india, womEn & arrangEd marriagE

Love marriage or arranged marriage - the perpetual question in group discussions and the favourite of debaters and perhaps one of the most clichéd argument topics in India. I was dreading the day when I will take up my e-quill to spray my take on this subject all over the blog. And finally for me it all fell into a single piece and here u can have my arguments on this. But I’m sure I have no where read about a similar argument and as far as I know I’m pretty authentic with this one...

So ask for the greatest advantage of an arranged marriage and the elders will undoubtedly say “stability”. Perhaps Indian subcontinent might be the only place where arranged marriages are practiced in such abundance. In the west and the 'other' east, its “man vs. wild” in the fight for woman or vice-versa.

I remember learning in history classes that in India during the Vedic period women were much freer than they ever were in the 19th or 20th centuries. But something terrible happened after the Vedic period and there was the Dark Age the passage of which meant more of darkness for the Indian women. Finally it all boiled down to a state where women were no longer considered part of the homo-sapiens. They were just a tool to produce off-springs so that the male child can help the father in his business and girl child can be burdened off to some poor male soul so that he too can have offspring.

It’s in this so called patriarchal or male centric society that women were considered subservient and their dignity and stature as humans eroded in the long run without education, social contact or any other forms of action with a scope for emancipation. The woman too adjusted to this and they surrendered their dignity to the male society and started coping with the way they were treated – a rather sad kind of Stockholm syndrome. It is in this context that I believe arranged marriages became common method for stable marriages with the choice lying solely with the groom. It is this setup where the women who were down the chasm of social recognition and lacking total support not even from fellow women, that arranged marriages soon translated to mean stable marriages.

As the country progressed socially with the arrival of British raj and later after the independence, economically with a more inclusive social growth, the women were granted rights to education, social status, recognition and dignity. With this her level of awareness grew and after the wake of the millennium she stands almost in par with the men (at least in certain highly educated societies and cities). She no longer feels the compulsion to stick with an un-adjusting or moronic husband just because she is a woman. I would be lying if I don’t mention the fact that Indian woman are more conditioned to adapt, suffer and tolerate compared to their western counterparts owing to the mental and psychological conditioning she has received through centuries of consistent ill treatment and brain washing (and it may still be present in their DNA for decades to come). The society as a whole has become more liberal and as a result divorcees from arranged marriages have also increased.

So in all, the so called stability of the arranged marriage is a farce act by the so called protectors of the society’s moral fabric. When, in this society women attain the same status as that of men in all places, all conditions and in all strata of the society, the facade and the whole structure of this dumb charade will crumble. Then it will be a victory not for those who argued against arranged marriages in debates but it will be a victory for the better half of the world.

god of small things

A novel I longed to read was really worth the wait.

I wanted to read this book, the time I read about Arundhati Roy bringing the Booker prize to India. But 'fortunately' I was living off my allowance those days and I dint want to put the pressure on my parents. So I pushed this book into the stack allotted in the trenches of my mind, where it creped down to oblivion. Later when I had the chance in college, I had lost myself and the stack was lost (I was to discover it was quite recoverable). After my rediscovery of my true self during the employed times, I was able to reclaim my long lost stacks and I started a frantic search and rescue in the stack. I have been reading like there is no tomorrow since then.

I started on this novel, the beginning of July and during my busy but useless schedule, I’m glad that I was able to enjoy this book within a fortnight. As I said earlier, only now I recognize why destiny shied this book away from me all these years. I could have never understood this book, had I read it any earlier. This fact made me think a lot philosophically and that’s was made me write this long prelude to my endeavor with this book.

The novel is set in the backdrop of Kerala and its Syrian Christian Community centered in Kottayam in the 60s or 70s presumably. It narrates the life and times of a tragedy that happened in a typical Syrian Christian upper class family and how it turned around the life of twins. This feels like a tragedy from the outside but from the viewpoint of the young protagonists, but in fact to the reader this is a magical journey through the childhood. I could identify with the children and the narrative stands out, clearly because of the freshness and tenderness of the children's mind which Ms.Roy has captured quite brilliantly. Only on adult looking Peter Pan can craft a narrative as innocent as I saw in this book.

I believe that’s the strength of this book. It captures the small and minute details which often slip the adult eyes but are devastatingly large in the eyes of the children. It captures the small joys and happiness and doubts and assurances of the kid's life without delving deep into the abyss of examining the adult thought process.

A simple and powerful story 'of small things' told by the young at heart to an audience who is into 'large things' to be bothered in their reality.

looking back from the silVer lining

as it is customary with any undertaking of mine, i procrastinate a little; even when it comes to celebrating the silvEr jubilEE. as a matter of fact, that is the only thing that has taken my life through the course it has taken. i see it clearly, how it has shaped me. if i stop to pracastinate, its as if i'm loosing my identity. its these little careless acts of so called misbehaviour and bad habits that makes the human life all the more twitched and interesting. without these what else can identify ourselves from the computer? (pardon Windows users. its more unpredictable than women).

so what do i feel when i look back at the 25 years i have lived out?
if that was someone else i would have slapped his/her face (atleast verbally), but under this circumstance, its me and i dont have an easy escape from the answer. i would like to make this very very clear- i dont have any regrets except for a span of 4 years in this 25. those are the years i spent, i breathed, i lived for living and those are my college days- the engineering days. it took away the hard earned self from me which i could recover only later with the help of a genious. in fact i'll say, he is the one who has made the present day me (of course after my Parents). he is the best friend and mentor i ever had.

thanks macha...
i reclaimed my life, thanks to you...

my Parents need no mention. i'm sure, if i intend to thank Them i will be doing a terrible job, coz words cannot express nor the heart cannot oralize the importance They had in my life. i dont want to walk the cliched path. PERIOD.