Latest / Love Matters With Leeza Mangaldas / How do Love and Marriage operate in a Caste Society? ft. Anurag Minus Verma

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How do Love and Marriage operate in a Caste Society? ft. Anurag Minus Verma · Love Matters With Leeza Mangaldas

0:04
I'm Lisa Mangoldas and this is Love Matters, and today we're going to be
0:08
talking about marriage in India. While weddings are often glorified in pop culture and
0:13
the public imagination as the ultimate grand romantic event, is marriage not in fact
0:20
a system that simply upholds existing social hierarchies. Is there even any space for
0:26
love amidst this when arranged marriage remains the omnipresent way of going about things.
0:32
His love simply a delusion in an endogamous society. That's what we're going to
0:37
be discussing with my guest, Narrag minus Varma. After all, he has
0:42
once said that same cast, different go Thra remains the magic formula for love
0:48
in this country. Anurrag is the most incisive voice on cast, society,
0:53
pop culture and more. He has a cultish fan base among which I count
0:57
myself, and his unique voice comes through and israels his podcast is writing.
1:02
So Anurrag, thanks so much for being here. And one of the things
1:04
I love about your work is that not only does it hold amera to the
1:07
injustices and the cruelties and the loneliness of life and society, but also to
1:12
Ashria ridiculousness and absurdity. So I'm really looking forward to unpacking all of this
1:19
with you. But I want to start with a question. I'm sure you're
1:21
tired of answering. I'm going to ask you anyway, why is your name
1:23
Anurag minus Verma. What's the story? Thank you, Thank you, Lisa
1:27
for this wonderful introduction. Story behind my name Unrog minus Urma. So my
1:33
name is just Unaug. I mean, on the official documents, on passport,
1:37
AHA, everywhere, it's just undug. So there is no surname.
1:40
But when I joined Facebook in twenty eleven, so there was no option of
1:45
putting that last name column empty. So out of just as a pun on
1:49
the cast, I wrote it as Nag minus Verma because some people in my
1:53
family use Verma's surname. So that I wrote in twenty eleven, and people
1:59
liked it and I got five six likes because of that, and I felt
2:02
relevant. So I continued using that as a pseudonym for whatever I do now
2:07
and it has a certain music to it as well as opposed to under,
2:12
so I'm continuing doing it. Thank you for sharing that. All right,
2:15
let's dive right in to the murky waters we're going to be treading today.
2:20
I want to just throw some stats out there. Only five percent of marriages
2:23
in India can be counted as intercast. Ninety three percent of marriages are arranged.
2:28
Doctor Bieker, in the inaugural edition of Muknayak wrote that Hindu society is
2:32
like a tower where each cast is allotted one flow. And the important thing
2:37
to note in this is that there is no staircase in this tower. So
2:40
the flaw on which you are born is the flaw on which you die.
2:44
That wasn't over one hundred years ago. But not much has changed, yeah,
2:47
because especially I mean if we talk about love, then the whole idea
2:51
of love is very complicated and complex, and there are many philosophers and the
2:54
writer who tried to understand the meaning of love. So the proost has said
2:58
a lot about love, and there are pop cultural song what is love,
3:01
baby don't Hurt Me? And India people started creating these lyrics Muhaba, they
3:06
Michisana, Menishkamuna and whatnot. So the idea of the love is very complex
3:10
and everybody's trying to understand what exact the love means. So in India.
3:15
I always think love as a freelance activity. For example, if you are
3:17
in the college, then there is a certain kind of a dreamy state,
3:21
dreamy mindset and that madness of the youth. Your mindset is inspired by Pink
3:25
Floyd and the Doors, and you listen to these songs and you know,
3:29
you think of screwing the rules of the society and everything. And by the
3:34
time you are in the final year of the college and you are about to
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go out in the real world or in the society, then your love which
3:40
you have formed also you know, ev operates or I have seen you know,
3:44
some of the best lovers who were like the idel for the new st
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parents of the romance, and they were considered as like they are the couple.
3:51
But after the college got over, they had to separate because they have
3:54
to get into the real world where the rules of the love and are different,
3:59
because they have to their love to their family as well, and then
4:01
the family has five thousand filters in their mind and they have to judge whether
4:05
that love is suitable for you or not. So in that scenario, sometimes
4:11
you also do that preemptive surgical strike on your romance in the college time because
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you know what is going to happen when you move into the real world,
4:19
which operates very differently. So these lovers then finally realize that this beautiful river
4:26
of the love goes through the seewage of the society. So we have these
4:30
filters like go tra Cast, Subcast, Kundali, mang Lake, Color Dari.
