KARIMNAGAR: Brahmin grooms in Karimnagar and neighbouring districts who are working as priests and cooks are struggling to find the right matches for themselves. They are looking for brides in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh and they are even prepared to pay ‘kanyasulkam’ (bride price).
A parent of an unmarried priest said: “The problem is very acute. Even though priests have good incomes, Brahmin girls only want to get married to software engineers. The parents of the Brahmin girls are rejecting outright those who are working as priests and cooks.”
To bridge the gap between the groom and bride, middlemen are playing a key role. They are getting commissions from both sides and are arranging matches. Only the Brahmins who are in financial problems are consenting to the wedding of their daughters to priests and cooks albeit for a ‘kanyasulkam’ of up to `3 lakh.
Recently, a priest whose parents who have migrated to Hyderabad married a girl from Chandrapur in Maharashtra and later organised a reception in Hyderabad. Another groom Srinivas Sharma who is working as a priest married a girl from Uttar Pradesh.
Brahmin priests and cooks in the age group 30-40 in Karimnagar and neighbouring districts couldn’t get matches in their respective districts. Ironically, even a priest is not showing interest in giving his daughter in marriage to a priest.
Lately, Brahmin associations in WhatsApp groups are persuading parents of girls to consider matches from among priests and cooks since they are earning as much as software engineers do. The practice of parents arranging the marriages of their pre-pubescent daughters to old men for cash (kanyasulkam) was prevalent once upon a time in South India.
A famous Telugu play of the same name written by Gurajada Apparao in 1892 deals with social evil.
It is one of the earliest modern works in the Indian language, and it is the first Telugu play to deal with the issue.