A typical Indian marriage.

February 09, 2022
Wednesday morning thoughts

Hello! Namaste!

Today, I am here writing about marriages in India of course you have already guessed it from the title. The idea of writing on it breaks into my lovely brain after my brother recently attended a marriage of his friend's sister on February 05. There are many contrasting views of people on marriages, their types, and how it lasts. Of course, as there are 7 billion people living on this earth and everyone's opinion might differ according to their society, education, country, prospects, etc.

Recently I saw a small video where an American lady was interviewing an Indian actress Aishwarya Rai and the American lady asks "Do Indians think we are rude"?
To which Aishwarya Rai replied, "Indian people are very hospitable". Then American lady posed another question "Do Indians think we go through so many divorces?" to which the actress replied, "now it can be a discussion".

Well, time to flex people who sponsor me-

Now, the above context was not the thing I was going to talk about but I guess you already have gotten into some thoughts about the questions above but I am not here to talk about that.

Normally in India, the earlier trend was of arranged marriage where the males and females do not use to know each other and the family used to visit different family who they get acquainted with some third party like a mutual friend of both the family and so on, anyway then a date was set when the family member used to visit the other families and get to know a little bit. And then if they think they can have a relationship in future they give a chance to their kids to know a little bit about each other but it was when the family is not very conservative.

In conservative families there was no meeting or talking of brides and grooms before marriage and neither they can see each other in real life except in the photos given to them by the family. And I must say once they are married at first the girl accepts all the responsibilities of the boy's family in a hope that her family does not have to feel embarrassed about her acts or the manner in which the girl is raised is questioned.

And slowly and gradually the love also sparks among the bride and grooms and then they have kids together and they spend the rest of life together taking care of each other, completing their responsibilities and taking care of their kids and the question of divorces never arises maybe because this slow process of getting into love has already sparked and created so much love among them or maybe they think that they should live in harmony because it can affect their child.

I would like to share another video, but before that, I must mention that in the majority of the cases the kids after marriage still live with their families and take care of the parents when they get old because the only support of parents when they become old is their kids and their daughter-in-law, they do not need money to spend the rest of little life they have but the love.

well, it is an interview of Aishwarya Rai with David letterman you can search it on youtube.

But, with time things change. like always change is the necessity of environment so does changes came into marriages in India too, but I wouldn't say that the changes injected tonnes of divorces in India too, but it changes in the manner of marriage, not the way marriages happen but the way brides and grooms interact with each other, now in this post-modernization era we live in people are acquainted with each other using social media or other mediums.

Now, brides and grooms get to know each other better before marriage actually happens, though there are still arranged marriages happening but also now love marriages (love+arranged marriage ) are booming. And also love marriage is important nowadays because brides and grooms get to know their compatibility with each other, earlier there used to be horoscope reading of stars alignment of brides and grooms and then if the qualities of both sides are compatible enough to allow the marriages then only marriages used to take place.

Anyway, I must say that Indians know well how to keep marriages working till their last breath and I must say that exceptions are also one dimension of nature.

Process of marriage:

It is a really very complex procedure and as a young gentleman I am not sure I can tell everything about it, but yeah if I would exclude some events then still it is 3-4 days procedure and maybe 5 days procedure in some cases.
There is a function of song rituals-

There are then like "Haldi rasam" (sorry I do not know what do we call it in English)
Then there are other procedures which I do not know because the last time when I attended any marriage was in 2008 when I was so little, but one thing I must say that even after the marriage there is a function called as "RECEPTION PARTY" hosted by the bridegroom's family and according to the ritual it is supposed as the important relatives of this family are invited and normally the bride have to cook food for all of them but it is little modified in a way that the bride actually now just touch the wares in which the foods are being cooked while the food is actually cooked by some chefs who are hired.

I actually support this thing because in any normal function of Indian families people who attend the event is normally around 200-300 and now it is definitely very very hard work for the brides to cook for that many people.

Thank you for your time reading.

If you want to ask something you can ask it in the comment section, or if you are a bit more curious you can search it on youtube or the internet about how typical Indian marriages look alike.

I would also confer that India is a secular and democratic country and therefore all the religions have their own way of marrying procedures with no restrictions, and the procedures which I mentioned above is of "Hindu religion".