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So these things operates, and even among the upper cast, it is
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very difficult to intermarry. Like one of my friend is very tense these days,
4:44
and his problem is that he comes from Bania community, which is the
4:46
uppercast community, and the girl is from Brahmin community, which is also a
4:50
uppercast community. And he secretly did a court marriage with her without letting the
4:56
parents because parents will be very violent and they will be very angry when they
5:00
come to know that their daughter has this intercast marriage. So this whole idea
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of the cast doesn't like necessarily is among upper and so called upper and lower,
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but within a certain kind of community that is considered upper. So in
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that sense, marriage and love are very tightly controlled by the norms of the
5:18
society. And it remains like that. Yeah, I mean, just building
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on some of these filters you mentioned, there were some studies of matrimonial entries
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in the newspapers and things, and you know, it was found that a
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groom with no education would be more likely to be contacted from the same cast
5:38
bright then she would contact a man from a different cast with a master's degree.
5:43
Right, And then we were talking about color. I mean, this
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whole sentence just sounds so absurd, just me saying it. A man was
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willing to sacrifice three shades of skin tone to marry within his own cast,
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you know. And it's when you just say this out loud, it sounds
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so ridiculous, and yet it is how ninety five percent of the country is
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operating, right, And marriage is not even a choice, It's an inevitability.
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You have to get married, and this is what we will get married
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to. And what was also really interesting to me was that it's not the
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education level of the bride and the groom that was found to have a correlation
6:15
with likelihood of being open to an intercast union. It was the education level
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of the parents, and more specifically, the education of the mother of the
6:26
groom that was an indicator of likelihood to be open to an intercast relationship.
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A very educated mother of the boy was the only time you would see an
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openness to considering marrying outside of one's own cast And I found that all very
6:41
interesting, you know that, because you see all these sort of woke young
6:44
people who claim to be cast less, and what you were saying that you
6:46
you know, preemptively end your love affairs in order to toe the line.
6:51
And this is what's happening. So what do you make of some of this,
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this whole idea of wokeness and everything, and that whole idea that I
7:00
think, therefore I am when you are saying in the Indian context, or
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I am free freedom of speech thought, I'm a free individual these ideas,
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doesn't I mean, I sometimes find it comical in the when we are discussing
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it from the Indian society point of view, because these ideas work in a
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society which is more of an individual based society. But our society is a
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community based society, so we are not really free, and we can't be
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free from so many judgments of the people and what our relative things about us,
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what our parents are planning for us, and everything happened within a particular
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kind of a community setup. So this is why these people who otherwise pretend
7:38
to be very woke, very progressive and everything, but if you dig deeper
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and in their kind of a lifestyle, then you realize a certain kind of
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regressive, traditional kind of lifestyle they eventually follow. So that's a different matter.
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But and also after applying five thousand filter, we are left with five
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six options and we choose one option among them and we call it love.
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So I was planning to write a book at one point of a time,
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which was title love is basically lack of options. So we were given so
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little option and we choose one partner from that, and that too after matching
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these kind of filters. And so that's why I'm quite surprised when people said
8:18
that found my soulmate match was made in heaven and something like that. No,
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it was not made in heaven like it was like there was so many
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filters that were there, although in financial aspect and everything, which I don't
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mind, because when you're marrying someone then you have to think about a lot
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of things. It can't be a dreamy love thing kind of thing. Like
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in the Europe that whole idea of romance started from that romanticism movement in eighteen
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hundred eighteen fifty so where they gave the priority to the feeling and the intuition
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and that whole idea of dreaminess of love, then the planning and everything.
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But now, right now we're living in a capitalistic and consumeristic society, so
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we have to think through a lot of arrangement and everything while we are planning
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to live with one So that I understand that it can't be just like two
9:03
people are I mean, but the choices of choosing should be given to two
9:07
individuals. That's the problem. But otherwise I can understand they're looking at the
9:09
financial stability of each other and everything, because then you have to manage your
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cutchat and brand and everything, so that you have to take into consideration practical
9:18
considerations for sure. But when you think about the history of marriage, I
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mean, even romanticism is relatively more recent, it was an economic arrangement,
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right, primarily you have cows, I have goats, et cetera, et
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cetera, And it was deeply oppressive to women, particularly Right, you become
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like the property, you're like property basically being traded between fathers. And it's
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still like that. It's still like that, exactly, It's still like that.
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And what I find really difficult to wrap my head around is that on
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the one hand, there's people who are so denied agency by their families that
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they are aware that this is an oppressive situation, but they have no way
9:52
out. Okay, so it's like, now what do I do. They're
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not deluding themselves into believing they have agency and this is great, is like,
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unfortunately, it's too great a cost for me to kind of resist this
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right. I might risk my life, I might risk my livelihood whatever,
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and so now this is what I'm faced with. But I think what's really
10:11
difficult for me to wrap my head around is I see a lot of people
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who tends to be these voth liberal people. We're like, oh, but
10:16
this is wonderful. You know. Now my husband and I both keep or
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like, oh, Prancachubra now is the brand ambassador for bulgary Is Mungal Sutra,
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and she goes, you know, today a bride can smash the patriarchy
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by buying a Bulgari Mungal Sutra. And for me, it's like, how
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are we buying into this delusion where you don't even seem to see you repackaging
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the patriarchy and the castism and all of these things that you claim to be
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hell bent on advocating against in your Instagram activism or whatever, and suddenly it's
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more palatable for you or something. I don't know, it's just very difficult
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for the dissonance around that is difficult for me to wrap my head around.
