iLOVE in the time of algorithms - 2

[ The author tries to seek a suitable solution when stable relationships are hard to find and divorces are norm of the day. His observations and thoughts will be presented in a series of seven blogs as the system doesn't allow to post more than four thousand characters in a single entry. ]

Another favorable aspect of arranged marriages is that it gives the freedom to concentrate on studies. And this is pretty meaningful in the developing asia where grades are more important than anything. They have had to be high as the GDP per capita is low.

It'd be quite intriguing to know that arranged marriages was a common practice in ancient europe, the victorian UK, and also in pre-feminist USA. And it's equally interesting to note that love marriages were respected in historic asia. The tradition of speed-o-blind dating was known as Swamvara in historic India, where women used to choose an eligible male from a very large pool of highly qualified applicants, only to indulge in a succinct period of courtship followed by a pompous marriage. Love marriage was known as Gandharva Vivaah in Indic civilization. While vivaah means marriage in many Indian languages, the phrase itself denotes one of the eight types of marriages in the time of the Vedas ( Veda - hindu scriptures ), the very form which advocates that mutual attraction should remain the sole factor for selection - and for the curious readers gandharva means a male angel. I'd refrain from bringing more complexity, however, they shouldn't be confused with the demi-gods like Zeus - the Adonis-resembling male counterpart of an wood nymph would be a more appropriate analogy i guess. How the other asian cultures assimilated the gandharvas or yakshas ( both the terms are used interchangeably ), this is beyond the scope of the present discussion, but i'd love to tell those fascinating myths in some other day. For instance - the four great kings of mystic India were referred as four guardians in thai-indonesian-burmese scriptures, the srilankans called them four privileged, while the chinese-japanese-korean-vietnamese simply said four heavenly kings.

I guess now you must've successfully guessed my most severe weakness ie the untreatable eagerness to know about other cultures. Let's pick it up where we left. The demarcation between love and arranged marriages has finally become fuzzy. While they're arguably a majority in the west and still a somewhat small-ish exception rather than the norm for the lucky-till-date east ( read asia ), the boy / girlfriend-upgraders you know, often known as gold diggers and beauty sharks - it's disturbing to see them growing at an exponential rate irrespective of the geolocation. It's disturbing as it takes all the faith away we the idiosyncratic minority once invested in humanity.

( To be continued )