Today's theme for me in this episode was all about the difference between "arranged" and "love" marriages. In both love and arranged marriages there are good points and bad points.
In life I feel there are four types of shaadis:
1. 100% love shaadis (where the couple decide everything and the parents may or may not even be involved!)
2. 100% arranged shaadis (where the couple hardly matter at all and the shaadi is more between two families like a business arrangement!).
3. "50% love + 50% arranged" shaadis (like Aarti-Prashant or Pratik-Paridi, the love may begiin the relationship first which then goes on to be arranged between families)
4. "50% arranged + 50% love" shaadis (like Yash-Arpita's was and Yash- Aarti's shaadi is expected to be - first arranged and then love grows).
I have been wondering in my own mind which type of shaadi has what good and bad points. Of these I will for the moment discount the first two types because those two types are not in question in this serial.
Now let me take the third and fourth type of shaadis ...
The contrast between Pratik's shaadi and Yash's shaadi comes from whether love precedes marriage or marriage precedes love. That was clear from the short Pratik-Paridi scene where they were both discussing how their wedding may be different from Yash-Aarti's wedding, and they both came to the conclusion that both marriages had a good chance of succeeding!
The big difference to me though is that Pratik-Paridi's shaadi - because these two people have already settled most compatibility matters between themselves - have left little to the mercy of the rest of the family to fiddle with. Hence we see no politics being played out in this marriage and things are going smoothly.
Pratik and Paridi are calm and anticipating a happy marriage without any family hiccups and hurdles because love preceded the marriage, and Paridi's parents and Pratik's parents have come into the picture only much later to complete what the youngsters have already decided between themselves.
Even the wedding arrangements between the families respects what Pratik and Paridi want because they have come with the first proposal to their parents, and so the parents too are guided by what these two people want for their shaadi and what they do not want. Pratik and Paridi have accepted each other's personality as they are, and so the families are not trying to remould them into some other personalities.
In fact, their love was so strong and tight that it allowed no one else a chance of meddling with the type of personality, bonding and dynamics that Pratik and Paridi already have and may have chosen to continue with for their lives.
On the other hand the marriage of Yash and Aarti has begun with the arranged model (and while there is hope and expectation of love later among us audiences, Yash and Aarti and their families have not separately or together anticipated any major love to happen).
Aarti and Yash have not yet accepted each other's personality or even discussed any subject about their mutual acceptance of each other. In fact they still keep maintaining that they are only interested in each other to the extent that they will be good parents for each other's children. They have not separately taken any mutual decisions on what sort of dynamics their marriage will have ...
The Yash-Aarti kind of shaadi seems to therefore have become a free for all for the families to have a ball with ...
1. Everybody and his grandmother wants to have a say even on what the personality of Yash and Aarti should be ... Mansi and Shobha have both given different ideas to Aarti about what Yash's personality is or will be ... and the entire Scindia clan have already decided what the personality of Aarti should be (in fact they have taken lots of trouble to completely rewrite her personality)
2. Everybody and his grandmother want to decide what the shaadi ceremony itself should be like (Garima trying to do haldi and kanyadhaan is just the tip of the iceberg, and God knows what other bouncers are going to be bowled by the Scindias. They are bending the rules like crazy!)
3. Everybody and his grandmother even want to decide for the couple how much love and what kind of love there should or should not be in this shaadi (Bua today wants no love between them, Shobha wants "acceptance of physicality with love later", Mansi sees nothing but physicality, Gayatri sees only a love for saas and sasur and nothing beyond that ...)
Look at today's episode ... look how many types of opinions have been given by all and sundry about what the couple should be like, what the marriage should be like, and also what the marriage dynamics between the couple should be like!
Today's episode had a lot of other things going on apart from all that I've written above (the SRK scene, the forgetfulness of Gayatri, the saree ironing by Paridi's dad etc) but I was less interested in all that today and more focused on whether Yash and Aarti are going to gather the courage to define their own personalities, marriage and marital dynamics or not!
I think things have come to such a stage that if Yash and Aarti do not talk between themselves first and then together with all the families involved, this marriage is fast becoming one where the families are just taking the upper hand with it and running away with it (and since there are so many of them they are all running in entirely different directions).
Aarti and Yash may have agreed to an arranged marriage, but that does not mean that they allow themselves to be bulldozed or mentally corrupted by all and sundry.
If only they both were to at least talk to each other, and they decided on some basic rules to work out their mariage, they can take the intiative to tell their families:
"Stop, bas, bahut ho gaya! While we respect you as elders, please do not try to mould the two of us separately into people you wish us to be. Please do not try to bend the rules of shaadi to bring new kinds of kanyadhaans that are never heard of. And please do not try to decide for us what our mutual relationship should or shouldn't be. It may be arranged, but after all we are the two people getting married. Is there space for the two of us, as we are, in this marriage or not?"
Edited by skanda12 - 13 years ago