I had been to Rameswaram, a Pilgrim centre, which is considered holy for the Hindus.
While travelling back to Chennai, I got to talking to a gentleman in the Train.
He said he was looking for an alliance for his son.
In Hindu custom, the parents look for girls or boys to get their children married.
They look for the family back ground,Gothra(genealogy, a unique concept which traces out your ancestors and excludes blood relatives who might be brothers/sisters however far removed-this is verified scientifically)
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The word “gotra” means “lineage” in the Sanskrit language. Among those of the Brahmin caste, gotras are reckoned patrilineally. Each gotra takes the name of a famous Rishi or sage who was the patrilineal forebearer of that clan. And each Gotra is addressed by the suffix ‘sa’ or ‘asa’ as relevant.
The concept of Gotra was the sociodemographic-cultural coding by Brahma to classify His family, themselves among different groups. At the beginning, these gentes identified themselves by the names of various rishis (Angirasa, Daksha, Himavan, Atri, Gautam, Vishrava, Kashyapa, Bhrigu, Vasishtha, Kutsa,and Bharadwaja; the first seven of these are often enumerated as Saptarishis). It is to be noted that Vishwamitra was initially a Kshatriya king, who later chose and rose to become an ascetic rishi. Hence the gotra was applied to the grouping stemming from one of these rishis as his descendants.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmin_gotra_system
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Humans have 23 pairs of Chromosomes and in each pair one Chromosome comes from the father and the other comes from the mother. So in all we have 46 Chromosomes in every cell, of which 23 come from the mother and 23 from the father.
Of these 23 pairs, there is one pair called the Sex Chromosomes which decide the gender of the person. During conception, if the resultant cell has XX sex chromosomes then the child will be a girl and if it is XY then the child will be a boy. X chromosome decides the female attributes of a person and Y Chromosome decides the male attributes of a person.
When the initial embryonic cell has XY chromosome, the female attributes get suppressed by the genes in the Y Chromosome and the embryo develops into a male child. Since only men have Y Chromosomes, son always gets his Y Chromosome from his father and the X Chromosome from his mother. On the other hand daughters always get their X Chromosomes, one each from both father and mother.
So the Y Chromosome is always preserved throughout a male lineage (Father – Son – Grandson etc) because a Son always gets it from his father, while the X Chromosome is not preserved in the female lineage (Mother, Daughter, Grand Daughter etc) because it comes from both father and mother.
A mother will pass either her mother’s X Chromosome to her Children or her father’s X Chromosome to her children or a combination of both because of both her X Chromosomes getting mixed (called as Crossover). On the other hand, a Son always gets his father’s Y Chromosome and that too almost intact without any changes because there is no corresponding another Y chromosome in his cells to do any mixing as his combination is XY, while that of females is XX which hence allows for mixing as both are X Chromosomes.”
In addition to this, parents look into Horoscopes and decide how the marriage is to be conducted.
Of course the Boy/girl will have a say in this.
However this old system is fast disappearing.
Gone are the days when parents circulate their children’s horoscopes through their friends/Relatives and through their family astrologer.
Now people advertise in Marriage portals.
The gentleman was expressing his difficulties in getting a Girl for his son as the Girls seem to be making impossible terms in their expectations.
I can vouch for this.
I have spent nearly four years in getting my son married.
He is B.Com, MBA,Soft ware Specialist in a Senior position and we have no commitments to be fulfilled at home as my only daughter is married and there are no other children for me.
I found,in the marriage portal, under’ expectations’ Girls/Girls’ parents listed the following.
Should be an Engineer, preferably in Communications/Electronics
Should be an IT Professional
Must draw a salary of not less than 7.2lakhs/a.
Preferable that there are no brothers and sisters
Placed in Metros
Should be in a transferable job
Willing to relocate to the Girl’s home town/where she works.
( The sting, I shall come later at the end of the blog.)
I wonder how people who are not IT specialists and those who are not in the specified Income Group ever get married!-leave alone the other terms!
Of course I got my son married to a suitable girl whose family did not have funny hang ups like these.
I have noticed a curious fact while going through a marriage portal www.bharatmatrimony.com
The details of Girls to be married , who were less than 26 years of age were uploaded by parents while for those above 26 years of age were uploaded by the Girl herself or brother \sister.
In the process of selecting the girl.I have come across various instances where the parents were unwilling to get the girl married quoting irrelevant reasons( in one case a parent told me that he had deferred his daughter ‘s marriage temporarily, and I asked him if this decision permanent!)
The reason is that the parents have accustomed themselves to the girl earning and the parents have become used to living off her and were unwilling to get her married.
This may sound cynical ,but unfortunately this is a fact.
The parents thus dispose of enquiries for marriage informing their daughter that the alliance is not good.
One day the girl finds that she is over 26 and she is not getting married and uploads her details and enters into the fray.
How sad!
(In the selection process I have short listed 3300 horoscopes, no error here, to find a suitable match, normally I select one in 10 based on compatibility including Horoscope).
The gentleman brought home a curious instance where the girl/parents of the girl asked him whether the Boy had Old Furniture at Home.
The man was perplexed.
He replied them that they have new furniture at Home.
The reply he got was
‘We mean parents”
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