Love Marriages: Uniting Diversities

A few days back my friend, Taresh, came back from a weeklong trip to Pune. I went to meet him to know about the well-being of my friends back there. In the passing he told me that he had brought the new Chetan Bhagat book, 2 States: The story of my marriage. I immediately asked for it and he agreed. I started for my room straightaway as I wanted to start reading immediately. I like Chetan’s writing very much. 5-point someone is an all time favourite. Though the last one, 3-mistakes of my life, was not that good. I had read nice reviews about the new book in the newspapers and was longing to read it. But I could start only at midnight as something or the other delayed me.
I always start reading with the back cover. I find it quite instructive. The back cover as well as the title suggested a love story whose start and end was totally known, a boy and a girl falls in love then they are opposed and then they live happily live after, a typical Bollywood story repeated so many times. But I wanted to see how Chetan had treated the topic. I finished the book in one sitting in about 3 hours and to tell you the truth it’s a must read for all and sundry across the globe. It’s just more romantic and deeper than any SRK starrer and is more hilarious than any David Dhavan special.
But it’s not the book but the repercussions that have occurred in my mind are the topic of my present blog. The book echoes life of many a people across the globe involved in cross-country love affairs. {A similar situation had been in the Adam Sandler movie, “You don’t mess with Zohan”, where a Jew boy falls in love with a Palestinian girl though there it was treated with quite a different touch.} The book shows how hollow the great Indian unity thing seems when we encounter real life situations especially love affairs and marriages. I always thought that the country upholds the concept of, ‘Unity in Diversity’. But when I had gone to Hyderabad (a few latitudes south of Pune), a few years back each Hindi question had an ‘Ille’ as the answer. During the entire one and a half day visit, I talked only with men in uniforms or men wearing skull caps and was bearded.
The book deals with resistance offered to a Punjab-Tamil union. But that’s a very big matter when you consider the resistance to love affairs between people differed only by caste or gotra or some other bull-shit nonsense. I know many people strangled by this nonsense and many eventually becoming front-page and prime-time news items.
A natural feeling as delicate as love is still a matter of grave concern in modern India. People still don’t approve love marriages and many are dead against them. Even though the marriage is a matter of two individuals it becomes a matter of prestige for the entire clan (In places like Haryana the whole village has a say!). Think what would have happened if our ancestors would have considered these constraints when they first mate! As Ananya’s father correctly points out that the community is not always the reason for the restraint. The main reason is the ego of the guardians who get pissed off as their children forget to ask their permission before falling in love! As Chetan points out correctly, it’s the nature of many a guardians to have a problem on anything from biscuit to brides if their children really want them.
Although I don’t have an affair (No chance of one either how much I desperately want to!), I sometimes tinker with mother on this topic. She tells her and I tell my ideas on the matter. The only two points where we still agree is that she should be educated and we won’t demand dowry. She is apprehensive of any girl with whom I have even a small liking and doesn’t want me to venture as well!
I think it’s time we stop glorifying our own sects, values and cultures and join the bandwagon of cross-country, cross-culture, cross-religion, cross-…… marriages. This is one way through which the country can truly unify. All unity talks and high moral ideals fizzle off when it comes to our personal affairs (e.g. as seen during Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi’s daughter’s elopement). Hence we need to imbibe the values in our personal affairs and do it for the country (again inspired from the book) if not for ourselves. What I’m saying is nothing new as even Chandragupta Maurya married Selecus’s daughter in third century B.C. to progress Indo-Greek unity. Emperor Akbar also married Jodhabai to strengthen Rajput-Mughal relations.
Until and unless Butter Chicken be cooked in coconut oil and Rasgullas become an irreplaceable sweet for the Gujaratis, we can forget all the Unity nonsense and continue to live in a country united by a name and divided by everything else! Let’s hope all this starts rolling soon and we have a truly unified country devoid of the damn barriers that we call our ethos.

P.S: I have made sure that I’m not going to marry anyone from my Gandhabanik caste (The ones I know are all money ogling under-educated). I also am apprehensive of marrying a Bengali as I want to unify at least two cultures in India. (It will at least bring diversity to my book-shelf, dining table and travelogue if not anything more!)