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 ;)