In India, arranged marriages are common. For finding a bride for the groom (to be) his relatives go from house to house to meet and see girls which can be a prospective daughter-in-law. Many times the guy also visits the girl's house and they are left alone on purpose by their parents/relatives to talk. This invites many awkward & sometimes funny experiences. Have you ever had such an experience when a guy had come to see you for marriage? Or were you made to meet a girl with the hidden agenda of getting you married to her?
Answer :-
Show us how to make Papad.
So this is my first and only experience of having a guy and his family visit my house in the context of 'seeing' me as their prospective daughter-in-law/bride.
My family is contacted by this guy through a matrimonial website; he calls up and visits (gets his whole family: uncle, aunt, mother & father) and says will come for tea but eventually stays till lunch time (so my mom prepares a huge meal for them).
I was not interested in the whole affair and had refused many times to meet the guy but like all other girls I too was emotionally blackmailed, so had to put up with the whole thing. The whole experience was an unpleasant one, but now when I look back it seems more funny than unpleasant.
I am asked to enter the room. Everybody's gaze is on me. Now, this guy works in some renewable energy firm, he distributes his company's brochure to everyone in my family (who does that?) and this is what happens --
Guy's Father : "Namaste, please sit down, How are you?"
Me: "Namaste, Fine, thank you. How are you?"
Guys Father: " I am a lawyer by profession and would like to ask you a few questions"
Me: Sure. (Lawyer?)
Guy's Father: " What do you think about Bhagat Singh?"
I am confused for a minute. Everybody is watching me intently.
Me: "Er..He was a great guy I guess..I mean I really don't think about him much..?!"
Guy's Father: "Ok I will make it simpler, what do you think about the movie Rang De Basanti? Do you think what happened in the movie is possible in real life? Will you do what Amir Khan did"
Isn't this suppose be a meeting where his son is supposed to meet a prospective girl to marry? Or is this an IAS interview?
I am a scientist by profession and not a Miss India contestant stuck in the Question Answer Round I think.
Guy's Father : "What would you give first preference to : nation, family or yourself?"
What kind of a question is this?
Me: " I liked the movie but I don't think that's possible in real life."
Guy's Father. :"I am trying to gauge your personality through this Q&A session."
What? Am I supposed to impress you with my answers or what? I am an independent girl, am I not supposed to talk to the guy myself and find my compatibility with him rather than answering your crazy questions?
All this time, the guy is sitting with his face down and hands folded.
Guy's Father: "What are your work timings? Do you have a night duty? How do you commute to office? What is the percentage of males in your office? Are you comfortable working with males?"
Seemed like one of those surveys conducted by the India Today magazine for an edition titled "Working women in India : Constrained or Happy?"
I give him the factual answers. Most of my colleagues are males and I am super comfortable working with them. I don't have a night duty but won't mind one. Then he asks:
"How do you calculate 4 divided by 2?"
Me: "Isn't it 2?"
He: "How did you calculate it?"
Now it has moved to psychometric testing, probably he's checking if I am a retard.
Me: " Dunno..may be you find the highest common factor of the numerator and denominator or something..blah blah."
He: "You seem not be good in mathematics, but you are good in social sciences."
Would my class 5 mark sheet help you in your assessment?
He: " We are a very modern family, I will allow you to wear jeans and also a top. You can also keep short hair if you want" (Points towards his wife who has been 'allowed' to keep short hair.)
Yeah I get it. Bloody hell. What do you mean it is allowed? I know what to wear, when and where! And don't you realize that a top HAS to be worn over a jean? You don't go around topless wearing only jeans!
He: "Do you know how to cook? What all can you cook?"
Me: "Ya I can cook most of the Indian dishes"
He: "Can you make a Papad?"
Me: "Er..Yes.."
He: " This is a tradition in our family that we ask the new bride to make a papad. Go to the Kitchen and show us how you make a Papad" (in a commanding tone)
Does he actually want me to go to the kitchen and show his wife that I can make a papad? I am not even the 'new bride' yet.
He insists, I don't find it funny at all. My family seems to take all of this as a joke or something, they don't even protest. It's not even like my boss telling me to go to the lab and show him how to pipette 100 ul.
So I go to the kitchen with the guy's mother, I don't even know where the papad is kept, our maid hands it over to me and start preparing it. (finding the whole thing very lame though). Meanwhile his mother is telling me to leave my job if I plan to get married her son and also re-think my ambition of doing a PhD, and is telling how she left her job after her marriage. I don't say anything. I am just thinking about my flight back to Bangalore.
My family is not that conservative and I have been brought up in a free environment. During the lunch I serve everything in their plates and after they finish their food they nicely hand over the soiled plates in my hands.
Finally I serve sweets to the whole family.The guys father says "Why have you served only one sweet? Don't you have more? Or you people are stingy in these things?"