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Basically that in the consumer culture, that is also kind of a guilt of
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that inside of psyche that you know that whatever this you're doing is not correct,
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it is not something which is progressive. So you know that. But
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do know that some people I think have that sense what is wrong and what
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is right. I think so at least I believe like internally they have,
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but there are so many layers around them, societal layers that they have to
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navigate through it. So in the consumeristic society, there's a guilt of consumption,
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so that whole idea of how to bring in the ethical idea into it.
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So that's why you see these like Mungos Pananga like I'll keep the fast
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for you don't have to keep the fast, So that guilt is somehow compensated
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through these kinds of actions. It's like you're going to a Starbucks, like
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it's a j X very famous thing that you go to a Starbucks and you
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are worried that whatever I'm consuming is unethical because maybe these beans are sourced from
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some farmers in the Africa who are tortured while making it. So they said,
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no, these are ethically sourced bean and the price of ethicalness is also
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included in that coffee. So now it's like the four dollars coffee, six
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dollars coffee if you want ethical coffee, So that is combined within that whole
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package. So similarly in this situation, also, you know, you look
12:07
some ways to get out of that kind of guilt. But at the end,
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this is all very performative things. For example, recently I saw if
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you talk about big fat weddings that happens in India. So a couple reconstructed
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a scene from jodak But film. It was a lavish wedding and everything.
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They reconstructed the whole scene, how the Jodah will come, how the burg
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will come, and you know, the elephants and everything. It was a
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very expensive wedding that was obviously made for Instagram and for that engagement and everything.
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But if they wanted to create that jodak Gar scene, then it should
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have been between a Hindu and Muslim, But can you do that In the
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contemporary setting it would be called as love you have and whatnot. So you
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are just picking up some elements of it and not going to the root issue.
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And obviously there is As you said that one of the problems is that
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where will you go if your parents are not allowing So that that's a problem.
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Even I don't know the answer to it because although I also think that
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you have to like the pop culture and everything teaches all about the family.
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You know, whatever they are saying is correct and everything. But I think
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you have to negotiate and also rebel and try your best to make them understand
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certain things. But although it's very difficult, most of the parents are very
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rigid in their viewpoints. But it's your duty to change the things to how
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much possible it can be for you at least. So if you are not
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doing it and we are just subservient to the wisdom of the old people,
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then we are going to you know, the next generation will be also like
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that, which is the thing. Even because of the we think a lot
13:35
about these modern technologies, like they are dating apps, they are AI and
13:39
everything and then we think that we are progressing because they are apps and everything,
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But the technology of anything also represent the society. Both things are connected,
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so it's not like the technology will build a world which is very different
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island than how our society functions. So yeah, these things are somehow connected.
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This is the reason why I don't think dating app are some kind of
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a revolution or something, or they are changing the habit of romance or habit
14:05
of marriage in India. I think same kind of people, the same kind
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of biases will also come on the dating app. Last day, I was
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watching a story of one of my friends. She posted some of the screenshots.
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So there's a question on some app like you shouldn't date me if Then
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he wrote, if you are having a benefit, you may think that it's
14:22
an expensive app and everything is a premium member and everything. But his thinking
14:28
is the same hoow it is in the real life. So that's why the
14:31
technological progression should also be understood a little more closely. That are they something
14:35
new or something different? Same thing I say about the podcast People think podcasts
14:39
and new medium or something, but the podcasts are as regressive as contemporary podcast
14:45
as. I don't know if I can say India TV or these general,
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Internet is very rapid coming, just like me, just like but I do
14:52
want to just sort of hop on this point a bit longer off. Not
14:56
only do existing biases continue to be perpetuated, what I find very insidious is
15:03
that they're being repackaged as benign as some Oh it's preference, you know,
15:07
these are my preferences. I'm not castists, I'm not colorists. These are
15:13
just my preference. I can't control who I'm attracted to, you know,
15:16
or oh no, no, of course I would be open to anyone.
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But look at us in India. Your social group, your school, your
15:22
college, your job, the people in your sphere of interaction are typically extremely
15:28
homogeneous. So there's already a tell me that it's done its work. Before
15:31
you're even thinking about who you can be friends with. Your available pool is
15:35
already filtered, right, And I think people, particularly from privileged casts,
15:41
don't seem to have not considered some of this at least. I mean,
15:45
I see I'm thirty three. Now, I see a lot of women seeing
15:48
marriage as some sort of very necessary like I will have failed if I'm thirty
15:52
five and I'm married. What do I do now? I'm going to get
15:54
married no matter what, even though they're working. It's not out of compulsion,
15:58
right, it's out of the social respectability and status and upkeeping all of
16:03
that. What does it mean to be a good woman in society? You
16:07
must be married, You must be married a respectable person. I've seen people,
16:10
you know, I sed to live in Bombay. I met someone who
16:12
was like, oh, yeah, I'm only going to marry someone with a
16:15
Willingdon club membership, I mean, and then dilated I et ce club members
16:19
or something. And these are people who are extremely educated, extremely liberal,
16:25
you know, and so they convince themselves often that these are just preferences.
