Marriages are made in heaven but done on Earth :-)

you can decide where you want to get married, when you want to get married ... - but not to whom you want to marry ????? i guess so. i feel that it is not our choice that we marry a particular but it happens that way.

leaving the time, venue of marriage to parents - one thing one needs to focus is - whom to marry and how to select.  There is fantastic analogy which i would like to bring in - you have a sine curve. let us it is visible from 10 mts of distance. move till 50 mts... sine curve starts disappearing. move beyond at some point you feel that it is a straight line. move beyond and then there is nothing :-) bingo. You definetely know that there is a sine curve there. but it translated to straight line and then to a nothing....
drawing on the same lines - initially almost all of us have a certain set of requirements (may be pseudo) about our would-be. the more you are particular about it, the less probability that you are going to make it. For the simple reason that, no two individuals are alike. never and never.
One lives with one self till say 25 years prior to marriage. give him a chance to live with some body else who is not like him self. Otherwise it would be a dumb - boring life. Expect a different person. Now the question comes - differences to what extent.  This is where our enviroment we grew and our experiences happy/sad come into play. these will decide that i want someone with this feature, that feature. for eg, when buying a TV, somebody prefers a one which has good sound system and somebody preferes a peice which has a good visual quality. If you are lucky you get both but this is not the case always.
But the issue is there are infinite aspects/features in a human being. some of them will be visible in particular age and some others in later ages. Even though one forms a comprehensive requirement set and succeeds in finding partner with matching values - hidden features are bound to surface at a later stage and one needs to prepare for the same.
based on all this, i would prefer to prepare a set of requirements with minimum criteria ie base condition - 1, 2, 3 and just leave the rest...

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The goal is to accept the person in their entirety rather than a futile search of close match.
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i bet that all the married people agree to me on this. and for those who are unmarried, just please wait and watch and you will understand.

There is an interesting formula i believed in during the "selection process" --
here are the steps

1) Get convinced of the need to marry - other wise it will be hell for your spouse
2) Decide when to marry.  for eg in case of a hindu marriage, genly it is 3 months during which marriages occur - vaisakha (summer seoson), magha (winter), sravana (rainy) - check which one you would like based on diff parameters
3) start the search 6 months prior.
4) communicate in your family circles about the decision initially bcos this is where reliable sources exist and if didnt work out in couple of weeks approach the match makers. (both of these can be done simultaneously)
5) Discuss with your family - parents and brothers/sisters on what your priorities are - everyone should be coherent with requirements - ie achieve clarity - otherwise selection time would increase ....
6) List down the preferences in the order - an imp step
for eg - beuty, family backgnd,  education, rich ...
i think - education (knowledge) is the most important factor - bcos with it you can get all others. Also family background should be of high priority.
7) Go GET IT - fully focussed.

there is a thumb rule: if you are not able to find a match in 3 months frame of time - i think it is definetly going to take atleast an year.

Increased time most of the times mean - u or ur family is in confused state / not clear. the other implication is that ur expectations are high.
<<<like always everything has an exception>>>

Marriage is the most colorful event of one's life. till my marriage i always thought its a waste of time and money going the gala way. but to most of the people it makes them happy. each of them enjoy.

Ultimately, more and more people should come ... people should bless you. these blessings (nothing more than positive energy) should be showered on you. this  is the essence of the marriage event.

Marriages are made in heaven but done on earth --> exactly translates in to the above statement.

[[about the pic: Coorg trip 1st jan 2005, guess the last bachelor trip !!!!]]


Once upon a time there lived a great philosopher named Socrates. He died by drinking hemlock after being found guilty by an Athenian people's court of impiety and of having corrupted its youth through his "teachings". One of his teachings included "Earth is round". At that time people believed that Earth is flat....... After 100s and 100s of years it is scientifically proved that "Earth is round". See the starkling difference between the TRUTH and what we believe as TRUTH.

There are three dimensions in any truth which we try to prove:

the magnanomity of the truth under consideration, the technique we chose to prove it (generally it is scientific), and the actual proof.
Since our child hood education most of the times we prove by using science and unfortunately we are now in a state of denying anything if not proven by Science. Infact Science is only one of the techniques of proving.

Coming to the first point of the magnitude, certain things are pretty easy to understand and accept by common sense. On the other hand there are too many complex things in this universe which take ages and ages before a universal acceptance and proof is established. One such point is "Earth is round", "Sun is the centre of universe".

If i ask a question, "Have you seen it" for the above two facts, i guess no body can say YES. Immediately people will try to use some of the tools (telescopes) and diagrams to explain me why they are correct. In this process a base MODEL/Belief is considered to be TRUE and whole of the proof is based on this. I bet such a base belief is very difficult to prove.

