Love & Marriage

I was 21 when my mother came to know about my second relationship . As usual she didn’t receive it well and cried for 3-4 days. She didn’t stop until I promised to break up with the guy. I had to lie to her, you know. It hurts.
Not to blame her, the culture of Kerala and India generally is the villain here.

Here in Kerala,  a love relationship before marriage is mostly shameful. You are not allowed to love anyone before marriage. That doesn’t mean people don’t love, it means it is looked down upon. Majority of the parents become hysterical when they hear about their daughter’s relationship. They verbally abuse the daughter and sometimes beat her up too. Most of the parents do emotional blackmailing and threaten to committ suicide. (I am not kidding). Love before and outside wedlock is unacceptable. That’s why people use the word ‘affair’ more while talking about a love relationship. And FYI living together and casual dating is out of question. You date to marry, if you don’t marry the person you are dating you are a bad girl. Obviously this norm isn’t applicable to boys.

When it comes to marriages, parents choose their children’s partners most of the time. Parents dream about their child’s wedding. It includes finding their partners also. Love marriages are whole heartedly welcomed if
1. You are a man
or
2. the groom you found is higher in social and financial status.
Or if your parents are liberal minded.
My mother couldn’t accept the fact that I found my own life partner. So she didn’t talk to me and when she did it was to cry and talk me out of it.

Then again my parents weren’t that bad. Because they didn’t abuse me nor did they threaten me. My father didn’t bother to comment on it and all my mother did was cry. Which is bearable when compared to many other people’s situation.

The system and procedure of marriage is also interesting here. In Christian families, first the parents  collects all the details from the other family. I mean if Sam is looking for a woman to marry, then Sam’s family will collect all the details about the woman’s side of family. If details  seems just fine, then comes the official customs. The first is ‘pennu kaanal’ which means bride seeing. The prospective groom along with a bunch of relatives comes to meet the girl. The two families get to know each other a bit and the P. G (Prospective Groom) and P. B (Prospective Bride) are allowed to talk to each other for like 10 minutes max, may be? If everything is perfect and no obvious faults are found, soon the P.B’s family visits the house of P.G. If the house is good  enough and his relatives are fine too, then the marriage is fixed. After that an official ceremony is conducted at the church where the engagement takes place.  And then comes the wedding.

After the wedding the bride moves in with her husband to his house. If it is the elder son of the family then he builds a new house and lives there with his wife and kids.
The system of marriage here is actually funny. A few days ago I saw cartoon on Instagram. That sums up a woman’s married life. Let me show you that.

From Official Eyes Wide Shut, Instagram

Nowadays movies are made on the life of married woman in a middle class kerala household. I think that’s a wonderful initiative. With that many people have started to notice things that were otherwise ignored or normalized. The Great Indian Kitchen is ranked number one on the list of such movies. If you want to know more about the movie click here.

Do you know there are thousands of Indian movies on love? Not just love, these movies  are  mostly about the couples who fight the whole world  to defend their love and have a happy life. The movies aren’t lying. A huge number of people have to fight for their love. They have to convince family, relatives and sometimes even distance relatives too.
Heard of Honour killing? It is a fast  growing issue in India. This is an evidence of such struggles. “Honour killing  or shame killing, is the murder of a member of a family, due to the perpetrators’ belief that the victim has brought shame or dishonor upon the family, or has violated the principles of a community or a religion with an honour culture”.(Wikipedia) If or when a person marries someone who isn’t the same caste/class/religion as his/her the relatives kill the both of them in the name of honour. Sometimes a whole village gangs up against the couple and brutally murders them.
This system is mostly seen in uncivilised villages in India. There are movies on the same topic too. There is this one amazing  movie named Zairat in which you  can watch the plight of two young teens who went against the society. Now that I think about it I am so gonna write a blog  on that movie for sure.
What I planned to write about and what I wrote seems so different now. Sorry people.

So my parents didn’t approve my relationship earlier and I had to hide it for like 4 years.  Now my marriage is fixed with the same guy and all the above said customs are awaiting. I am so excited. Hurrey…

Ciao Buddies…