I get the whole bowl of sweets and keep it in front of him and say " No. Everyone at my home is health conscious and we don't really take a second helping of things containing high amount of sugar and fat. But you can have the whole pack if you don't really care".
Finally I meet the guy. All he does is market himself. He works in Spain. He talks about how he got selected for this job (out of 600 people) and how he has an 'out of the box thinking' which helped get through his interview. Then he tells me about his salary and how I don't really need to work. Their family just wants an educated daughter-in-law so that she can present herself properly (means she can be kept as a nice show-piece, bhai beta Spain mein job jo karta hai!). He goes on and on and doesn't even seem interested in asking me anything about myself. In the end he tells me his hobbies and after a while says he likes Ricky Martin (wtf? is he living in the 90's..I think then he probably liked George Michael too..!)
I ask about his sister, he says she has done law and is sitting at home and is married to a hotelier. He only tells about the hotelier husband of his sister (females don't really do anything in his family it seems.)
Then he says --
"I will tell you one thing about myself. I am a pure vegetarian, I hate pubbing and clubbing. In my family all decisions are taken by my father. I have never breached his trust. If I marry you and you go for higher studies you will have to make a lot of adjustments. Now tell me what all stuff do you like? (it didn't sound like a question at all)"
He would have jailed me if I would have mentioned one of my likes to be a drink consisting of Old monk + coke.
I tell him that I am not sure about marriage as I want to go for higher studies. Then he tells me that I should go ahead for it but he also mentions how he once refused an offer from the 'daughter of a high court judge' because he wanted to go for higher studies and how he is now not left with good offers for marriage. (So am I from the left over 'lot' of the girls?)
Finally these people say bye and go back home. Since I 'behaved' so nicely and quietly during the whole meeting they sort of liked me.
It was such a relief to say goodbye to them!
To me, the whole meeting seemed like a display of male dominance in the Indian society by the people who call themselves modern. What if my parents quizzed their son the way they quizzed me?
There were a lot of other questions his father asked me, which I don't feel like writing here. I don't really know how I took all this shit.
Further:
Obviously I didn't marry the guy. I could go through the meeting because I knew I am not going to marry him.
Secondly, I made the Papad and his mum said "This is half burnt..but it's ok..you are a cute girl"
Cute Girl?
Anyways the conversation that followed after that was so boring that I unknowingly ate the Papad while listening/talking to her (to pass the time) and the Papad served to the guy's father was prepared by our maid.
My father was out of town when this took place, my mom, grand parents, uncle & aunt attended the meeting. My grand parents politely declined their proposal afterwards.
source :- quora.com
Answer :-
Show us how to make Papad.
So this is my first and only experience of having a guy and his family visit my house in the context of 'seeing' me as their prospective daughter-in-law/bride.
My family is contacted by this guy through a matrimonial website; he calls up and visits (gets his whole family: uncle, aunt, mother & father) and says will come for tea but eventually stays till lunch time (so my mom prepares a huge meal for them).
I was not interested in the whole affair and had refused many times to meet the guy but like all other girls I too was emotionally blackmailed, so had to put up with the whole thing. The whole experience was an unpleasant one, but now when I look back it seems more funny than unpleasant.
I am asked to enter the room. Everybody's gaze is on me. Now, this guy works in some renewable energy firm, he distributes his company's brochure to everyone in my family (who does that?) and this is what happens --
Guy's Father : "Namaste, please sit down, How are you?"
Me: "Namaste, Fine, thank you. How are you?"
Guys Father: " I am a lawyer by profession and would like to ask you a few questions"
Me: Sure. (Lawyer?)
Guy's Father: " What do you think about Bhagat Singh?"
I am confused for a minute. Everybody is watching me intently.
Me: "Er..He was a great guy I guess..I mean I really don't think about him much..?!"
Guy's Father: "Ok I will make it simpler, what do you think about the movie Rang De Basanti? Do you think what happened in the movie is possible in real life? Will you do what Amir Khan did"
Isn't this suppose be a meeting where his son is supposed to meet a prospective girl to marry? Or is this an IAS interview?
I am a scientist by profession and not a Miss India contestant stuck in the Question Answer Round I think.
Guy's Father : "What would you give first preference to : nation, family or yourself?"
What kind of a question is this?
Me: " I liked the movie but I don't think that's possible in real life."
Guy's Father. :"I am trying to gauge your personality through this Q&A session."
What? Am I supposed to impress you with my answers or what? I am an independent girl, am I not supposed to talk to the guy myself and find my compatibility with him rather than answering your crazy questions?
All this time, the guy is sitting with his face down and hands folded.
Guy's Father: "What are your work timings? Do you have a night duty? How do you commute to office? What is the percentage of males in your office? Are you comfortable working with males?"
