Romantic Diplomacy

Traditions die hard, particularly in our country. We are rather anxious that our children get married within the same community. An Iyer must marry an Iyer and an Agarwal, an Agarwal. Though marriages are made in heaven, they are fixed on earth by parents. While people in the west wonder how anyone can marry a total stranger, we are critical of love marriages.

Our daughter went to the U.S. for higher studies. There she met a boy who is an Indian from a different state and of a different caste. As romance has no barriers they fell in love and wanted to get married. Though the parents of the boy were well to do, they belonged to a slightly lower sub caste but were nevertheless very orthodox and conservative in their own rights. Above all they liked our daughter and wanted her to be their son’s wife.

My husband jumped at the offer. Assuming he could eventually convince me too with his sensible argument and characteristic wit, our other relations in the family, the so called kith and kin, were not for it. They contended that under no circumstance should we accept a boy of different community as our son in law in the family! He had to be a Madhwa desastha preferably of Kumbakonam or Udupi origin, and that was final.

My daughter suggested we meet the young man and his parents, and then decide. Even though we knew the exercise would be futile, in order to buy peace temporarily agreed to meet them. We found the young man, who was from a very good family, very intelligent, handsome, and possessing all the qualities we would wish for in our daughter. Yet our answer was a firm ‘no’. How we wished he had been our own community!

After a few days we received a letter from our daughter saying she would not like to go against our wishes and that with a very heavy heart she had called it off. She added that she would not like to go against our wishes and that she had called it off. She added that she would wait for a boy of our choice for her. We heaved a sigh of relief and settled down to our routine.

Nothing happened for some time. Then all of a sudden one day we got a call from a close friend of our daughter. She rang up saying that our daughter of late was seeing an Ethiopian Black Muslim and was seriously thinking of getting engaged to him.

The blow struck home. We stopped all our activities and called emergency meeting of the family. There was a commotion. Our elders who had so vehemently opposed the earlier proposal decided to send me and my husband immediately to the parents of the Indian boy. Without waiting for the priests’ clearance or the auspicious dates the marriage was fixed within a week. We asked our daughter and the boy to rush to India for the wedding pronto, even if they had to travel by Air in First Class.

After the ceremonies were over, before leaving on their honeymoon, my daughter winked amidst laughter and merriment that the Black Ethiopian Muslim was nothing but a dry fib!

PUTTA