Bride and Prejudice by cochinjew
Whilst in the last ten years, life has gotten much better for a subclass or subcaste of educated people, it takes more than ten years to change mentalities and cultural contexts.While the girls are more educated and are holding down jobs in gender free industries such as call centres and Software jobs, their arranged marriage patterns are too strong to be affected. The so called Love Marriages are few and far between. In India it is not the religion that is important but the caste, they tend not to marry outside the caste system. Unfortunately the new found boom finds the girls working and mixing with all sorts of people but have to abide by the cultural constraints of finding a husband. In private they cherish the idea of meeting a foreigner or marrying one, but in reality they understand the difficulties associated with it. Many Indian girls who had gone abroad to study, work have married foreigners but it is not the done thing while residing in India, with its rigid moral codes.
I had the chance to spend some time conversing with this bright girl of Kerala who works in Bangalore, educated in Australia, has travelled to Singapore and Malaysia but finds finding a suitable partner beyond her belief, superimposed on her parents values of who she can or she cannot marry. Women coming into the workforce always suffer regardless of the country but in India the cultural contrasts are so stark and the suffering so immense.
It is still not uncommon to hear, bridegrooms relatives murdering a young bride for not bringing in enough dowry. one thing i was happy to hear that the dowry problems are down but the parents of the groom still insist on the bride coming in with lots of gold jewelry!