16:29
Just this is just how we do things. So I just want to keep
16:32
it in my friend group, my community, you know, without really thinking
16:36
about how this structure even has come to be. Yeah, so certain kind
16:40
of communality and certain kind of there has to be preferences and everything that these
16:45
are fine, Like we obviously love because of that, we find some kind
16:49
of relatability in the other person or sometimes just to discover more about some new
16:53
thing in the other person. So that is there, and which is also
16:57
okay. Think that's nothing wrong in that. But I think it's very good
17:00
to be aware of your own biases, your own thought process, why it
17:06
is shaped up like that, and then maybe you can free from that vices.
17:10
So the choices you are making maybe a little more real, a little
17:14
more you, a little more personal. But at the moment these we also
17:19
don't realize that most of these choices are made because of the conditioning provided to
17:23
us through the society or our surrounding, or by our parents. So how
17:27
to break free from it and then choose whatever whoever you want to choose,
17:32
So that whole idea is very necessary in this angle. So which is missing?
17:36
So the main point is this that you become aware first, and you
17:38
become aware of these whole biases, and then you choose whoever you want to
17:42
choose. But at the moment, you are just becoming a clone of your
17:45
own surrounding. And it's not just about changing society or anything. It's just
17:49
not fun to be very you know, just mingling in people who are like
17:53
you or around you. I think as a human being, you have to
17:56
explore more and whatever you have. So which is missing because we are extremely
18:02
segregated people. There is also community, obviously, but there is also an
18:07
extreme form of segregation and nobody is allowed to jump into other parts. So
18:11
that is there. That is one of the reasons that a free flowing love
18:15
or free flowing I mean attraction and everything can happen, obviously, So this
18:18
is why on dating apps you can get attracted to anybody, and dating mostly
18:23
are for short term things. These are not the long term things. These
18:26
are for short term things, and so people get attracted and meet each other,
18:30
which is very different from how Shaddi dot com or these kind of app
18:34
works. So that's why I say that Shaddi dot Com is basically tindered with
18:38
gangaja. There is a Sanskari thing attached to that. So yeah, we
18:42
can talk about that as well if you want. Yeah, I would like
18:45
to. Yeah. I mean, while perhaps dating apps and the idea that
18:48
dating is somehow casual and not permanent and distinct from marriage might afford people a
18:55
slightly wider net to cast in who they're willing to at least flirt with,
18:59
I don't know. I hope. I think what you also said earlier was
19:02
that you know, our biases are in built into technology as well and how
19:04
we use it. And I was very intrigued by this article I read about
19:08
how data of the behavior on dating apps in the US indicates certain racial and
19:15
gender biases, where so Black women and Asian men were the least likely to
19:22
get matches from outside of their own racial group. Okay, black women and
19:29
Asian men, Black men, and Asian women were actually quite desirable within the
19:34
dating landscape, even amongst people from other racial groups, because I think the
19:41
racial and gender stereotypes that are very prevalent are such that the way desirability and
19:47
masculinity are coded tend to be instead of like coming together in this way with
19:52
how Black men are stereotyped desirability and masculinity, and the way desirability and femininity
19:56
are coded tend to come together in the way that Asian women are racially stereotyped
20:02
the black man is strong and you know, masculine, and the Asian women
20:06
is seen as docile and petite. And so interestingly, race and gender have
20:11
this strange overlap where these really quite problematic stereotypes also are coming together to fetishize
20:17
certain races and stigmatize certain races and gender combinations. They're not always the same.
20:22
I haven't seen that type of data analysis of Indian dating app behavior,
20:26
and perhaps we are less racially diverse country than let's say whatever city like New
20:30
York. You know, there's so many people from so many different countries.
20:33
Perhaps here where more Indians dating other Indians would be the majority of the data.
20:37
Right, But do you think that things like cast and class and skin
20:41
color and you know, might also play into our dating behavior in similarly convoluted
20:47
ways. I think the role of the cast is not that much, to
20:49
be very honest, although some scholars have written about it, but I don't
20:53
entirely agree with them. I think, like you give the example of us,
20:59
so there is a different racial orientation, and you can judge the race
21:03
from the pictures and then you can swipe left or right and everything, But
21:07
there is no such judgment of the cast because you know, different cost of
21:10
people can look very similar. Even the lit can look like upper cast and
21:14
you know, so there is no difference in that, So how do you
21:17
judge that? And even sometimes the surnames are also very ambiguous. So what
21:21
I say is that dating also gives you a certain kind of In India,
21:25
it's still considered in the societal sense, it's still considered more of a sinful
21:30
kind of an activity that has to be done in the secrecy. If I
21:33
talk mostly about you know, small towns or even in the cities, like
21:37
people do it in the secrecy, meeting someone without letting their parents and everything.
