Okay. This one is for you dozen tipsters who are jonesing for our take on this article about “”love-cum-arranged,” marriages that appears in today’s NYTimes.
Yawn. Haven’t I read this article like a dozen times before? It’s always half of an article where they drum up the angle that they wanted to write in the first place instead of doing any real reporting.
These young people may have come of age in an America of “Moonstruck” and “Dawson’s Creek,” but in many cases they have not completely accepted the Western model of romantic attachment. Indeed, some of the impetus for assisted marriage is coming from young people themselves – men and women who have delayed marriage into their late 20’s and early 30’s, said Ayesha Hakki, the editor of Bibi, a South Asian bridal and fashion magazine based in New Jersey.
“That has been the most remarkable trend,” Ms. Hakki said, citing the example of a male acquaintance, who, after dating on his own, turned to his parents for guidance.
As Madhulika Khandelwal, a historian who has studied Indians here, said, “Young people don’t want to make individual decisions alone.”
[cough]-bullshit-[cough]. It’s not that young people don’t want to make “individual decisions alone” and have decided that their parent’s “guidance” is best. No. It’s that they are giving up and no longer want to fight “the system.” Ladies in their late twenties can only pursue self-absorbed or commitment-phobic guys (and there is nothing wrong with being commitment phobic ) for so long before they throw in the towel and opt for “traditional,” by default. Likewise, guys are forced to deal with women who are too neurotic to date mostly because their parents are breathing down their necks to get married. We (Indians raised in this country) turn to our families for the exact same reason as someone of another culture would turn to their’s, except for the fact that there is more pressure to turn to them. This article and others like it always seem to dodge the truth in order to accentuate the exotic “embrace” of our culture. What the article describes is more than just being set up on a “blind date,” which it compares it to. Lots of cultures practice the art of the blind date, whether through family or friends, and it isn’t particularly newsworthy. When journalists single out Indians they do so with the implication that the family’s fingerprints are all over the entire courtship process. If that is the case then explaining it away as a willing “return to tradition” makes my eyes roll. Here is some more bullshit:
The embrace of more traditional habits is apparent in other ways. Weddings are often elaborate and last three or four days. Families of the betrothed often still consult a Hindu astrologer who schedules wedding ceremonies according to the stars. When Anamika Tavathia, 24, was engaged to a young Indian she met in college, his family visited hers to propose on his behalf and the priest determined they should marry on June 26 of this year between 10:30 and 11 a.m.This fall is expected to be an unusually busy wedding season in Indian communities, because many couples postponed weddings last year when many days were deemed inauspicious.