A Few Notes Before We Get Started-
*Usually this blog at least attempts some form of humor, but for today we are ‘broadening our horizons’ :)*
*I am not trying to force any beliefs on anyone. This is just something that happened to me, you can take what you want from it*
*Did you get the title? Like a ____ and a _____walk into a bar…but it’s a High School…oh, never mind. Moving on*
Today after school I had a club meeting, and after it ended I had almost an hour before my ride could come, so me and one of my friends (let’s call her Summer), decided to walk across the street to go get brownies. Before long, the conversation turned to (suprise!) guys.
“Don’t you think that guy in History is at least a little cute?” I asked, “And he’s super sweet too, unlike most of the cute ones.”
Summer shrugged, “Ya, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m not allowed to date anybody. It’s the Hindu thing, you know?”
“So…what age are you allowed to date?”
“Never. It’s against my religion. I’m Hindu, you know that.”
Honestly, I’d forgotten, but I didn’t mention it.
“But if you don’t date, how do you know who you want to marry?”
“Well, I’ll probably have an arranged marriage”, Summer said before listing a bunch of other girls I know who will also have arranged marriages.
I know there are still arranged marriages going on, but in my upper middle class suburb? To people I know? I was shocked. But I was also curious. So, as we walked to go get our brownies, I asked her about it.
“And you’re okay with it? Marrying some guy you don’t know?”
“Well, I guess. It’s how my parents did it, how my grandparents did it. It worked for them. I don’t know, I’ve never really thought about it.”
Never really thought about it? I know that her family would consider me a typical ‘Western Girl’, with views much different from their’s, but I never realized how different. Every time I hear about arranged marriages in the news or online, it’s typically written from a European (BBC) or American (CNN, Time, NPR, etc.) point of view. Most of the time (if not all) they make it seem almost barbaric, like it has no reason to be around. But while hearing her explain it didn’t change my mind, it diffidently opened it.
“I haven’t figured myself out yet. I’m supposed to trust my parent’s know what’s best for me. There’s a process, how they find a guy. It’s not just random.”
All of us ‘Westerners’, how many times have we heard our parents do the, ‘Trust us. We have more life experience’ routine, whether it’s about school, jobs, or just life in general? Maybe arranged marriage isn’t as foreign of a concept as the media makes us think.
“What if you meet a guy in college you really like and you’re sure you want to marry. What if he asks you? What do your parents say?”
“Well, we’re southern indian, which is more traditional. So they’d probably be mad? Like ‘Whaaaaat?'”, Summer says, “But I’ve never really asked. It’s so far off. They’re more lenient than most southern indians though, so they might let me.”
We talked for a little but, about my religion and hers. I was surprised at what she didn’t know about christianity and she was surprised at what she didn’t know about Hinduism. I told her I wasn’t so sure and even just plain disagrees with some of the christian ideas, and she told me that I she didn’t agree with some hindu ideas. Even though I’m personally still opposed to arranged marriages and I don’t really get the logic behind the no-beef rule, I do feel like my views have been altered, and I diffidently understand her views a lot more.
I know we’re ‘just teenagers’ and we don’t have the life experience that adults do- but in this instance, I think that was a good thing. In general, the older people get the more rooted in their beliefs they become, and the less likely they are to talk to people different from them. If I simply believed what the media tells me about religion, I’d think Muslims are all suicide bombers, all Christians are radicals who burn the Koran, all Mormons have multiple wives.
Parent’s might have a point about us teenagers using ‘social media’ too much, but maybe we have the right idea. I think we’d all benefit from actually talking to someone with different beliefs than us instead of just blindly believing what the news tells us.
Rated Yin
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