Marriage Misconceptions

You can tell how much everyone is waiting for the weekend when we're out at Joey's Smokin' BBQ for lunch on a Thursday. As we were waiting for our food, talk veered towards marriages. C is about to become a father soon and has no plans for a wedding yet. He started talking about how both of them think it will be a big waste to spend a lot of money on the wedding and instead plan to do something on a smaller scale. Everyone seemed to agree with his point of view. S told us how a friend of his bought a boat with the money he had saved up for his wedding and just threw a small party at some local hotel later. Needless to say, everyone was in splits on hearing that. And from there on the topic of arranged marriages cropped up and I was left to defend all of their misconceptions.

R always thought that arranged marriages meant you just show up on wedding day and get married. You dont know who the girl is, what she does, your parents choose a girl and the deal is sealed. So I went on to explain how it works and not how he imagined things were. That left him a little relieved and he said 'yeah cos I was about to say. What if things don't work out for the two of you? Can you take her back to your parents house and tell them 'You liked her. Keep her in your house. I don't want her.' He was convinced though that this was a good system. 'Not like they do it over here. Call you each year on your birthday and go 'You're getting older now. Better get married' and I'm like what do you want me to do? Go to a bar, get trashed and start hitting on every chick I see there?'

C suggested that one should atleast get to see pictures of the girl before meeting her. So I told him, it actually worked that way. Ofcourse he had a brilliant idea immediately. 'So if you don't like any of the pictures that your parents send you, just call them up and tell them 'Can't come to India. My manager gave me a lot of work' Blame your manager, there's nothing anyone can do about it.' He knew what he was talking, he is my manager =)) At this point R asked if there was a lot of alcohol in marriages. I told him that in some communities it does, but not in ours. He went 'You know what you could've done then. If the girl is not pretty enough, drink till she starts looking pretty!'

If this was brilliant S had reserved the best for the last. 'So when you meet her can you take her to a beach or something? Get to see her in a bikini?' He definitely had the right ideas but I did not have the heart to tell him that desi girls' beach attire comprises of punjabi suits/jeans/capris rolled up to their knees. That would have certainly left him choking on his pulled pork sandwich. So I told him that the place where I live in India there is no beach close-by. He went 'Oh! Thats easy then. Tell your parents I want every girl to participate in a wet t-shirt contest and ask them to send those snaps over. Tell them that's how we do it in America!'

We finally finished off our lunch laughing our asses off like drunk idiots and drove back to work. I was definitely amused by everyone's suggestions on approaching arranged marriage with an American mindset.