5 Bitter Truths About Indian Marriages the West Won’t Believe

Yes, we are on the same planet.

I held my breath as I watched the astrologer’s hands fiddle through the magic beads. My parents, drunk by the enormous gravity of the situation, looked at each other. I tried to remember the ‘deep breathe techniques’ to keep my raging heartbeat rate under check.

A few seconds from now, his hands would separate a certain number of beads, and that would pretty much decide if I can marry the girl I love!

You think I’m joking? Relationships are the last thing I kid about.

Welcome to India. And Welcome to the consulting room of an astrologer from a local village in the land of wonders.

The astrologer promptly checked my horoscope. He did his spiritual matchmaking calculations and blurted out the following words:

“This marriage shouldn’t happen.” That’s it.

Six years of painstaking brick by the brick erection of my relationship shot to hell with six words. My father and mother got up, having heard it from the best. I sat there, watching my dreams get shattered.

Three years down the lane, I am married to the same girl, albeit with a struggle that makes no sense to people from the 21st century.

What are those struggles that most Indian youngsters go through? Why is life so different in the Indian subcontinent?

Here are five truths about Indian marriages that the western civilization would have a tough time wrapping their heads around. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot about my culture, but not the bits am about to talk about.

Swayamvara- The Retro Charm We Miss!

One would assume that retardation of values in the current society is an evolution of something much worse. Not quite. Things looked much brighter centuries before.

In ancient India, there was a system called Swayamvara.(at least that’s what the mythology says)The word roughly translates to ‘choose by yourself,’ and here is how it works:

The bride, adorned in a gorgeous outfit and extravagant jewelry, is handed a flower garland. In front of her sits all the potential suitors, mostly the prince and gentlemen of the elite class. She walks about with the garland, runs her personal scanning program, analyzes each candidate with whatever information she can process, and zeroes in on the best one.

Once she picks her man, she drops her garland on him, and that’s it. The match is made. No drama. No-fuss. Not far from window shopping on Amazon, except that the products are limited and breathing!

Don’t ask me if the girl really got to know his groom. I have no idea. Don’t weep for man’s freedom either. He signed up for this!

Let’s be happy about a time in the distant past where a girl could exercise this insane freedom to pick the guy she wanted.

In 2021, we don’t get to drop the garland! Our parents do. They use their better sense to handpick the best guy/girl and then superimpose their logic and judgment on their juniors.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it goes okay.

So how does it all start? These days it begins with an app.

#1 The Elder Tinder

Dating apps are hot cakes in a testosterone-charged population. Still, here in India, it’s the elders that get to play with it. No, not Tinder; this is called a matrimonial app.

The only difference here is that the seniors use the app for their young ones. They watch in awe as the software’s algorithmic marvel churns out matches after matches, making traditional marriage brokers look like a bullock cart on the express highway.

If you are a young man operating the app by yourself and press the chat button to talk to your prospective partner(to get to know her better), rest assured you are only earning brickbats from your potential Father-in-Law. You get a 1.5/10 for manners, thanks to your ‘improper advancement.’

Eventually, after hours of strenuous analysis and checking, the parents find a few good fits. The good fits are the ones that tick the CRAW box.

The Caste-Religion-Astrology-Wealth box.

#2 Religion

I hear that in many parts of the world, particularly in Europe and America, religion has reduced itself to a mere symbol. People do flock to churches, have faith in sermons but following them diligently is not a part of their active lifestyle. It’s not the case in India, though.

Religion is flesh and blood of our everyday chore here. It’s deeply embedded into our sensibilities, dominates even the run-of-the-mill affairs, and you are never too far from a religious institution.At Least quarter a dozen religious holidays pop every month, and there is a multitude of customs and rituals to witness or follow.

Inviting a person of a different religious faith into your family feels like having a Real Madridian in a camp of Barcelonians! If you don’t have the sound judgment to know that both teams ultimately elevate football’s quality, it will always be a case of ‘my team is better than yours.’

Thankfully, youngsters are showing better sense these days to merge into different streams of belief systems. But they don’t get to call the shots! Their parents do.

To put it in a nutshell, If you have fallen in love with a person of a different religion and your parents are bigots, you are never walking away from it smiling.

#3 Caste

There are people in India who disown the caste system. But what they fail to get is that caste-based division is a child of religion. And very few disown religion.

It’s like you like the grapes, but not the seeds in it. It will take some effort to separate the seeds from the fruit, so most people would instead take it as a whole.

