Chetan Bhagat, the author of the best-selling ‘One night @ the call center‘, is touting his latest book ‘2 States: the story of my marriage‘. The Delhi-born Bhagat, who is Punjabi but married to a Tamil-Brahmin from Thanjavur, is asked in an interview in The Sunday Times of India what one can do for one’s country.
His answer: “Marry outside your State.”
“Punjabis will have their meals sitting on the bed with plates piled on sheets of the previous day’s newspapers. But at my in-laws’ house, meal times were confined to the dining table and food was had in complete silence. It was a real culture shock.”
Really?
Is marrying outside your State going to make India a better country? Would you like to (if you haven’t already, that is)? Will marrying outside your State it help us understand each other better, sink differences, bring us closer? Can marriage become a national mission?
Also read: Ram Guha: If possible, marry outside the profession
Punjabis would find it a culture shock to encounter any non-Punjabi in any setting, let alone a marriage. They think all of India feasts on naan/tandoori chicken, and dances the bhangra at the drop of a patka.
not really. if the fundamentals are not right in the first place it cannot help in anyway. yugoslavia, czechoslovakia, russia-ukraine are some of the examples i can think off immediately. maybe u can add the UK too. there is a high degree of intermarriage among scots, englishmen, welsh and irishmen but still they don’t get along very well.
What chetan does is a generalization that we accuse Hindi films of doing with the south Indian’s with thier portrail of ‘madrasi’ types.
The reality is there isn’t a single lifestyle or culture in any given state or any given city or even within an area of a city. You’ll see a cross mixture of people, who adopt varying lifestyles depending on their upbringing, financial status and their comfort levels.
I know of Tam-Bram families which were riotous during their lunch and I know Punjabi family that have military discipline.
That doesn’t make them ‘typical’.
Not quite. Rather quite astonishingly abolishing caste-based reservation can do some wonders.
In love marriages the lovers generally marry not because you are from a different state. In all possible circumstances you love and marry someone because they meet your intellectual or emotional or whatever quotient. That i bet is how Chetan Bhagavataru is married too. He must have met his wife in the high walled environs of some so called intellectual poultry.
So intellect meets intellect. Now when intellect meets reservation it could still work if the reserved is ravishingly beautiful.
Seriously people like ‘Stimulated B’ have no choice in future but to marry outside their Panjaban ilk. The rampant female infanticide in his home state has left these martial races (Punjabis and Haryanvis) with fewer and fewer women folk of marriageable age. They are in fact importing brides from Bihar and other BIMARU states…I can’t be bothered to quote the exact data on this like Sainath of The Hindu but you get the picture…
Genes need variety to evolve and flourish.
WHich is why scientists say it is not advisable to marry within the family.
By extending the logic, it may not be actually advisable to marry within the same caste.
and may I add Simpleji, within the same political party…:)
ha ha, what a trivial conclusion by a trivial writer in Chetan Bhagat.
before urging Indians to “Marry outside your State.”, Someone needs to tell them marry outside their caste.
bull crap, i say!
Doddi Buddi
I see that you love needling me.
K.
See what happened to dogs which are inbred a lot:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/10/2681558.htm
There is also a thing called ‘hybrid vigor’ known to plant breeders and farmers…
If it happens too much in one direction (like too many Punjabi guys marrying Tam-Bram females but not many Tam-Bram guys marrying Punjabi females), it is going to cause large scale rioting in the future.
We are male chauvinist bunch of people, we do not want to end up with a situation, where we get the feeling that some community(communities) are in a sustained conspiracy to steal away our females :D
The boys will be more-ly from state where they do not allow much freedom to their females.
I strongly think that if there are cases of inter-state (or inter-caste marriage by choice), it speaks greatly for the open-ness and progressiveness of the community of the female in question.
Just a thought :D
Marry far and wide for the best genes.
A Kannadiga marrying a Kashmiri or an Assamese is great from the view of the health of future generations.
Vinay, fully support your point on marrying far and wide for best genes.
This is the best and practical view which one can go for.
Though I support inter state and inter caste marriages, but I have seen around in most of the cases in interstate marriages, initially the things looks best, the girl is specially mad for the guy, discovering new things of the partners culture and stuff. Gradually it wanes away and the real problem starts after 5 years of marriage, when it boils own to reality. 80% of the girls doesnt have a happy life, its not adjustments, but they have to sacrifice everything in order to accomodate to the boy’s culture and in giving the culture to their children. I have seen more than 50% of them getting divorce after a period of 5 years, which is really rare in other marriages
I personally worry about the possible lose of identity of the children out of such wedlock due to the fusion of cultures, because in India we hardly have anyone calling indian, unlike in countries like USA, China or other european countries
Joya
Nagpur