21:41
So the whole idea is based on something which is a sinful activity.
21:45
So a lot of these social ideas I don't think apply there. What apply
21:51
is the idea of desirability. And then obviously you are a consumer and you
21:55
are seeing these faces, so these are kind of a commodity, and what
21:59
you want to do as a consumer is that you want to consume them.
22:02
So that is the whole thing. You consume them, and then you move
22:04
to something else. You consume and move to something else. That's how this
22:07
whole consumer culture on the dating works. So there can be the element of
22:11
the class, like how the person looks, what kind of person dresses,
22:17
because that's a very shallow medium after all, because it's based on the looks
22:21
and everything. Sometimes they can be the English and everything, you know,
22:23
so they have people who write if you tp loik this, then don't and
22:27
something like that. So these are the class based thing. The second thing
22:30
is that I have once I wrote an article about kind of the lit where
22:33
actual Manzara, which was about that. There is also stereotyped image that if
22:37
somebody is from the lift background, then he might not be aware of the
22:41
esthetical aspects in the society or about the pop culture or the movies and everything.
22:48
So there is also an upward mobility in the the lids living in these
22:52
cities, so even they access these apps, and like we were discussing some
22:56
time BacT like most of the conversation that starts in there, like somebody is
23:00
writing like I loved Oppenheimer or something like that, I love Barbie and something
23:04
like that, and then you look at that bio and then you talk about
23:08
Barbie like I like this aspect in the bo oh, you like this aspect
23:11
and this kind of shallow talks, you know, build up and then you
23:15
finally meet and you know, and date together. So it happens like that,
23:18
And it's always considered as a not always, but in most of the
23:22
cases it's considered as a short term unless or otherwise you're looking something which is
23:26
a long term or you know, want to do something with it, which
23:30
is quite rare in my opinion. So mostly it is considered as a short
23:33
term consumption thing. So in that sense, this rule of the cast,
23:37
I don't think that applies that much. Maybe in some cases, but the
23:41
idea of the class and everything that these things are more of a factor.
23:45
And as I said that, societies are also very different, so the race
23:48
and everything can't be compared to the cast. Most of the surnames are very
23:52
ambiguous, so you can't also judge through that. Like my own certain name,
23:56
there are many of a cast who use it, So there are many
23:57
such kind of surname which I because it's difficult to judge it. But yes,
24:02
obviously if you are in long term relationships with someone outside of dating app
24:06
then the cast factor comes after a while. I remember I was in college
24:08
in a relationship. Everything was fine, but suddenly, I don't know if
24:12
became very curious to know about my cast and everything. You are this are
24:15
you ratchpooled or something? It was not said in a confronting way or something,
24:19
or in more of a jocular way to reveal some kind of information which
24:23
I've kind of understood After a while, and I realized that this is not
24:27
might not go anywhere after college, and so you end it right now.
24:32
So these things happen in the long term romance and everything. But in dating,
24:36
where it is based on a short term consumption idea, the rules are
24:38
a little bit different. But do you think that those rules this idea that
24:42
it's okay to hook up with or something, you know, Because also we
24:45
have a value judgment in we're socially conditioned to see which type of relationship is
24:52
legitimate and valuable. So somehow a short term or casual or just physical relationship
24:57
is not in the of upper echelons of respectability or legitimacy or importance in how
25:03
we see relationships. Right, So this idea, and unfortunately, when women
25:07
socialized to see how they should navigate sexuality and romance, there's this value on
25:14
your inexperience, right, there's this value on your purity, innocence, chastity,
25:18
et cetera. As if you must save yourself for this one person,
25:22
that's the messaging you get otherwise you're slut or whatever. Right, So there's
25:26
that. Then there's this idea anyway for all genders. Also, the casual
25:29
and temporary and physical is somehow Nietzsche and shaddy and permanent and love, you
25:37
know. So even if we're willing to be more experimental in the temporary or
25:41
more informal sort of aspects of our romantic lives. That isn't then in built
25:48
higher. But it's a bit of the humanizing I mean personally, I don't
25:51
think the temporary is less valuable. I mean I don't ever want to get
25:53
married, so you know, my temporary or casual or whatever. I think
25:57
even a one night stand can be quite a valuable event if it is as
26:02
such. It can also be whatever, forgettable, whatever. But I don't
26:04
think time and permanence and is in my books at least how I attribute value
26:08
to the people in my life. But society does right, and many people
26:12
are kind of navigating that work, whether it be like you know, some
26:15
people are okay to hook up with, but this is not I would never
26:18
introduce my parents. I would never. Isn't that like? So that's why
26:22
I said, it's still considered as a sinful activity deep in your psyche and
26:27
or in the beginning I said that we lost someone that you are to present
26:30
that love to their pure family and parents, so similar things. These things
26:34
are considered as time past kind of a thing by most of the people,
26:38
or it's just another form of entertainment in this whole neoliberal world kind of a
26:45
thing. So there is no seriousness like attached to it as compared to a
26:48
seriousness that like garal ECUs kyla key, that kind of seriousness is considered as
26:55
a very pure thing. And obviously the purity virginity the coal cast is fives
27:00
on the purity of the women, like the women has to be pure and
27:03
other people can't mingle, so that the whole basis of the whole car system.
