So here’s the thing. Despite the edgy love stories, Malayalam cinema regularly puts out (anyone seen Mammooty’s Peranbu, where he settles down with a transwoman at the end?), and the love songs our singers soulfully sing, the truth is that many people in Kerala are stuck in the Stone Age where ‘love marriages’ are concerned. So, when a boy and girl fall in love with someone not chosen by their Amma-Achchan, much tension follows.
Now the thing is, in Kerala, we don’t do much in the way of honour killings. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, but not too often. What happens is, the offending youngsters are locked up (separately)
and subjected to (a lot of) love-shaming, because that is one thing many of my fellow Malayalis are very good at. And going to ridiculous lengths to conceal ‘love marriages’.
Someone in the family recently broke off an arranged match at the engagement stage and in short order, informed his family that he wanted to marry a colleague, who was, yes, a Hindu, but from the north. After the dust settled, the marriage went ahead with all pomp and ceremony, and that’s when I realised the narrative had undergone a 180-degree swivel.
His mother told me, “My son told us there was this colleague who was interested in marrying him, and asked if he could say yes. We said, go ahead, as long as she is from a god-fearing, traditional family.” The narrative floundered when I asked whether the boy had broken off his engagement because he was anticipating a proposal from this girl.
In quick succession, I recalled a friend telling me she married her Bengali collegemate because his parents (in Kolkata) had spotted her (in Kochi) and quite liked the idea of her being their bou. Another friend said her daughter was marrying someone she’d been friends with for years; but it’s not a love marriage, they are just friends.
The daughter of a close friend wed her senior at medical college. This was a minor misdemeanour, their liking each other, because they were of the same caste/creed/religion. Then the girl told me, “But people keep asking my mother if I’d been dating this guy for a while. And my mother is left red-faced with shame.” Me, I was left red-faced from holding in my comments.
So, we now have weddings in Kerala where the bride or the groom may not necessarily be a Malayali, where the uber-brief Malayali ceremony is leavened with elements from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Kashmir. But please don’t make the mistake of asking if it is a love match. You will be given convoluted stories of outreaches from total strangers across India. And you will have to listen with an impassive mien.
Sheila Kumar
Author
kumar.sheila@gmail.com