Adding legitimacy to bride-hunting

If I keep talking about marraige & related issues, my age and that of my friends' circle is to be blamed for it. Also the unique phenomena of arranged marraige (unique to the Indian culture vis-a-vis cultures over the world) often creates interesting material for writing, which is another driver for me for writing on the subject of marraige so often.
Recently, I was talking to one of my friends, with regards to a guy whom she had met for the purpose of matrimonial alliance. She had complained after the meeting that the guy was too shy and probably didnt match upto her. She also mentioned that the guy rejected her even before she could use his shyness as an excuse to reject him. Shyness I thought, that was a lame excuse to reject him considering that first meetings could be pretty unnerving for many guys. Especially those guys who arent used to talking to girls, and i must say such a segment in our society is indeed a majority if not available in ubiquity. Shocking but true, that inspite of the era of liberalisation, the men seem to be still living in a cocoon while the women have hatched out & going guns over the cocooned specie.
Anyway coming back to my friends and her opinion about the guy whom she met, I granted her the fact that the guy didnt match up to her for the sheer reason that even other than matrimony, a lot of guys that we had known in our MBA days stood no chance in front of her flair & smartness.
Probing her further on the issue, on another follow-up call, she told me that the guy whom she had met in the one-off date which was suppose to materialise into life-long matrimony, had recently got in engaged to a batchmate of his whom he had been seeing during his college days. She also added, that his apparent shyness was owing to his non-chalance for materialising the meeting into anything beyond, and also the fact that he didnt try and match up to the girl he was meeting(inspite of being MBA from one of the top institutions in the country) was a deliberate attempt to look and seem dumb. Reason for all this was now clear and obvious - he had already had his heart fixed, so rejecting my friend inspite of her drop-dead gorgeous looks & amazing personality didnt sound so shocking. What shocked me though was, why in the first place did he come to meet my friend? The answer to that brings me to the main issue that I wanted to highlight in this post.
I think the answer in some small ways is connected to what came up in my previous posts too. The fact that our conservative society still considers love marraige a stigma, has a lot to do with the point I am driving to. The point being, often girls & boys who have already decided on their life-partner from amongst their colleagues, batchmates or acquaintances, find it difficult to confront their parents on their choice. To simplify the confrontation process what they do is ask the parents to find someone for them, whom they would pre-decidedly reject, and after having met a few they can easily blame that their choice isnt being met and hence they offer their pre-decided partner's proposal. The whole drama just adds legitimacy to the process of chosing a bride who was once your girlfriend.
This is exactly what happened in my friend's case, the guy already had someone in mind, and was using my friend as a tool to make his parents realise their incompetency in finding the apposite life-partner for him. I appreciate the fact that he had at least made up his mind on whom he wanted to marry, I also appreciate the methodology he adopted in making his parents approve his choice - which was not by imposing it on them, rather allowing them to grow upto the concept that they are not able to find the right match for him, and it is best for him to chose his partner himself. It often unjustifies the stigma factor associated with the journey of transforming love into marriage.
Now what I dont appreciate here is the fact that he had to make use of 'rejection' as a means of getting his point across. I still cant fathom how easy it was for him to make use of some third party to get a message across between himself & his parents. There are two contentions that I have in this whole situation. One is the fact that the guy made use of a third party. A party who is foreign and very liable to feel bad for being used i.e. if she realised that she has been used, which in my friend's case she did. I didnt like the fact that someone was dragged into this because you had politely convey a message to someone who is dear to you without hurting them. The second issue is very grave -'rejection'! How many times has a guy complained about having proposed a girl whom he has been secretly admiring for a long time & having being turned down after pouring his heart out...more often than not you will hear a guy in situations like this, and thank God it is guys who are in this situation more often!!...because women in general have bigger egos when it comes to being rejected by the opposite sex. And even if we look beyond how each gender takes the issue of 'rejection', one would agree that 'rejection' for any living creature is not the best of feelings to cope with. Whether it happens in the process of establishing a matrimonial alliance, or can be guessed from the sullen face of an orpahned kid vis-a-vis a chubby gay face of a doted only-child of parents, so much so a domesticated pet vs. a stray animal. Each of these are intense examples of rejected living creatures. Thankfully however, of these two contentions only one can happen at a time, because if you are feeling bad about being used by the guy, then you know you havent been rejected. Or else if you think you have been rejected, then you dont know that you have been used.
And while every person can have his/her own unique style of conveying harsh messages across to their near & dear ones, all I would request for the general betterment of the society is that dont make use of rejection routed through a third party to get your message across to your loved ones. Remember, what goes around, comes around, you could do this to someone today, and end up having this done to you some time later. Be careful, the most precious smiles are not only of those who are yours, someone who is not yours could look much more beautiful smiling than frowning!!