Haven’t done shopping lately?... then try arranged marriage…

Disclaimer: Be it men, women, shopaholics, anti-shopaholics, those who have either done or willing to do love marriage, those who regret arranged marriage, those who don’t regret arranged marriage but its process, and most-importantly those who are going through the process – this one’s for you. This one is strictly for the generation, which makes, or is at least willing to make their own decisions their own way. It surely will raise eyebrows of few, but who cares?

Well, the title at first somewhat rhymes with the advertisement of Cadbury Dairymilk SILK… which says “Have you felt silk lately?” But, trust me it is just the opposite to that feeling of ‘feeling silk’…

Judging the topic based on the title of this post, many of you won’t be able to relate to this at first instance as it strikes… but again, trust me and hang on for a while, and I would be able to either make you relate to one or the other aspect of this or at least humor you :-)

photo credits: http://mugen.wikia.com/

Let’s take a short example of ‘shopping clothes’, there follows a process: You choose a shop/mall. You enter with a certain set of pre-defined criteria in your mind. You fix the budget/range. You go for a few particular brands. Then you choose the size. Then color, pattern etc. Then you go to trial room, wear it for 1-2 minutes, do bargain, make the payment, and you are good to go. If not, you try another cloth, another shop, another mall and thereon… This is an infinite loop until you find the correct thing. Sometimes, out-of-blues, you may get something awesome (although very very rarely, it does fit in your budget). Many times, you end up compromising your choice, due to all practical constraints – budget, availability, affordability, long‑run sustainability and what not. And till now all is well. But, the irony is yet to come – most of the times, you get bored of the clothes after wearing it 2-3 times coz your choice was made in just 2 minutes when the dress looked all fairy; in very common cases, you even curse yourself to choose such a dress that you can’t still believe how pathetic your choice was at that moment.

Most of the women won’t find above paragraph palatable for they just love shopping… but now read that paragraph once again, replace the ‘clothes’ with ‘yourself’, and ‘shopping’ with ‘arranged marriage’ perspective... And the analogy is just obvious that I don’t need to re-write that paragraph again, do I? ;-) The basic process is all the way ditto (obviously with few additional claws applying to arranged marriage).

For all the gruesome similarities, there are 3 ironical differences that I feel:

1) You generally don’t run the kundali (horoscope) match with your clothes before buying them;

2) You can go shop more clothes if you dislike your clothes later on, or once they are old. There are also replacement warranties on clothes; and the most important…

3) Shopping can be fun for it’s only YOU who shop… while it is not the case for latter. In arranged marriage, you GET SHOPPED, more than you GET TO SHOP…

Therefore, with all due respect to shopping, the analogy is very close to reality.

After all, I couldn't be more direct :-D