Marriage as business

As I stepped inside the portal of a massive temple, I could see a throng of people swarming around something near the doorway area.

Being swamped by curiosity I went near to peer through to find what had elicited their attention. What I saw staggered me. I saw a marriage broker, merrily squatted with a miscellaneous collection of pictures of prospective brides and grooms, spread before him. Each picture had a horoscope clamped to it dishing details of the person in the picture. Maybe the idea was to facilitate those scouting for a suitable bride/ groom. And of course, lucrative commissions churn out of it in the bargain.

Looking at the way the pictures were displayed, myriad funny images popped up in my mental screen. It reminded me of a place where pedigree pups were sold, wherein each pup had a price-tag fixed to its collar. It also reminded me of auction sales, wherein the alluring antique pieces went to the ones bidding maximum price. It even reminded me of potpourri collection of sundry items, sold on pavement bazaars that had customers haggling over prices of items retailed.

Sadly, the sanctity of marriage, a sacred eternal bond between two individuals had boiled down to a brisk ‘business’. During my granny’s times, it seems, a girl got into wedlock while still in pre-teens, to a guy almost a decade elder. For, it was believed she’d be malleable at that age, with high flexibility quotient.

And once married, both the individuals had tacit well-defined roles. The man by being elder and the bread winner, called the shots at home, while the over-biddable wife, tended his home and children. Since those days, high ambitions, expectations, and exposures to temporal pleasures were virtually zilch, marital peace and harmony supposedly reigned supreme.

Now, new-age family dynamics have changed with paradigm shift in marital scenario. With girls getting more educated, more enterprising (more elder too by age!), it’s not so uncommon to see role reversal, wherein husband is ministering his kids, while wife is on globe-trotting work assignments. Now, it’s marriages of convenience, unlike the yesteryear marriages of compromise. Thanks to equality concept, which has ushered in exertion of rights and assertion of supremacy.

With tolerance/endurance elements slowly waning today, one can see constant spats between young couples that are causing them to make impetuous dash to divorce courts over piffling issues. No wonder today’s youngsters enjoying unstinted leeway are shelving marriage plans, shuddering at marriage prospects!

Naturally, prior marriage ‘live-in’ relations are catching up, to see compatibility factor between the two,before getting hitched into lifetime relation. What next, you wonder? Maybe, to bear the child first, and see how good the man/woman is as a father/mother, and then decide on a lifelong commitment!