“A Twin Flame (also Twin Soul) is a spiritual (New Age) concept describing a special soul connection between two halves of the same soul. According to the mythology of Twin Flames, in the beginning of time we were created as a perfect soul, that was split into two soul halves, one male, one female, that would then be cast upon Earth to be forever looking for one-another. They would reincarnate over lifetimes with this longing for each other, and once they finally meet, they would reunite and be blissfully in love and then leave this physical plane as one whole individual.” - Wikipedia
I believe in the concept of twin soul and for me marriage would mean marrying that one person who gets me, gets my jokes, gets my cynicism, intimidates me, completes my sentences and most importantly accepts my flab !!
So when the aunties and uncles search for a candidate within the same community and caste, the concept of twin soul goes for a toss and the end result is a business arrangement with maximum risk mitigation benefiting both the parties involved . A typical girl family perspective would be :
1. NRI is a delectable entity but Indians with a 6 figure salary would also suffice.
2. The guy should have a house in a gated community and a sedan.
3. Good family. (The ‘good’ here is subject to discretion)
A typical guy family perspective would be :
1. Fair-skinned beauty, the skinnier the better. (But we Odias prefer the non skinny versions)
2. Should have a job to share the guy’s expenses. But in some cases, females are required to quit.
3. Good character. No alcohol. No weed. (If your profile is in any matrimonial site, please remove your pub pictures ASAP, this is India, you cannot be the pub going loose woman !!)
So what we do is narrow down our options to a limited strata of the society when actually the world should be our oyster.
When you are in that tricky age of 24-25 and you are a female, marriage suddenly becomes more of a compliance than a choice. You should ideally have a candidate to get married to for your sake or else the family intervention will hit you just below the belt :P If for some reason or the other, you fail to find your ‘soulmate’, people around you will think it’s their moral duty to hunt down that special someone for you. Nobody’s interested to know if you’re interested for such a commitment or not. People around you start getting married and having kids, so even you should bite the bait. And so, owing to the circumstances around us, one fine day, we all settle. And most of us settle with any feasible option that comes our way. We settle because we’re scared. Scared of being alone, which is why that quest for mad, passionate, extraordinary love dies a martyr’s death.
The very sound of arranged marriage is thus creepy. Unless your arranged marriage guy gifts you a destination wedding with a Sabyasachi outfit and The Wedding Planners and Tarun Chawla, I am going to keep thinking it’s weird and illogical. Arranging a marriage typically means seeing what you get, interacting with a few hand picked and maybe hen pecked candidates, narrowing down to a lucky few, talking for a few months or worse days and finally giving in with prospects of hope, excitement and expectations.
Nobody will ever divulge what happens after the happily married part cuz in the Facebook era, we all feel obligated to act happy in our profiles (‘Best day ever’, ‘Best husband ever’ etc. ) and market ourselves in a certain way. What actually happens to you is your destiny. Thou shalt get screwed if that is your destiny.
I don’t have the statistics to claim what is better, love marriage or arranged marriage but all the candyfloss movies that I have seen makes me believe that liking > dating > loving > marrying sounds more natural to me.
But then sometimes we have to bend backwards for the greater good.
Mere Ramblings, No Apologies :)
