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Serena Nanda, USA
I.
Literal Comprehension
Context: This essay was written by
Serena Nanda, USA, in 1992. In this essay she has talked about her experience
of matchmaking in India.
On her first trip to India, the
writer met many young men and women whose parents were searching suitable
marriage partners for them. She was shocked at the fact that they had no
freedom to choose a partner by themselves. Their parents decided everything
about their marriage, so she found the Indian arranged marriage oppressive.
The writer interviewed some of them.
Sita, a college graduate with a degree in political science, said that she was
happy with her parents’ choice for her future husband because her parents would
never choose a wrong man.
The idea of marrying a stranger
offended the writer’s ideas of individualism and romanticism. But she was
satisfied by Sita’s answer that marrying a stranger would help make married life
full of mystery and romance, and that a couple who took their marriage into
their own hands was taking a big risk.
Six years later, when she returned
to India, she got a chance to be involved in arranging marriage of her friend’s
eldest son. Though she was experienced in matchmaking in America, she found
arranging marriage in India very difficult because of its various
complications. Her friend rejected the first proposal from a mother of five
pretty and well-educated marriageable daughters because she was a possessive
mother who would like to always have her daughters around her and she would not
be able to spend much money at the wedding ceremony. Another girl was too
educated and too independent for her joint family because she was found
travelling alone on a bus. The third proposal was from the friend’s husband’s
client whose daughter was fat and wore glasses. She was also rejected. The
writer’s friend actually expected to find a modest, attractive, and educated
girl for her son.
Two years later, the writer’s son
was still unmarried. She decided to try again for finding a match for him. She
found a family with marriageable daughter who was pretty and had studied
fashion designing in college. She was running a small boutique and had had a
traditional sheltered upbringing. She wanted to have a career, but wasn’t
allowed to go off by herself to anywhere.
The writer told the girl’s parents about
her friend’s son. They were immediately interested in him. She also told her
friend about the girl. The writer was not so much hopeful, but a year later she
received a letter from her friend that said the girl’s family had visited them
and that her daughter had been a good friend with her. The two girls had been
visiting each other frequently.
Finally, last week, the writer received
her friend’s invitation for her son’s wedding with the same girl.
II.
Interpretation
In the essay, the writer has tried
to show that marriage is a very much complicated event in the Indian society
because of the parents’ involvement in it. The parents decide everything about
their son or daughter’s marriage. Individual freedom of the bride and the groom
has no value in the Indian society where arranged marriage is so popular.
Actually, marriage is not an individual choice but a family choice. The essay
might also be trying to tell us that marriage is not fair in Indian society
because of the gender discrimination practiced in it. A bride must have all the
possible good qualities, but a groom doesn’t need so much. A girl is always under
the surveillance of her parents before marriage and her husband’s and her
in-law’s after the marriage. A bride and her parents have to give the
traditional gifts to the groom and his family. Indian marriage is also guided
by narrow-mindedness because it takes place only between a girl and a boy of
the same caste and social class.
III.
Critical Thinking
The writer has exposed the
narrow-mindedness and gender inequality seen in the arranged marriage. If so, why
are the young generation people attracted so much to it till date? There is
also a growing trend among the youth that they choose a boy or a girl, and the
parents arrange marriage for them. Also, many parents are seen to arrange
marriage of their son or daughter with boy or girl of different castes. But the
writer has observed and described about only the traditional kind of arranged
marriage. It’s because perhaps she had many limitations as an outsider to the
Indian society and culture.
IV.
Assimilation
Now I know marriage in India is
taken rather seriously. Despite its defects, arranged marriage is preferred
because it provides chance to the parents to exercise the authority. I found
the Indian society that the writer has discussed in the essay very much similar
to the Nepalese society in the matter of arranged marriages.
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