Indian Matrimonial @ ShaadiKaro Matrimonials          

If it is the clothesline, then it is the D&G, the DKNY that’s sported or the Armani that’s flaunted and the South Indian Kanjeevaram that’s draped. When it comes to fragrances, it is the YSL Jazz or Poison that enamours.

Whatever it is, when it comes to marriage, we have a tendency to become “Phir bhi dil hain particularly South Hindustani, North Hindustani”, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and many more such divisions. The otherwise active gut feeling to experiment, take risk, adapt or adopt turns passive and is almost absent in issues concerning marriage. When we can appreciate and even accept everything else belonging to a different culture or community, why cannot we make it our own?

Adam nor Eve had no nationality, community, religion or a region to call their own. It is for all of us to see and learn how many inter-culture marriages have been successful and how many marriages arranged within a community have broken down.

Right from the age when we are taught the difference between whats right and whats wrong, we also tend to imbibe the same pre-concieved ideas that our families nurse towards particular communities and people. This grows, changes, modifies according to our own experiences but continues to remain a barrier between people.

Most people identify or categorise a single event or reason as to why others "are" as they are. Our style of dress, the way we talk, the food we eat or even the music we listen to are distinctive to our personalities and identity. What is similar to one’s own personality becomes ours. What’s not, becomes other’s. Despite living in a world that follows multi-culture, accepting another culture does not come easy.

Each person has his or her own prejudices and cliched ideas moulded regarding every other sect of people across the world. The problem with interacting with people is rooted in our continued desire to put labels on people and force them to fit into one social section.

It is one thing to believe that you accept people different than you. It is another thing to live out this truth in the place where it counts the most. How many of us can dare to choose a partner for a lifetime from a community or a nationality not our own?

We really have to start with facing reality. Normally, people won't consider a partner with a foreign background. All of us have fears, some are more and greater than others. We could fear having strangers in our home. What you are ignorant about becomes not a world-to-be-explored but a world-to-be-avoided & feared, and so are the negative attitudes towards outside comunities other than your own.

When we restrict ourselves within our own sect, it is our loss and we do have less to choose from.  We grow up with some very strong messages about what we need from a partner. For women, the unconscious impulse is to seek a man with physical capacity as a protector and provider. Men seek a woman who can nurture and care for home and children. Basic and sub-conscious expectations of this kind do not ask for community, nationality or religion in particular. The social categorisation related to these are of our own making. Of course, these categories have been substantially broken down in modern times, but they remain at play in the psyche more than we might care to admit. To the degree that potential partners are still influenced by these messages, men and women with different backgrounds fail to meet their respective tests and often struggle with personal prejudices against other cultures.

Are you among the people who have longed for a partner of another community but have been rejected on cultural differences? Try not to take it personally when you're rejected. Take heart. It only means they're not really rejecting you as a person for your own values and merits. They're more interested in the surface, not the substance. If you got involved with one of these people , you'd only have wasted your time finding out that they're not a person who wants to take on the real stuff of relationships. Usually, ended relationships are emotionally exhausting, and to the degree that you're prone to self-doubts or cynicism about finding a partner, they can foster negative belief systems which would only be a source of further loneliness and fortified defenses.

Pre-conceived thoughts and negative attitudes will lead you to hesitate, be less secure, maybe even a little more desperate when you encounter someone who attracts you. This inability to "see" people for who they really are does two things. First, in an already small population, it limits people from finding that special life partner. Secondly, within our community, it places us  in the same type of stereotypical existence they want to put us in. Basically, we become mirrors of the biased community that we propose to change through tolerance and acceptance. Especially, women complain of a shortage of "people to meet" and often remain alone for years or get married to the wrong person. We should not assume that any one person is excluded from consideration based on his / her religion, nationality, colour or race. Only when we are able to address and correct this type of thing in our own community, will we be able to ask the other community to do the same.

No culture is lesser than another and is the best in it’s own right way. Every culture has been left with a witness to teach that each culture has truth in it, along with the evil. By learning from people from other places and cultures, we can multiply our effectiveness. However, it takes humility to learn, especially when the learning comes from another culture. By learning from other people and other regions, we can excel in our own.

Stereotypical attitudes are not avoidable. What is avoidable, however, is the application of a stereotype to every individual of a particular classification.We always learn, sometimes about ourselves, when we meet a stranger who is a foreigner. We learn so much more when we learn from someone from another culture. If you are willing to learn, geography will come alive for you. You will have faces names and even relatives with the countries from around the world.

No one culture has a monopoly on God. As culture influences our values and perceptions, learning about God from only one cultural point of view deprives us of all we could know about God and so, religion is never a deterrence but only a little difference.

When all you want is a partner and companion who shall love you for who you are and lets you be yourself, don’t let prejudices and negative attitudes take over. Instead, let your personality show, talk about the things that interest you rather than trying to do something special to overcome resistance to your lacking. Focus instead on your own path to knowing the other person and achieving the self-confidence that will naturally attract a partner who resonates with your true essence and the kind of life you want to live.

Choose not a person for who or what he / she is, but for who you become and how good you feel with them.

Whether black or white, south or north, people are people, regardless of their identity.