Some quirky shaadis

Well, a number of reports covering various versions of Indian marriages (I suspect the rise in interest in Indian marriages is a consequence of the Mittal wedding..) but take a look at this article. It mentions a certain Amar Nath Verma who will get to marry two brides- Ragini and her sister Preeti. The latter is disabled and their father wants them both married off at the same time. Apart from the fact that this is completely illegal, what is more worrying is the attitude to the disabled girl. It's as if she's a piece of property to be disposed off. (On the other hand, our society is remarkably insensitive to the disabled, and so if she was an unmarried girl, I wonder what her life would have been like).

On the other hand, there are these people, who are having a 'desi wedding' because they think their marriage will last longer. a) Are they trying to say that the high rate of divorce in the West is a product of the rituals they follow? b) Are they aware of the many sexist connotations of our traditional marriages and how demeaning they can be to women? (In Bengali marriages, the mother of the groom does not attend. Instead she sits at home while the marriage ceremonies go on, and her son before leaving tells her that he has gone to get her a 'slave'). c) There's a deeper sociological point here that they are clearly missing. It's not as if Indian marriages are uniformly happy. Either most women do not or cannot express their unhappiness, divorce is hugely frowned upon and the 'death do us part' belief can be incredibly stifling- not always the ideal model to follow perhaps?