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COVER STORY
Friends
Food 33%
Family 28%
31% Family
Friends
12%
20%
Work
Work
11%
13%
surveyed think that men must be older than 26 to be married. Most parents of 30-something women we spoke to say it is especially harder for women to find someone as they grow older. ‘Men in their 30s want younger wives,’ goes the adage. But it’s not as simple as that. It is perhaps harder to get married when you’re older because by the time you’re in your 30s, you know precisely what you want and are not willing to settle for less. “And why must you?” asks Yamini Chandra, a 32-year-old graphic designer. “In your 30s, you’re doing well at work, you’re used to living a certain way and wouldn’t want too many people to interfere with that.”
OLD V/S NEW
Food
22%
The deal-breaker for 90 per cent of parents looking for partners for their children is someone who doesn’t want children. Proliferation of the species is, after all, our primary biological impulse. And the origins of the institution of marriage can be traced back to caring for the young ’uns. So, of course, the pressure to get married comes from your parents’ desire to have grandkids, says Arunoday Singh. “It started for me when I got close to 30, that’s when Mum said, ‘Ab boss, bohot ho gaya. Ab mujhe naate-pote chahiye.’” For 89 per cent singles and 76 per cent parents, a meeting of minds is far more important than caste and religion. Sociologist Janaki Abraham, associate professor at the Delhi School of Economics, says, “It’s because parents and singles both know that lack of compatibility can wreck marriages. And the big fear (especially for parents) is not that ‘chhod ke chali
jaayegi’ but that the couple will continue to live in the same house and be miserable. They’ve seen that happen, more than divorces they’ve seen so many households where the husband and wife lived in the same house but in separate bedrooms.” So parents are cautious about who their children marry, besides cross-over weddings are a wonderful affair. Vishal Punjabi director of The Wedding Filmer, a Mumbai film production company that makes documentary films of real weddings, has noticed that different cultures are mixing with much more ease and it's no longer taboo to marry someone outside of the community, caste, religion or country. “Before the wedding, there is still that stress. They sound like ’80s stories but it still happens – parents eventually come around and spend crores on the wedding,” he says. Parents, according to our survey, like to see their children sticking to traditional roles – women should know how to cook, men should have the higher salary. Although 81 per cent parents said they felt proud to see women going out to work, they were also proud to see them managing homes at the same time. Sometimes, parents can be downright ridiculous. Says Punjabi, “Right now, we’re doing a very sweet story. The parents wanted to introduce this boy and girl but they were hesitant and said, ‘No, no we don’t want to get married’. But they met and fell in love. They went on dates, WhatsApped and FaceTimed, and decided to get married and went to the fathers and said, ‘We love each
MARCH 30, 2014