27:07
And as you said rightly, the gender thing is there. Unfortunately,
27:11
this is all the psyche of male that they don't take women who are on
27:17
their very seriously. They think, I mean, they will do it for
27:19
the whole coup or whatever, but they think whatever their parents or the mother
27:23
will choose is more pure. And you know that biases, as I said
27:27
earlier, are there and they are not going away just because we have moved
27:32
forward in terms of technology that those bises are there. Yeah. Interesting you
27:36
said the boy's mother, because I was saying the education level of the boys
27:38
mother tends to be quite instrumental in how yeah diverse his choices of brighter.
27:44
But let's talk a little bit about how pop culture represents marriage, especially mainstream
27:49
Bollywood. What's your take on sort of do you think it classes over far
27:53
too much? Do you think we've seen some more sort of accurate portrayals more
27:57
recently. I mean, I want to let you okay. So I think
28:02
this whole idea of big fat Indian wedding started from that film humapkn I think
28:07
nineteen ninety one or something, if I'm not wrong, So it started from
28:11
these kinds. So after that, these weddings got expensive and costlier, and
28:17
then obviously whole brand of pop cultural thing and whatnot, the whole cinema,
28:22
so that cinema inspired people because wedding now became a part of living a Bollywood
28:27
reality, or like the arranged marriage meetings are auditions and then you finally have
28:32
that dream of living like a star for one day or two days. So
28:36
these are designed like that to make you feel like a Bollywood star, so
28:40
that a music are also inspired from the Bollywood and everything, so everything is
28:44
like that, and now it became an instagram able. Your wedding has to
28:48
be like that because of the celebrity weddings and we see so the wedding that
28:52
we see in the pop culture produces an aspirational idea of what we want to
28:56
do. Sometimes even in the society these you know, expensive wedding provides an
29:00
aspirational idea and if you're not doing it, then you are somehow failing at
29:03
it. So that is a very sad situation. Because I once saw my
29:07
driver uncle crying in front of me because you can't arrange the money for this
29:11
big tent and big marriage garden. And he said, Mary, society mca
29:17
argate this, So that competitiveness is something which is very sad. So that
29:22
is one aspect of it all the wedding, To be honest, my experience
29:26
of wedding in Rajasthan from where I came, it comes from the state of
29:30
anxiety, to be very honest, because I remember when I was a child,
29:33
there was a Cuddain phone call during my mama's wedding, which is my
29:37
brother of my mother. So the phone call said that the other person to
29:41
call that Sol's are not allowed to sit on the hordes. That thing have
29:48
happened at that time. So in the night that police came and everything,
29:51
and in the morning was the wedding, that whole ceremony. Then there was
29:55
a tense situation that something can go wrong, so that even that Davi,
29:59
which is considered as a ut day for most of the people like a beautiful
30:03
day that is fraught with so many kind of danger and anxiety. So this
30:07
also happens again Rajasthan. These kinds of situations are very common during the wedding
30:11
in the Duali wedding that there can be a chances of some miscreants who are
30:15
going to disrupt it through violence or something. So wedding is I associated a
30:19
little bit with that, but also with another aspect which I realized recently when
30:25
I attended so many weddings of my family that for women it becomes an idea
30:30
of release because our society is so traditional and women are not given chances to
30:34
express themselves. Women of the family, I'm saying, when the wedding function
30:38
and everything happened to women of my family became very excited. When the wedding
30:42
happens, set, they dance, they express themselves, and for them it's
30:45
a celebration. And the other kind of days are obviously very mundane and boring,
30:49
but that whole wedding function becomes for them, it gives a meaning to
30:53
their life. That function is Yeah, the attendee is the relatives and everything.
30:59
So when I see them happy, then I said, okay, there
31:00
is another point of So one of the very interesting image of my growing up
31:04
is that I saw DJ at my village which was playing a song called Puppy
31:10
Puppy, Puppychulo, and there were fifty women dancing on it. Fifty dancing
31:17
on it. I said, okay, I understand that for them, it's
31:21
like tomorrow Land or something like. I mean, it's so sad, right,
31:26
there's women. There's a war on fun. You're not allowed to have
31:29
fun. The only time you can have fun is that a religious I mean
31:32
today's religious. In Bombay, there are trucks playing rave music. You know,
31:37
it's the only time you're allowed to party in the name of someone else's
31:41
wedding or religion or some other oppressive force. Right, it basically becomes one
31:45
man's oppression becomes a small window of fun because technically we're all doing this traditional
31:49
thing that becomes a joyful I'll show you a video when after after like the
31:56
whole dance and everything. Then, so there is that aspect of but so
32:00
in Rajasthan and everything. So these are the complicated weddings that happened so recently.
