Guy/Girl's plight??

On request by anandable.......this post is with reference to the comment made by anandable on my previous post.

First & foremost, my previous post was in reference to another post by an author called Nishant. I limited myself to the situation posed by Nishant (though I did assume certain things here and there), now what anandable has asked me to think about is a diametrically opposite situation, some assumptions of which are as follows:

• The girl is a small town, not so independant girl.
• The guy is willing to marry the girl, and so are the guy's parents willing to accept her.
• The girl's parents are not in favor of this marraige, on account of caste & status issues.

Before I begin to analyse the various variables that I have mentioned in my previous posts, I will talk about some inherent loopholes of these assumptions & also my limitations in understanding these assumptions.
I think the first & foremost loophole in the assumption is that while in the previous post both parties in love looked like matured & independant people, here atleast one party is not. Previously, we were talking about people who were capable of taking decisions by themselves, and also assess the merits & shortcomings of those decsions. In case of a non-independant girl such levels of maturity/independence cannot be expected, due to the sheer lack of exposure that dependency creates. Also in the previous posts both parties being the decision takers, the assumption was that they have a fair understanding of the fact that the accountability of the success or failure of the relationship lies on their shoulders. However in this case where the girl is not so independant, I am not too sure if she will be matured enought to shoulder the reponsibility/accountability of her relationship in the future. What i mean is that if god foresaken tomorow some mishap occurs in their relationship or in their lives, is the 'not so independant' girl, capable of handling it? The answer is perhaps no, and that is what brings me to the third assumption: the girl's parents' opposition to this proposal is not so unfair after all, except that the pretext that they are using to oppose it (i.e. caste & status) is probably not the best explainations of why they should be rejecting the alliance.

Another loophole of the assumption, and this time it is also a limitation of my understanding of small town girls. Arent small town girls the introvert kind of females, who rarely talk to guys, and probably are very well aware of their family & the social environments' condescending disapprovals of romantic reltionships?? Then how come they fall in love, I mean love can happen to anyone...thats fine!! but how does the mechanism of love unfold in such cases. I mean to ask, she atleast has to have talked to the guy a few times to really fall in love or after falling in love...or wait a min!!...are u talking about the love that she experiences by virtue of sight ...love at first sight!! If thats the kind of love u are talking about then believe me thats not love...its infactuation...or in my langauage 'stupidity'...and all i will recommend is...it is not even worth a fight!! So chup chaap se listen to what the parents say...

I know that it is a harsh suggestion for someone in love...but all i mean to say is that the assessment of whether something is worth a fight is very important...cupid may strike in several forms- love at first sight, crushes, friendship, sex...and many more....but the assessment of whether the form of cupid can be extrapolated to the sacred knot has to be a very prudent decision. And this process of extrapolation shouldnot be confusd with synonymising: love & marraige are not synonomous. They are two different things, if what you call 'love' materialises into marraige then you are damn lucky!!...but if it doesnt it is an important lesson of life, and you should 'by heart' it and move on in life!! However, I do believe that love is an integral subset of married life but that doesnt mean 'marraige = love' or vice versa.

Coming to the point of parents of the girl opposing the girl's marraige. In case of a non-independant girl, parents have to be very instrumental in chosing her partner, because the age in which a girl may have fallen in love could have been very impressionable, and love by its very nature makes someone very silo in their thinking. Owing to this, assessing the entire merit of the proposal keeping in view factors that will play an imporatnat role from time to time in life, becomes imperative for the parents. On judging these factors, some of which may revolve around the financial or social status of the guy's family, if the parents oppose the proposal...i dont think there is anything wrong with it.