Seemed like one of those surveys conducted by the India Today magazine for an edition titled "Working women in India : Constrained or Happy?"
I give him the factual answers. Most of my colleagues are males and I am super comfortable working with them. I don't have a night duty but won't mind one. Then he asks:
"How do you calculate 4 divided by 2?"
Me: "Isn't it 2?"
He: "How did you calculate it?"
Now it has moved to psychometric testing, probably he's checking if I am a retard.
Me: " Dunno..may be you find the highest common factor of the numerator and denominator or something..blah blah."
He: "You seem not be good in mathematics, but you are good in social sciences."
Would my class 5 mark sheet help you in your assessment?
He: " We are a very modern family, I will allow you to wear jeans and also a top. You can also keep short hair if you want" (Points towards his wife who has been 'allowed' to keep short hair.)
Yeah I get it. Bloody hell. What do you mean it is allowed? I know what to wear, when and where! And don't you realize that a top HAS to be worn over a jean? You don't go around topless wearing only jeans!
He: "Do you know how to cook? What all can you cook?"
Me: "Ya I can cook most of the Indian dishes"
He: "Can you make a Papad?"
Me: "Er..Yes.."
He: " This is a tradition in our family that we ask the new bride to make a papad. Go to the Kitchen and show us how you make a Papad" (in a commanding tone)
Does he actually want me to go to the kitchen and show his wife that I can make a papad? I am not even the 'new bride' yet.
He insists, I don't find it funny at all. My family seems to take all of this as a joke or something, they don't even protest. It's not even like my boss telling me to go to the lab and show him how to pipette 100 ul.
So I go to the kitchen with the guy's mother, I don't even know where the papad is kept, our maid hands it over to me and start preparing it. (finding the whole thing very lame though). Meanwhile his mother is telling me to leave my job if I plan to get married her son and also re-think my ambition of doing a PhD, and is telling how she left her job after her marriage. I don't say anything. I am just thinking about my flight back to Bangalore.
My family is not that conservative and I have been brought up in a free environment. During the lunch I serve everything in their plates and after they finish their food they nicely hand over the soiled plates in my hands.
Finally I serve sweets to the whole family.The guys father says "Why have you served only one sweet? Don't you have more? Or you people are stingy in these things?"
I get the whole bowl of sweets and keep it in front of him and say " No. Everyone at my home is health conscious and we don't really take a second helping of things containing high amount of sugar and fat. But you can have the whole pack if you don't really care".
Finally I meet the guy. All he does is market himself. He works in Spain. He talks about how he got selected for this job (out of 600 people) and how he has an 'out of the box thinking' which helped get through his interview. Then he tells me about his salary and how I don't really need to work. Their family just wants an educated daughter-in-law so that she can present herself properly (means she can be kept as a nice show-piece, bhai beta Spain mein job jo karta hai!). He goes on and on and doesn't even seem interested in asking me anything about myself. In the end he tells me his hobbies and after a while says he likes Ricky Martin (wtf? is he living in the 90's..I think then he probably liked George Michael too..!)
I ask about his sister, he says she has done law and is sitting at home and is married to a hotelier. He only tells about the hotelier husband of his sister (females don't really do anything in his family it seems.)
Then he says --
"I will tell you one thing about myself. I am a pure vegetarian, I hate pubbing and clubbing. In my family all decisions are taken by my father. I have never breached his trust. If I marry you and you go for higher studies you will have to make a lot of adjustments. Now tell me what all stuff do you like? (it didn't sound like a question at all)"
He would have jailed me if I would have mentioned one of my likes to be a drink consisting of Old monk + coke.
I tell him that I am not sure about marriage as I want to go for higher studies. Then he tells me that I should go ahead for it but he also mentions how he once refused an offer from the 'daughter of a high court judge' because he wanted to go for higher studies and how he is now not left with good offers for marriage. (So am I from the left over 'lot' of the girls?)
Finally these people say bye and go back home. Since I 'behaved' so nicely and quietly during the whole meeting they sort of liked me.
It was such a relief to say goodbye to them!
To me, the whole meeting seemed like a display of male dominance in the Indian society by the people who call themselves modern. What if my parents quizzed their son the way they quizzed me?
There were a lot of other questions his father asked me, which I don't feel like writing here. I don't really know how I took all this shit.
Further:
Obviously I didn't marry the guy. I could go through the meeting because I knew I am not going to marry him.
Secondly, I made the Papad and his mum said "This is half burnt..but it's ok..you are a cute girl"
Cute Girl?
Anyways the conversation that followed after that was so boring that I unknowingly ate the Papad while listening/talking to her (to pass the time) and the Papad served to the guy's father was prepared by our maid.
My father was out of town when this took place, my mom, grand parents, uncle & aunt attended the meeting. My grand parents politely declined their proposal afterwards.
source :- quora.com