32:06
Because of that whole thing, the lit groom decided to go by helicopter
32:10
rather than a horse or anything. He decided to go through the helicopter to
32:15
meet his bride. So I'm saying that just a small distance of where two
32:19
lovers or maybe they are not lowered cut arranged marriage and maybe become lower in
32:22
the future, just the small distance become so much complicated. Just a distance
32:27
of one kilometer when that groom has to meet the bride, that one kilometer
32:31
distance is so complicated to cover. So that's what I'm saying that the whole
32:37
idea of love marriage is very complicated. Then the kind of images or the
32:40
kind of visuals that we see in the popular culture, which mostly just talk
32:45
about class sometimes meal cover, but in the society where marriages happens according to
32:52
cost, we don't see much of that in the popular culture. And obviously
32:57
recently made in Heaven, that episode by Neil that presents although they said it's
33:02
a the lith wedding, which is the wrong word. That's an umbd CORC
33:06
Buddhist wedding, which I really liked. That whole wedding scene, because,
33:09
as I said, wedding gives an aspiration. So that kind of wedding,
33:14
which is different from the traditional conservative wedding, it gives a lot of aspiration
33:17
at least to the people of the community to look forward to something, to
33:22
look forward to, an alternative way of wedding. All the wedding also has
33:24
a history of which where there is no priest allowed, which are not so
33:28
aggressive and innocence like the samaged marriages or even the Perryer's self respect marriages.
33:35
So there is also a history, but very less people who are aware of
33:37
it. So when you present something like this in the pop culture, then
33:40
it becomes a very important aspirational tool. So which I like that small change
33:45
that is happening in the recent time. But otherwise we just look at these
33:49
weddings and love romance uncritically without knowing that obviously there is a beauty in these
33:55
things, but there is also a lot of terror which is unexplored. I
34:00
find that often people are so successfully socialized by you know, these ideas of
34:07
basically this you know you just mentioned the bride becomes the super stuff for the
34:12
days that one day you get to wear the lenga of your choice and be
34:15
this heroin and everyone's taking pictures of you and you get but it's like they've
34:20
just gilded your cage for you. You know. It's like, let us
34:22
make you willingly walk in through the most confining situation ever, you know,
34:30
like, let's you get the Lenga as your aspiration. I'll get your tailor
34:34
to copy it for ten thousand apiece, you know, and that's like so
34:37
much you spending all this money on this stuff that's supposed to be because you're
34:42
the star this day, and like you create this aspiration around what actually is
34:46
an institution that is I mean rarely beneficial to word them, you know,
34:51
the statistically the person most likely to kill you were you to a die of
34:53
murder as a woman, as your husband for example. I mean, there's
34:57
so many aspects of marriage that are problematic, right, There's the gender stuff,
35:00
the cast stuff, the economic stuff. There's so much stuff. But
35:04
I almost congratulate whoever is doing the pr for marriage because so many people willingly
35:10
even when they have a choice. I'm not critical, you know, not
35:14
only not critical, are hell bent on doing it. Having the ostentatious wedding
35:20
as well on key and sometimes when I tend weddings, I'm like, you
35:22
want to impress these people? Why are we doing this? You know,
35:25
who is all this money being spent? Why do you care about these opinions?
35:30
Spend so much money just to stop people go sipping? You spending so
35:35
much money? Yeah, that is there. Why do we care about on
35:37
a very basic level, like why does it matter what all these people think?