Imagine you are in your kinder garden (say LKG). what if i come and say that
- there is something called an electron and a proton and the power of each
- there is nothing called you and me and inside the skin everything is blood and flush

guess it would be greek and latin..... and gets scared. and what if the same two things are told in 10th standard. i bet that there are very few chances that this will be denied.

To me there is an interesting process in this. first parents believed in the process of education and got you educated. You have belief in your parents and started believing the process of education and finished it successfully. And hence you went through all the steps that are necessary to understand the above two statements.

Belief to me has got very important role in our lives. Unless BELIEFE is there, it is very difficult to prove/convince a point no matter how scientific it is.

By this time, you must be worrying why all this philosophy in the "Dummy's guide to Marriage".

Because it is very essential that there needs to be some sense of "belief" in the minds of readers of these articles to get into the mind what i am trying to write. even 0.000000000000....1 % is fine. Otherwise i cannot answer/Prove a single question. the belief can be "Marriage is needed" or "Marriage is not needed". Anything other than these is not expected :-)

recently i read somewhere, "Marriage is a celebration of life" (obviously for those who believe in it) and it extends "Marriage is celebrating the way of leading one's life".

To start with the series and end with this article, i am penning down my own scientific reasons behind "marriage"::

Marriage is not essential in this world. Reproduction is essential. This should be an essential law of nature. Without reproduction and evolution there is no universe in which we are living. Probably in the initial days of mankind there is no concept of marriage, family .... << Even today, there are some tribes in some forests where there is no such concept of marriage >> But there is reproduction. After some time during the evolution, as always, a creative brain would have wished to stream line all this. Man needs woman and woman needs man. hence husband and wife. kids as a result of their union - children (brother, sister). And since then there are number of rules established and been established even today for a man to union with woman. You can immediately think of one man- one woman, one couple - two children......................
i am not going to discuss the abnormal scenarios of union here as it is out of context but just in case some body questions about it, "everything is accepted in this world, there is nothing good/bad they are relative terms".

Depending on the intelligence of the societies, n number of systems relate to these came into existance. Undoubtedly to me, HINDU MARRIAGE system(in its original) is the best as it stood ages and ages and it is still most successful, organised and well thought marriage system.
Unfortunate thing is that a system is the reflection of what the individuls following it perceive about it. And hence the -ves of it surface. And most of the times we see the negatives and think bad about Hindu marriage system.

Anyway, by the above, i feel that marriage is a way of living which aims at systematic and organised way both from the individual and society point of view.

So the question of "is marriage essential?"... the surprising answer is "absolutely not" People can live without marrying. Also people can live without education. they can live without family and friends. and so on. Everything is possible in this world. nothing is a must. But it is only a judgement of way of one's life style. What do we talk about a person with no friends? an abnormal human. same is the case with marriage. it is one system that we can use or for that matter most of the people till now used. one can make a decision of whether to opt for it or not.

hey guys and gals and family members ....

i have been indefinitely postponing this blog entry and just got something to kick start it.... (specially after kk requested for inputs to bachelors in kurukure grp)

I have seen n number of "dummy's" guides but never saw a Dummy's guide to marriage .. so thought of putting this title.

It will be a series of blog entries as i just cannot put things in a single blog entry. will cover different topics in different entries.....  if people are interested, you can suggest the titles and contents you need...

This probably will be useful for both bachelors as well as married people... may be i would learn more by the end of it....

Marriage is considered to be the most essential and important thing in one's life whether accepted or not... take it for granted.

One can have a great deal of comfort just by understanding answers to the fundamental questions about it:
WHAT is marriage
WHY is marriage
WHEN is marriage

At this point of time, when the world is full of scientific, logical people it is almost impossible to single out and one answer for each of these questions because there will be n number of counter questions for each of the same. at the end of the day, one has to come up with their own answers which justifies them and their actions and once this is done i swear that people live happily thereafter.

i will try to put some of what i have heard before and after marrying and what i understood in this 1-1 1/2 year since i started thinking of marriage.
i think i have to justify of what i am talking here - i have some serious discussions with my parents, an elderly philosopher, a guru in an ashram, couple of my friends before and after my marriage regarding this subject.

There are n number of books available for eg : "men are from MARS,women are from VENUS" which deal at surface level of the issues. but i think it is very simple at the core ...only understanding it and implementing it is difficult....

so bachelors get ready....


One important thing that needs a special attention is - comparing married life with bachelor life is like comparing apples and oranges. They are just never same.