A close friend of mine shared a video on Facebook recently. It was one of his many shares and one that grabbed the regular eyeballs. The video was about marriages ...or rather 'benefits of arranged marriage'. This, approximately 12 minute video also showed a statistic at the end of it and the message said- '90% of marriages in India are still arranged and only 5% of them end in a divorce' ...and hence left behind a lot of seemingly important-but-overlooked implications. Let’s go through a few of them.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/22309808 w=595&h=336]
1. If you want to have a happy married life, arranged marriage is the way to go.
2. Divorces are common in the world where marriages are not arranged.
While I would hate to question the facts presented, I would definitely want to dig a little deeper here. Does marriages have a different meaning in this part of the world compared to the other parts of the world? Does a divorce presents a different picture here? May be it does.
When we say marriage lasts long here, I am assuming, we mean people choose not to separate for long (or forever). Is this same as the bond strengthened by the intense (or not-so-intense) love between the couple? Could be Yes...could be No.
Now, at the risk of questioning the holy institution of marriage, it isn't far sighted to believe that a unhappy and married couple wouldn't choose to relieve themselves from the burden because they don't even think of divorce as an option or separation would mean a big deal of social embarrassment or they are just not supposed to do so .... Hence the arrangement(marriage) is not only meant to tie the arranged opposites together but to officially lock them together whether, after a certain time, they like it or not. A few (probably most of them) of those 5% probably get away with this.
Am I suggesting that divorces are a good thing? No I am not. I am just trying to say- stay happy if you really are and don't point at someone else and say you are no good because you are not like me.
A good friend of mine once in our regular chit chats about...life in general said- parents generally help out the 'losers' in the family find someone if they are convinced their child will no longer be able to find someone on his own beyond a certain point in time. I just agreed :)
