Convenient and Comfortable: ‘lagna yog’

 

Culture of convenience something ‘not so new’ concept is gaining momentum, in today’s time. After all we can’t totally deny that our cultural practices as they tend to change and evolve over the time have brought convenience and comfort in our day to day life. From food to every day changing fashion to social media posts we can see the manifestations of convenient culture. But who would have thought that these convenient cultural practices might change some important part of our life like marriage.

‘Lagna yog’ as it is called in Marathi which is paradox in itself is basically timing of marriage which generally gets predicted by astrologer by studying ‘kundali’ of an individual. Now what has changed which marks the heading of this piece of blog is how convenience and ease have taken central stage while deciding when one would have to share his/her personal space with someone else. 

I mean, reasons like before onset of summer to avoid scorching heat and I remember one of my relatives while marrying his daughter within span of one month where she had met her ‘to be husband’ only once in front of all family members gave the reason for rushed wedding that “you know how much money I can save which would have been otherwise spent on AC and cooler if I had done my daughter’s wedding after a couple of months!” .Then other one is on arrival of winter which would come with ‘availability of variety of vegetables and fruits’ which would make ‘great menu’ for wedding, before bread earner of house gets retired from his/her work, before period of leave ends like “you see if you want a husband or wife with good ‘sarkari naukari’ then you would have to get married whenever his/her leave of absence gets sanctioned” no matter if its within fifteen days of their first meeting (mind you, ‘complete strangers’ here we are talking about) , these are some of the ‘parameters’ that I have come across based on which decisions about life changing events like marriage takes place under the notion that ‘lagna yog’ of an individual has come knocking at his/her door that one shouldn’t overlook.

Compatibility is something looked as ‘extra’, like “What’s more you want to know? you know his/her family is good, he/she has good five digit payment and haven’t his/her neighbors told that boy/girl has very good nature, once you get married you’ll get ‘used to’ his/her personality, now don’t be petulant! And say yes before rate of marriage halls touches the sky!” This is that trite conversation we can hear in any Indian middle class family.

So how marriages set according to ‘weather’ or ‘finances’ irrespective of choice of a boy/girl not even taking into consideration whether those two individuals are even compatible or not to live with each other affects the lives of everyone around that forcibly tied marital knot is something we’ll see next.