Whose love is it anyway?

India could've been the land of sages and serpents, but the serpents have now transformed into cell phones. On the face of it, India might appear to be the domicile of the poor and the needy, but inside this mysterious place is the thirst and hunger to beat the world and be number one. You step inside and the vibrancy will touch you. This is a nation that is transforming.

But one thing has long stood the tide of transformation, the Indian wedding. Neither has the money spent in nor has the prestige associated with weddings changed for centuries. Statistics say ten years of savings are wiped out during every Indian wedding. And this trickles down all the way to the bottom. Banks say most farmer loan defaults happen because the borrowed money is not spent on agriculture but on weddings instead.

But all of this is not to celebrate the union of two souls that were in love for many years. In fact love in most Indian marriages starts only after the wedding, for the couple had just got introduced to each other a few weeks earlier, through their parents, and couldn't have managed to fall in love yet. If the introduction happened the other way around, well, you'll not find too many like that, but if any, such marriages will not happen without frown from the parents or scorn from the society.

But then, is one kind of marriage progressive and the other, regressive? To answer this question we need to know if one marriage is happier than the other. Again, statistics don't say so. You talk with couples, they don't say so either. Well, then there is no logic in arguing about which one is better. Probably the one that better upholds love, will and hope is better. But whose love are we talking about here? Whose will? Whose hope? Wait, do we even care about these four-letter words anymore? I'm not sure. I hear a few other four-letter words much more often these days.

Whose marriage is it anyway? No, I think the question should be whose love is it anyway!