and the girl doesn’t want to upset her parents. Someone who’s had a bad break-up, and doesn’t want to risk the whole ‘falling in love’ business again. Someone whose biological clock is ticking – she hasn’t met anyone she really likes, and an arranged marriage is her only shot at having a family. When I finally wrote the book, I used a combination of the first reason, and another reason that is very specific to Tara, my heroine (I’m not going to say what the second reason was – I still want people to go out and buy the book!).
One of the most common arguments the “arranged marriage” faction used in those long-ago GDs was – “more ‘love-based’ marriages end in divorce”. Where that statistic came from I have no idea – last I checked, the Census Bureau didn’t collect data on marriages being arranged or otherwise. So I’d argue that a) quite as many arranged marriages ended in divorce, and b) people in arranged marriages, women especially, were bound by convention, and wouldn’t file for divorce even if they were deeply unhappy. What I couldn’t explain was why thousands of people who had arranged marriages with people they barely knew still seemed perfectly happy. I think I understand it better now – in enough cases, trite as it may sound, love does come after marriage. And in others, even if you can’t call it love, there is enough respect and understanding to make the marriage work.
Would arranged marriages work in countries where there’s no tradition supporting them? Maybe. Maybe not. Singles clubs, blind dates, matrimonial websites – they’re all ways of meeting people with the express purpose of finding someone you could have a relationship with. So not that different from arranged marriages after all. I’d love to know what other people think.
