The Honey-Trappers of Chennai, India
by Presently, both the parents of the prospective groom and bride enter into a spying game on them to verify their off-beat habits and crazes. This is carried out with the help of private detectives. Several marriages have been called off when the real picture of the candidate comes to light.
No, there is no spelling error. They are not honey tappers from honey combs found on trees. They are a different brand altogether. The term is a new coinage too.
The world has changed in many respects ; people have taken to new life styles, to new ideas consistent with the IT trends and time and so on. But one thing, the Indians have stuck on and remaining uninfluenced by modern thinking is, “arranged marriages” as opposed to “love marriages”. Even highly educated and knowledgeable young damsels go in for arranged marriages disenchanted with the “love type”.
For some Westerners, the concept of arranged marriages may sound odd and bizarre as well. In this method, it is the parents who select the bride/bridegroom for their off spring once they reach the marriageable age. They would look into all departments of a candidate such as – his job and its security, family background, religious beliefs, the reputation of the family in their area and the likes. Once satisfied, both the parents would organize a “bride seeing” ceremony wherein for the first time the bride and groom would look at each other face to face (for a few seconds only) and convey their decision about the acceptability or otherwise. You can say, this is something analogous to “love at first sight”. It is the looks that the candidates will be concerned about and not the other qualities which would have been verified and certified by the respective parents.
Once the bride and groom have conveyed their acceptance, there would be jubilation all round in the group of participants and immediately negotiations would start about the actual marriage date and allied details.
Until now, the bride’s parents had always taken for granted that a Man seeking a Wife was a virile fellow, financially sound to support and care for a wife, produce grand children for them and would stick to her for life. Seldom did they think of verifying his medical history or his secret philosophies on life.
All that had changed. Parents of both sides have become wiser now. Over and above the credentials of the old criteria, they would want to know if the prospective groom could get turned on by the touch of a woman, if he is hetero-sexual and could give their daughter a satisfactory bed-life.
Incidentally, there was recently a case when the groom turned out to be totally impotent guy and the poor young wife deserted him in no time. If only the parents had known it, the marriage would never have taken place. Hence the precautionary measures.
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