We all have some uncle, some cousin or some neighbor who got married after a lot of searching and sorting.. In my family I have several examples of such marriages. Lets start with my uncle (my father’s elder brother) , he once rejected a girl because he could see her future.. No , I am not joking.. He said that he could see that the girl would become ‘fat’ when she grows old.. And he was so adment on his intuition that the girl was rejected. Another example is one of my cousin brothers, whose mom took 10 years to select a bride for him.. She used to find flaws with every girl she saw.. She used to check the girls as if she is choosing goats for a butcher’s market.. I have seen her even measuring the lengths of the girl’s hands! God knows what length she was looking for. At last they had to settle with whoever agreed to marry their son as their son’s age had reached almost 40 years and they were hardly getting anyone for him. Then I have this cousin of mine who is scheduled to get married this year (fingers crossed) . His mom who is my aunt had a long check list of how the girl should be.. This list had the following criteria: the girl should be tall, milky white in complexion, she should be having a B.Tech degree, her father should be a high ranked officer, her family should have lots of members and all the relatives like her maternal uncles, aunties, paternal uncles n aunties, grandparents, cousins, etc should all be ‘alive’ ; none of the relatives should have done inter-cast marriages; her family should give them a lot of dowry that should include cash, jewellery, a car, cost of wedding reception etc. She rejected a girl who had all these qualities , except she was an only child and her father wasn’t alive .. My aunt gave the reason that since her father is no more.. she will have to take the ‘burden’ of her mother n actually used the sentence “mere bete ko uski maa ko bhi dhona padega” . At last they settled for a girl who doesn’t have a B.Tech degree, or has a joint family, or is stunningly beautiful ( i mean by the book, although i think every girl is beautiful) and is ‘fat’ according to the ‘fitness experts’ of our family.. Because the dowry part is really getting taken care of by the bride’s family.. I just don’t understand what ‘culture’ or ‘tradition’ are we restoring. This is plain and simple give and take business and no ‘holy matrimony’. If a gold digger tricks a guy into marriage, people criticize her to bits, but what are our parents doing? Last but not the least I should include an honorable mention.. During my college years I had heard from one of my friend about a techniques they pracriced for selecting the bride. They used to make the girl roast popadoms or papad and if the girl burnt it from anywhere the girl used to be rejected.