Re: [nukkad] Happy marriage

["Ragini" <>]

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Hi Nukkies,
  After reading so many views and experiences, I too wish to tell about my
side of customs and the need or redundancy of dowry.

I come from a very small working class community of Uttar Pradesh, North
India, the community which has very few business men till of late. Now there
are many well established Chartered Accountants but by-and-large a working
class group which relies on studies and  getting decent jobs. So dowry was
not and could not be an issue on either side.

The main criteria, for selecting partners for children till now is
reputation of the family in the same circle, horoscope matching and degrees
of a guy and shakal-surat of a girl. If she is very educated ...then as
bonus she gets a well educated guy. The bad part of this is that if the
parents have more than two daughters and the 3rd or 4th one is prettier than
the older two, she will get selected in the marriage market and parents are
so helpless that they succumb to the situation as they feel, chalo atleast
iski to ho rahii hai shaddi, ho jaane do. And that closes the doors for the
older daughter..forever, almost all the times. There are numerous families i
know, even in my both sides of families, that in almost every household of
many daughters the oldest daughter is in the maiden home till late thirties
and parents are having no choice. Then ofcourse we all know what is the
plight of overage girls in Indian scenario. They are left with to either
give up marriage plans or settle for little educated guys, physically
challenged guys or at times widowers.

 The second scenario, very common in us, is the parents make their well
educated younger or older brother of the less good-looking-sister stay
unmarried till they find a similar situation in another family ( and
ofcourse you must understand we happen to be very obedient puppies in this
respect !! ) and an exchange marriage takes place between the families....in
which it is difficult to understand who has lost more in the bargain  :-)
but atleast the children are married off, parents take a sigh of relief.
Again, there are many such barter marriages around me and my families. I
hate to see the helplessness of the parents.

The good part of the scene is, in my community hardly ever I have ever heard
of wife burning, also a very less percentage of divorces.
One reason for that could be that the girl knows she will not be a welcome
member in the not so wealthy maiden home.

Till now most of the marriages are parents decision based. So was mine, many
years ago, and even my youngest brother's not so long ago. My parents chose
the groom for me on the basis of the good reputation of the father and
degrees of all their children. In turn, I was chosen by them cause I was
proudly educated and maybe all my physical parts were fine and in the right
places and I had no sister to challenge :).

And would you laugh very loud if I say I had no say in the whole process and
had not seen each other till the announcement was made that we were
engaged...Yes, we were engaged by the whatsoever procedure amongst the
seniors of the families. Ofcourse, that goes for my husband also..he too had
no say. We should have felt blessed enough that our parents had good
reputation....and please this is not a story of 60s or 70s...and singled out
in my family...the general scene was/is so.

Now ofcourse there are changing trends of some families giving refrigerators
to the daughters to start well, or a TV as the economy is better for the
middle class since a decade. But dowry is never a demand, as far as I know
of. I do not know any family in my community where Marutis or houses are
given off as gifts or even they are asked of.

Now just diverting from the topic, and to narrate a small jovial part of
life. ( I am too tempted to share with you all.)
I went to my marital home with personal, clothes, kitchen utensils and
necessary amount of jewelery. That is all. With a starting job of my
husband, we could afford only PG digs in Bombay to begin with, and did for
3-4 years, ofcourse I started working too soon after marriage. So there was
no question of adding furniture or more things as we did not have room
enough. It was such a pride to buy any small thing we could, right from a
chatai to a jharru or to say a small TV. Life was so fine and happy, no
worries and in due course we could buy a small apartment with our savings +
HDFC...again after that no chance of adding furniture or any luxuries as
nothing left after the apt. Our daughter arrived home then. Life was
treating us fine, as far as i was concerned. And I had no qualms whatsoever.
In fact my bombay years were my best years.

Then my husband got transferred to Delhi, supposedly for one year. (but
eventually we ended up living there till we came to USA 4 years ago). We
hardly had anything to transport from Bombay except our personal belongings
, a TV, a bed and dining table..just that, those too we had bought after 5
yrs of marriage.
We got such nice accommodations in Delhi compared to Bombay's ...so we had
to hire some furniture as we were thinking we were there for one year only.
Our landlords were Punjabis, and for those who do not know about Delhi (
sorry, it can be a biased opinion too on my part), it is a place where you
are judged by what you wear and how you live.
 Seeing a truck of hired furniture coming to their door our landlady was
shocked. And asked me what about your Bombay furniture. I simply said I did
not have any. She almost fell and again asked, "Aapka shaadi wala sofa kya
hua?" I was puzzled and asked back, "what shaadi wala sofa?" She
continued,"Nahin, aapki Mummy ne to diya hoga na aapko shaadi mein." I said
no it was not so. She was aghast, and was shocked to see that ek Godrej kee
almaari bhi nahin dee mummy ne  :) and later on we came to realise her worry
was that how the hell we would cough up the monthly rent of her large house.
This still gives me a smile when i think of.

Thanks for reading through.
 Cheers

Ragini




> > > DO AWAY WITH DOWRY
> Now on to what could be done? From my personal experience, we never felt
the
> need to spend any of

Hence I don't see any need for dowry. So my opinion is defenitely
> no to dowry. Providing share to one's daughter should be left to her

. Let us hope for the best.


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