Yes, I doing marriage and dating as my blog topic today, but for a really good reason, I promise.
So, as you should all know by now, I'm in India. Without my husband no less. Now there are two more girls that are also without their husbands. For the last bit, there is a married couple here that are here. Now, so we have three single members, a girl with a boyfriend, and all the rest of us who are married. My research deals a lot with marriage, as I am studying marriage traditions of the castes here and so this will sometimes lead to my informants telling me about how they met their prospective husbands/wives. Something that you should know about the culture of India is that there is no socially sanctioned form of "dating" here. Like, you do not date. That is not what you do in order to decide if you want to marry someone. Your parents will arrange who you will marry, and for the most part, you will not know who that person until you are married.
So, Oliver, one of the single guys here, we've been teasing about having Rajalakshmi match him for a Hindu marriage while he is here. We only do this because we get such a great reaction out of him and he'll play along with it too, it's great! Anyway, as we were doing this today, the subject of dating came up and then Westen started asking Rajalakshmi about how love marriages came about, so I got called in to handle this part of the subject, due to my previous research as well as the few interviews that I got before I changed my subject. I'll have to say...no matter what I said, they were confused on how people got to know each other before they got married, especially with love marriages. But I explained to the best of my ability, and they seemed intrigued by the idea that there was no dating here in India. It's socially forbidden to do so.
Comparing this idea to what it is we do in America, it is two VERY different worlds of love. Here, in America, we date, we hang out, we do so many things! just to find the one person that we could find that we could picture ourselves living with the rest of the our lives. It's an interesting concept, when you think about it. We, as humans in America, do these strange activities with other members of our own species in order to figure out if we want to, basically, mate with them. In India, the parents choose who you will mate and then the deal is sealed. Done and done. There's not a big fuss made out of it, they agree to the marriage and the marriage is set and then they get married.
I know that this may seem like a strange topic for today, to reflect on marriage and dating. Forgive me though, with me missing Richard as well as talking about marriage and dating and then having several girls here without their husbands and then a married couple. All on one trip. Marriage and dating comes up a lot with us.
Talk to you soon,
Ashley
So, as you should all know by now, I'm in India. Without my husband no less. Now there are two more girls that are also without their husbands. For the last bit, there is a married couple here that are here. Now, so we have three single members, a girl with a boyfriend, and all the rest of us who are married. My research deals a lot with marriage, as I am studying marriage traditions of the castes here and so this will sometimes lead to my informants telling me about how they met their prospective husbands/wives. Something that you should know about the culture of India is that there is no socially sanctioned form of "dating" here. Like, you do not date. That is not what you do in order to decide if you want to marry someone. Your parents will arrange who you will marry, and for the most part, you will not know who that person until you are married.
So, Oliver, one of the single guys here, we've been teasing about having Rajalakshmi match him for a Hindu marriage while he is here. We only do this because we get such a great reaction out of him and he'll play along with it too, it's great! Anyway, as we were doing this today, the subject of dating came up and then Westen started asking Rajalakshmi about how love marriages came about, so I got called in to handle this part of the subject, due to my previous research as well as the few interviews that I got before I changed my subject. I'll have to say...no matter what I said, they were confused on how people got to know each other before they got married, especially with love marriages. But I explained to the best of my ability, and they seemed intrigued by the idea that there was no dating here in India. It's socially forbidden to do so.
Comparing this idea to what it is we do in America, it is two VERY different worlds of love. Here, in America, we date, we hang out, we do so many things! just to find the one person that we could find that we could picture ourselves living with the rest of the our lives. It's an interesting concept, when you think about it. We, as humans in America, do these strange activities with other members of our own species in order to figure out if we want to, basically, mate with them. In India, the parents choose who you will mate and then the deal is sealed. Done and done. There's not a big fuss made out of it, they agree to the marriage and the marriage is set and then they get married.
I know that this may seem like a strange topic for today, to reflect on marriage and dating. Forgive me though, with me missing Richard as well as talking about marriage and dating and then having several girls here without their husbands and then a married couple. All on one trip. Marriage and dating comes up a lot with us.
Talk to you soon,
Ashley
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