“IT is the best of times, it is the worst of times, it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness.” Pardon me for copying from Dickens’s immortal work A Tale of Two Cities; but when I watch programmes on television where an opportunely is provided to boys and girls to market themselves for getting a suitable match, I can’t think of lines better than these to express my feelings.
Born in an era when the elders of the family would arrange marriages, the ludicrous commercialization of nuptial ties for me is hard to stomach. In those days, if one was married outside of family, the couple would get to know each other after tying the knot. Despite that, the ratio of successful marriages was not less than 95 per cent. Hence the practice of matchmaking through advertisements, at a time when opportunities for meeting and getting to know a compatible soul mate are numerous, is a phenomenon as paradoxical as Dickens’s memorable lines.
When I was young, chances of getting to know women outside the family were scarce. I know of only one school in the city where girls and boys would study in a co-education system and that too up to the primary level only. Colleges were either all boys or all girls. It was at the Karachi University that I first experienced the co-education system. But there too the frequency of socialization between men and women was minimal and very formal. With workplaces overwhelmingly dominated by men and the induction of women in our workforce more than a decade away, getting to know anybody outside family was, to say the least, difficult. But even then placing a matrimonial advertisement in newspapers was not considered right.
Those were the days of the ubiquitous radio — television in its early days was a total non-entity and the Internet was decades away from being born. Despite all the limitations, matches were made without any help from the media, and may I add, at rates higher than today and more successfully too. Probably because no body even thought of commercializing the sacred institution of marriage.
The matchmaking process in those days was a team effort performed by family members. A family member who knew of or about a suitable person of marriageable age in another family would initially set the ball rolling. Individuals from both families would then begin to weigh the merits of the prospective match. In the next stage elders of both families would meet to decide for or against the match. In the last stage the boy and the girl would be informed about the elders’ decision, which the couple used to accept without any hesitation, because they were not accustomed to looking with doubt at the decisions taken by senior members of their families.
Matchmaking was a well thought-out systematic process, initiated and brought to fruition by a team of devoted elders. They were aided in this process by the fact that families and friends met each other on a fairly regular basis. Eid, unlike our times, was not the only occasion for people to visit relatives. The strong bonds and familiarity with family had then not been replaced by the addiction to television and other solitary pursuits.
The only thing that was missing was an environment where men and women could meet each other, assess each other’s strengths and weaknesses in a neutral atmosphere, away from the pressures of an impending marriage. In those times the educated and wise among us talked with a glimmer in their eyes about the future, when the boy and the girl would be able to discuss the pros and cons of marriage. These days, it is said, we have an atmosphere of freedom. What have we done with it? Unsuccessful marriages resulting in unprecedented increase in the divorce rate.
In days of yore there used to be female marriage managers who helped in bringing and materializing marriage proposals. They were trustworthy, elderly ladies who were fully aware of the reputation of families they visited and sanctity of the institution of marriage. Hence, no complaints of any dishonesty or false information were ever received. Proposals brought by them were thoroughly scrutinized by elders of both the families before finalizing a nuptial tie.
This does not mean that I am against love marriages, because this is again a very delicate thing. But then here on TV and the Internet we are abusing the openness prevalent in our society. We have turned the sacred institution of marriage into a reality show for TV audiences.
Modesty, delicacy and finesse are the first casualties of this age of commercialization — truth, honesty and transparency being the second. Identity frauds are rife in the online marriage industry business. It’s time we became a tad more wise.
“IT is the best of times, it is the worst of times, it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness.” Pardon me for copying from Dickens’s immortal work A Tale of Two Cities; but when I watch programmes on television where an opportunely is provided to boys and girls to market themselves for getting a suitable match, I can’t think of lines better than these to express my feelings.
