Arranging a Marriage (Part 1)

Poojah, the shy daughter of our housekeeper Margaret looks to be heading for marriage these days. It's interesting to watch. Things are getting pretty serious. Now, serious doesn't quite mean the same thing as we are used to, they've never actually met or spoken a word to each other.

How to Arrange a Marriage

As many of you know, arranged marriage is pretty much the norm here in India. I am not an expert in this subject, so I might get some of the details of this wrong. Any of you out there who know better can correct me.

If any of you shy bachelors (or parents of shy bachelors) out there think this sounds like a great idea, here's the process you might follow:

1. When your parents decides it is time (for educated people in the cities, when the boy is about 27), the hunt begins. A girl's parents might start a bit earlier.

There are several methods for searching:

• Friends and family. Asking around to your friends in your "community" (which means caste) is a great way of finding a potential girl.
• Hire an agent to assist in the search. They will put together a profile for you, and come present profiles of girls to your parents. Most people I know are not really involved directly in this part, just their parents.
  
• Take out an ad in the newspaper. Be sure to include caste, religion, height, weight and occupation.
  
• Turn to the World Wide Web gods. There's lots of "matrimonial" sites out there, used by Indians all over the world. Here's a link to an example. Note the pull-down menu for first "religion," and then "community." Marrying within your caste is still the norm. For more, google "indian matrimonial."

2. The parents make contact with each other and begin discussions. Health, education, family background, weight, job or job prospects all play a part. Especially for the Hindus, an astrologer often gets involved to make sure that the horoscopes match up properly--your birthdate and time of birth are key here. One common Bollywood movie plot is that the astrologer predicts disaster for the couple, but they get married anyway because they are in love and disaster strikes after intermission. Or the bride or the groom lies about their birthday to avoid such doom, and then, sure enough, the doom comes anyway.

Often now, especially among educated families, the boy and girl will actually get to meet prior to the wedding. This is not always the case. These days there is everything between not meeting at all to having a cup of coffee to a supervised courtship.

3. There is a negotiation phase. The bride's family almost always agrees to pay for the cost of the party and often still provide a dowry. (I have told my wife's father that I am still waiting for mine.) We teach our young men in the Church that they should not ask for a dowry, but it still happens sometimes. One brother got a laptop computer, a Blackberry, and his parents got a bunch of other stuff.

The costs to the bride's family can be significant and many families save up their whole lives for their daughter's wedding. Imagine blowing about $250,000 on a party and you'd get the idea. Our driver, Anil, has a savings account he contributes to every month. His daughter is only 6 and he already has several hundred thousand rupees saved and hopes to have three times his yearly salary saved up by the time he marries her off. Merinda's working hard to convince him to encourage her to marry a returned missionary and use the money for her college, but old ways die hard.

The families negotiate about the size of the party, whether the groom rides a white horse or sits in a white car, what dances they will do, etc.

4. There is an engagement ceremony. It's more of a family affair and I've never been to one myself, so I don't know too much about it. The pictures I've seen show the families very nicely dressed with lots of fruits and rice being offered up to the gods of your choice.

5. Finally, there is the wedding! Indian marriages are a topic all on their own and I'll write about them one of these days.

Even in cases where people have a "love marriage" it often approximates more of a self-arranged marriage than the thing that we are used to where you date for a year or so, propose, etc... I've seen in the church where there is a young single adult conference and a boy will meet a girl from a similar background, have a few shy conversations, and then ask about marriage. At that point the boy will talk to his parents about it and the above arranged marriage process will get kicked off.

Pooja's Negotiation - Will he or won't he?

Margaret our cook has had several people inquire about Poojah's hand in marriage before. All have been vetoed by the family in various stages. Although Poojah is a little plump and very shy, she has boys lining up for her.

But last week they found the boy they think might be the one. This boy is from a family that Margaret's best friend knows back in their native city of Chennai. The eldest son recently got married, which clears the way for the younger one. Margaret doesn't know them directly, but a friend-of-a-friend isn't bad. The family has a good reputation and the boy has a good job.

They sent a VCD of the elder one's engagement party. She let us borrow it and we took a screen shot of Poojah's boy Thomas Raj:


Poojah said she likes him, so they are moving forward with the negotiations. Yesterday Margaret had an important conference call with the interested parties The good news is that the boy's family says they don't want a dowry...so far. Sometimes this crops up later.

There were many phone calls to Chennai back and forth on this before the subject of what she looks like cropped up. Poojah got dressed up and Merinda snapped the pictures below and sent them via e-mail this weekend:

Cute!

Healthy!

Great with kids! (Graham is not included in the deal)

They have agreed so far:

• The wedding will be in Delhi
  
• There will be about 30 guests coming from his side
  
• The wedding can be performed in our church. This will be the third wedding in India that I will have performed, and every time I feel really surreal about it, like "What the heck am I doing standing in the middle of New Delhi, India performing a marriage?!?"

Currently they are talking about the dance numbers they are going to do and some other details. The boy's father and brother are coming to Delhi next week to meet Poojah and the family and get a better feel for the situation. When Merinda asked why the boy himself wasn't coming, they said he was busy with work.

Next Sunday Margaret will go to Chennai to meet his family and check them out. When Merinda suggested Poojah go along too, Margaret said, "Why would I take her with me? She doesn't need to come."

The actual boy and girl currently have no plans to meet in person until their wedding day.

So will the negotiations continue to go smoothly? What will happen when the boy's father comes? Is this family from Chennai really all they are cracked up to be?

Stay tuned.