Wednesday 18 September 2013

ARRANGED LOVE


Sure, instilling good values and giving decent education to their child is what parenting is all about. Right. Right? You wish! Our Indian (especially the mallu*) parents take this job a little bit more seriously than that. Seeing to it that this child does not fall in love with anyone and then marrying her off to a perfect stranger with a reputed profession from some respectable family forms very much a vital part of their job. 


While funnily enough in other parts of the world, its upon the individual herself to find love, test compatibility and make the choice of entering (or not) into a marriage (in that order), over here, we stick to the age old traditional system of bringing her up right from childhood as the most compatible of beings, promptly marrying her off upon reaching the appropriate age and then leaving her with a whole lifetime ahead to conveniently fall in love with this spouse. (Which shouldn't be so hard given he is in so and so profession, from so and so family background and so prefect a stranger.)


When the entire hardwork of keeping this system in place falls on the shoulders of the poor parents and they in turn measure their own success or failure in life based on its accomplishment, why any child would cry fowl is beyond me!

*mallu - Malayali a.k.a Keralite

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