35:42
And how can we change that? Do you think? I mean,
35:44
that's one of the aspect is obviously in the human behavior that people do care
35:47
about their own social settings. I mean, it can be if you understand
35:52
it through the online world. Then there are a lot many people who are
35:54
not very honest. They will say the opinion which is accepted by the people
35:59
around them so that they don't get canceled or something like that. So that
36:01
behavior is there. So I can also see it in me that sometime I
36:06
also play a little safe in everything, like I have to think what other
36:09
people are saying and everything. But at least some kind of education or some
36:13
education, not in the formal sense of education, but learning can make you
36:17
a little critical of things and can make you a little aware of what is
36:21
happening. If you start questioning them. When we say that be critical of
36:24
these things, that doesn't mean somebody want to destroy these things, or maybe
36:29
other model is better than this model, or this model is better than this
36:31
model. It's not like that. Like I also like community sense of India
36:36
in many sense, I like my family. I like the community sense as
36:38
opposed to sometimes the individualistic sense of the West. I like these things,
36:43
but there are a lot many problematic things within this setup. And if you
36:46
are not going to critically analyze it, critically understand it, and also when
36:52
something is wrong, then if you're not going to speak up for it,
36:54
and also it takes a lot of time. It's not that I also speak
36:58
up of everything which is wrong or anything like that. But it's also a
37:00
journey. So if you're not doing that, then in the basic sense,
37:05
you are not having the fun of living, fun of being alive, because
37:07
you are caged all the time, caged by the thoughts, caged by you
37:10
know these things. So have a critical viewpoint and try to understand why something
37:16
is happening in this way and what can be done to make it a little
37:20
better. So that kind of lens is very much necessary. It doesn't mean
37:23
that somebody want to destroy something kind of institution, maybe maybe mem where I
37:29
don't know. Marriages and these things can be institution, which can be good
37:32
if two partners are intelligent and they mutually respect each other. So these kind
37:37
of conversations we have to start. But that conversation is missing, and we
37:42
think that it is some kind of attack on the culture, attack on something,
37:45
and then we don't. You know, why would you even bother critiquing
37:49
something you didn't care about. I find it's so sort of counter productive to
37:53
call people who critique, you know, Indians who critique something about India like
37:58
they like, no, I love it comes from insecurity. Yeah, but
38:02
okay, speaking of love once spread in an article you'd written, I loved
38:07
what you wrote of. How you know the true ambassadors of New India are
38:10
its young lovers. And if we can retain and hold on to that spirit
38:15
of believing in love and going after it despite the potential threats and dangers that
38:21
come with it, like, those are the true agents of change and they
38:23
deserve our support, like if the donation should not fail these loves. So
38:29
do you see love as a very powerful and transgressive oss and can you should?
38:34
We should we sort of wrap things up on this. Love is obviously
38:37
a very radical thing in India to do because when you're loving someone out of
38:42
your choice, then you are bypassing so much of social structure. So the
38:45
entire act of being in love is through a political lens, is a very
38:50
radical thing. So why I wrote this article was because of an incident that
38:54
happened that a girl married without letting her parents know that to a dull person,
39:00
and then they were angry. They were after her life and everything.
39:05
So she was hiding somewhere and making these kind of videos. I think that
39:08
Facebook was there. She was making videos and telling the society that I'm in
39:13
love with him and I just want to be with him. And so that
39:17
kind of thing fascinated me because of her courage to stood up to what she
39:22
believed and also terrified me to know that what is going to happen. So
39:27
in that video, they are both the things which I said in the beginning.
39:30
So there is a beautiful trancelike aspect in the love when two people are
39:32
in love, but at the same time, there is an ultimate terror in
39:37
the idea of love, which was there because their life was danger So that
39:40
is the crux of the whole argument that I presented. These both things are
39:45
existing together. So it's not like the Urdu Shari or these gusul key do
39:49
Niyaki ckpr made and not SI company. So there is a journ nothing in
39:52
the love, but there is a hell which is also waiting for you.
39:55
So these both things we have to be more honest of analyzing it. So
40:00
that's why I said that governments should protect lovers because they were in the danger
40:05
and they should protect them, give them legal assistant and everything, which is
40:07
sadly not happening, because if you look at these vigilante attacks on Valentine's Day,
40:15
they are groups you know, who attack lovers. One time, I
40:19
was also about to get attacked in twenty ten in Japut, So that happened.
40:22
I was sitting in a cafe and suddenly I hear a loud sound of
40:25
somebody breaking the glasses. Then I saw that somebody was throwing stones. And
40:30
then I was with a female friend and we walked and I saw the trails
40:34
of blood on the floor, so apparently the manager hand got injured, so
40:37
the blood was doing. Then outside there was these dults who were you know,
40:42
wearing these things and shouting that Sharam karoshnas Kriti these things they were shouting
40:47
at me, and so yeah, I moved. But the problem is that
40:52
these gulls are also created out of the per words desire of the society,
40:57
so they also like them secretly disturbing the lovers, and these gults are seen
41:01
as like for them, it's like Batman for the society who is fighting the
41:07
real cause. So that's what I'm saying that we have to build some kind
41:09
of mechanism to protect lovers, for protect people who wants to love each other,
41:15
wants to be together each other, and there should be no such kind
41:17
of pressure from the outside. But I don't know when it is going to
41:22
happen, but at least we can talk about it. Yeah, yeah,
41:25
a girl can dream. Thank you so much, Anirak, such a pleasure
41:30
talking to you. Thank you for joining us on love Matters, and thank
41:34
you to everyone who tuned in. You can find all of Anurag's social platforms
41:39
and this podcasts in the show notes. You absolutely must check out everything.
41:44
If you haven't already, just spend the next ten hours consuming Anarag's work.
41:47
It is so well worth it. If you'd like to write into us,
41:51
you can email us at Lovematters at DW dot com. Love Matters is produced
41:55
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