I also hear tons of explanations from saints and gurus, explaining how caste is based on your karma and not birth. I have no qualms against them. Maybe they are right. Perhaps we are living in one big bubble of myth.

Either way, caste as a reality operating at the ground level is something else. It is not entirely a question of the higher caste oppressing the lower, and therefore the latter wish to see the entire dogma go away.

The lower caste is often more proud of their cult and pedigree. Perhaps they are more particular about not getting mixed up with a tribe sharing a different lineage.

Long story short, caste is one of the top priorities of arranged marriages in India. And once again, matrimonial apps have made the filtration process a piece of cake. They have state of the art caste filters. If the numbers are good, they even offer dedicated apps and websites for a particular caste. How convenient!

#4 Astrologers Call the shots

The ‘elder tinder apps’ have columns to mark your religion, caste, and sub-caste, which aids in a smooth and hassle-free elimination process. But knowing if the stars are nicely aligned for the couple, that’s an expert’s job.

It’s time to bring the man who is simply a walking panacea — the astrologer.

Once the seniors have enough profiles to consider (usually 3–5), they collect the suitor’s necessary details (like his birth time and place) and head straight to their trusted astrologer. He is your quintessential spiritual problem solver.

And there he sits, with his ‘solution store’ opened. People of all faiths frequent his place, and like the man who crashed my affair, pulls all sorts of tricks on people. Don’t get me wrong, they are not necessarily bad people. But they get crazy encouragement to fix and crash relationships.

What baffles me is that the saints and gurus of India’s rich past have had terrible opinions about astrology. Yet, people who worship the same saints have no issues in going against their ideals.

This is what the great saint of India, Swami Vivekananda said about astrology.

Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind; therefore as soon as they are becoming prominent in our minds, we should see a physician, take good food, and rest.”

Buddha, too had taken a dig at people who have subscribed to astrological practices.

“Whereas some ascetics and Brahmins make their living by such base arts as predicting an eclipse of the moon, the sun, a star; that the sun and moon will go in their proper course — will go astray; that a star will go on its proper course — will go astray;…..and such will be the outcome of these things.”

If the astrologer eventually gave a go to one of the profiles, it’s time for things to get real.

#5 Wealth

Now that the first three boxes are ticked, it would take something very off-putting for things to go awry from here.

The guy’s family visits the girl’s family. While everyone puts on their poker face and acts gentle, a part of the elder’s mind would run the analytic. With hawk-like eyes, they pick up anything remotely suggestive of the other side’s declining prosperity.

I still don’t know what they keep their eyes out or how they do it. The general state of the house, the property around, the trees in it, there are a million such things that would give away their actual state of affairs. Guess the previous generation had an eye for it.

If their keen perception picks anything terrible, the proposal doesn’t go forward. They go back to their app, and the process starts from zero again.

Somewhere in the middle of this mess sits the guy and the girl, wondering what the future has in store for them. They hope to bring their A-game while talking to each other when the elders talk and move things.

If everything goes well, phone numbers are soon exchanged, and the couple breathes a lot easier.

Conclusion

Despite the whole process being held under the watchful eyes of the farsighted previous generation, India’s divorce rates have the trajectory of a space shuttle.

I guess it’s no better in the west either, where people exercise more Individual freedom in picking their partners.

According to latestlaws.com, only 1 out of 100 Indian marriages end up in a divorce, which is relatively low compared to America’s 50% of marriages turning into breakups.

In India, high divorce rates are a direct result of women gaining more financial independence. Couples of the past probably had more scars to patch, but the women had no option but to put up with everything. Things have improved dramatically for them, at least in individual pockets.

The story of 5 step marriage in India is not the story of every Indian citizen. The rich and high-class folks do it the ultra-urban way. Celebrities date celebrities, cricketer’s date film stars, and the middle class sometimes emulate the rich-model in their own humble ways.

But the bulk of middle and low class( financial classification) still does it the traditional way. They maze through a labyrinth of five steps, pleasing a score of people and patching a dozen gaps. Ultimately, it’s one family marrying another.

At the core of all this process is our honorable responsibility to take care of our parents. We don’t live too far from them. We take care of them. We don’t drop nuclear bombs on their aging sensibilities. We patch the scars. We try to get as many people to a common point of agreement and move on.

I had three ticks going into the thick of things for my relationship, but I missed the astrology box. You won’t believe the roar I had to create to surpass the defiance of parents.

What if I had more boxes to tick? I guess then the article I would write now would be titled “How to get over the pain of a breakup.”