Now, one would argue that I was harsh on the guy's parents opposing a proposal on the basis of the same factors, while I am supporting the girl's parents. I have logic to support that too, the reason being, once married the girl moves from her home to the guy's home. Assuming that the financial or social status of the guy's family is not equivalent to the girl's then there are chances that the girl may have to live in lack of resources which she was used to, to the extent of taking for granted in her own family. This may be the cause of discontentment for the girl, and she maynot be able to cope with the lack of resources. In such cases the girl's family may have to come to her rescue to make her life comfortable. From the perspective of both families this may not be a very desirable situation, the girl's family maynot want to own up the burden of their daughter's comfort after they have married her off, and even if they do, the maynot appreciate his wife's family helping out, because then it proves his inefficacy to give his family a comfortable living. Here the assumption is that the financial status of the guy's family is lower than the girl's family. However, in cases vice versa, it maynot be so difficult after all...its always easy for anyone to move from a lower starta of living into higher one, rather than do the vice versa. So what I am saying is, that parents rejecting a proposal on account of status is purely justified, however on the basis of caste....i dont know...i am not too sure...actually casteism is a very sensitive issue...and its an issue of mindset...though i myself believe that i should marry someone from my caste...when i ask myself 'why?', i dont having any rationale to support my belief...this is one terrain wherein i refrain from commenting...i dont know why...

Talking of the guy's parents, I think they are on the same page as their son, simply owing to the fact that they know their son is an independent entity with personal desires, and they respect it just as the girl's parents in the previous post must have. So they are willing to accept the girl, believing that their son has taken a matured decision, and that he has a fair understanding of the fact that the accountability of that decision rests in his own hands.

That brings me to the point of drawing an analogy of the proposed situation with the one in my pevious post. Just as the affected parties in the previous case were three, here too they are three. One is the girl, the girl's parents & the guy( i eliminate the guy's parents angle because their viewpoint is in sync with the son's)

Now lets look at the girl's perspective first:

I think she suffers from exactly the same problem which the guy suffered from in the previous post. She just lost track of the reality of her background & didnt think it was important to judge the guy's background, when she pursued her love.

Of course, she is a small town, not so independant girl so standing up and fighting for somethng she really wants is not something we can expect of her ( anyways, i am not even sure if she has a strong conviction on whether she really wants the guy, i mean on the basis of love on first sight no one can be absolutely convinced).

Also I would want to introduce another angle to the girl's perspective, which applies only to girls. Girls, who dont have an independant standing of their own, often equate their standing in society to their beauty, their physical appearance. And at any point in time, a patron of this beauty induces in the girl a feeling of self-worth. The feeling of self-worth is important for every individual, and for an unmarried non-independant girl this can be derived from the appreciation that a lover offers. This source of self-worth looks all important till the time the girl is not put through to think about marraige, once married she has her husband to derive this feeling from. So the incentive of a girl to fight her parents to get married to a lover, is lower than what it would be for a guy.

Now from the girls' parents perspective:

Of course peer pressure is important here too, with the girl's peer group getting married to NRIs and IASs which other girls' parents have chosen for them, this girls' parents dont want to be left behind in the race by hitching their daughter with someone whose primary vocation seems to be falling in love (thats what it looks like to the parents atleast!!).

Thier ego ofcourse takes a hit, they dont want to confess that they werent keeping a close eye on the movements & heart slips of their daughter, that would raise a finger on their upbringing scheme.

Parent's insecurity in this case comes from whatI mentioned earlier, the fact that they would have to marry the girl off in a family which maynot have as much resources or social recognition as theirs.

From the guy's perspective, I guess its the same as was in the girl's case in the previous post. I mean he just has to cope up with the feeling of despair & loss...i guess thats how life is ... unfair, but simply 'life'......

Iin the conventional love stories like this one its the guy who takes the brunt...and in modern ones like the ones i mentioned previously its the girl...

Though I think I have done a better job of explaining the perspective of the not so independant girl than I had thought...in case of any aberrations, do grant me the limitation of not knowing what small town girls are all about or rather not knowing how it could feel like being a non-independant girl. The smallest towns which I have experienced in my life have been Ludhiana, Kanpur & Patna ( and I am sure they dont even qualify as towns...all three were cities, I believe), so my perspective on small town girls is a little silo-ed. Though i did have interaction with a few small town girls in my engg days, but they were all far too soaked in inferiority complex, that most of their claims of love & boyfriends looked like desperate attempts to be on par with the metro-girls than actually an explaination of their true personality.

I hope i came close to looking at the problem with the perspecive that anandable expected, in case not...comments & castigations are most welcome....