This blog was written a few years back, based on the book Two States. I had not published it back then. I guess its never too late.. 

I just finished reading Two States – by Chetan Bhagat. It an extremely light hearted book and brings out the prejudiced mindset of South Indians and North Indians for each other. Somehow you can’t unite India in case of marriage across states!!!! I loved the book and it’s a definite “must” read. There is a lot of humor and reality in the book. If you look around you will find your friends or someone you know in that situation. The author rightly says – its not at all enough that the boy and girl like each other; it is compulsory that the families like the boy and the girl respectively and most importantly the families like each other.

By the end of the book it made me think about the concept of love marriages in India. On the lines of Love marriage or rather relationship are two movies I enjoyed. One is Jab We Met and the other is Wake Up Sid. Although the later is not really movie revolving only around “love”.

Jab We Met portrays the feelings of girl who wants to save her relationship. She is ready to struggle and accepts all the difficulties en-route to make it work. I have seen many of my friends do that. It’s a struggle at least for the first few years to get accepted by the family. Especially if the girl is just not the family’s choice.

Where as in Wake Up Sid, the girl is older to the guy. That is a strict “No- No. This cant be accepted.” scenario. But after all it’s a movie and everything works fine in that!

Now here is my version to “Love Marriages” in India.

We live in a place where love marriages are even now far from accepted (though I do agree it is changing a lot as years go by). Well of course if the guy is older to the girl, they belong to the same religion – apart from that they should be of the same language, caste and also preferable the same sect. So basically if you want to find a guy / girl – they need to pass the following test

For Guys:
Is the girl younger to me?
Is she of my religion?
Is she of my language?

Once these basic question are “yes” its always a plus point to have “yes” for these following questions too.
Is she my caste?
Do we belong to the same sect?

The same set questions apply for a girl too expect the first question is vice-versa
Is the guy older to me?

Once you have a Yes to all the 5 question and your all happy about it … you have another milestone to cross. I call it the “M” factor. The Mangalik factor.. if either of the girl / guy has the M factor then your doomed. The baseline is apparently both the guy n the girl should have the M factor in their horoscope to cancel out the effect or else it is said that the if a non mangalik get married to a mangalik then it may happen that the non mangalik partner can die :(

But if all these conditions are ok -- voila we have a love—turned—arranged marriage situation at hand.

Its not that love marriage don’t happen. They do; in fact the number is raising a lot now-a-days. There are quite a few celebrity and non-celebrity wedding where the boy n girl is of different religions or the boy is younger than the girl. Families are now ready to accept love marriages no matter how evident the differences are. We are moving to situations where is doesn’t matter who is older and both the guy and the girl are accepted by the families no matter what. So I think in a few years from now it wouldn’t be a movie situation anymore. But right now I do agree as in the book – its not easy ;)

The "fairisim"

It’s been a long time since I actually wrote on my blog. Off and on so many topics on which I have wanted to blog, have crossed my mind. But the honest fact is that I have been lazy - its certainly no “writer’s block”   

Well today I decided to blog about "fair" racism. Hmm... thats a touchy topic. Now how on earth is racism fair?? Read on, you will know what I mean !!

I am talking about the commonly practiced racism on India based on color. Aaaah!!! Now you get it  :)

A few years back, at our annual party @ Deloitte we has an standup comedian. He made a few jokes about this kind of differentiation that we see in India. That got me thinking. Is this true?  For a fact I have seen this differentiation based on color. We all are so biased on this one factor.

You can divided India into basically two categories: obviously one being the fair one and the other being the dark ones. General obversation: most south indians (me including) are the "dusky beauties". Nice way the say dark ha? While, in the north, most of them are generally pretty fair.

It comes as a surprise to them if they see a fair southie! For the record my granny is very fair and unfortunately I have not inherited of it (ooops, guess I too am obssessed about the color factor) India is probably one the leading markets for fairness products. Here even men are not spared. Now-a-days the market is full of men's fairness creams!!

Moving on, even in movies, no matter the color of the actor, the songs always personify how fair they are. It's either "gori hai kalahi" or "yeh gore gore gal". Think about it.

Truthfully, as a kid, I used to wish that I had lighter skin. I do not think this issue to be encouraged. I am not trying to blame anyone of hurt anyone's feeling. The idea behind this blog is just to get laugh on ourselves, cause at times, we can be prejudiced on a silly feature like skin color.

P.S. This blog is based on my experience in India and not intended for any one particular person