A toast to arranged marriage

Given the way popular culture in general and the Indian film industry in particular impact and influence the way Indians think and behave, Shahid Kapoor's recent marriage to Mira Rajput, a girl his parents chose for him, is significant.

In an age of chat room affairs, WhatsApp flirting, speed dating, matrimonial websites, sexting, Tinder, PDA and all manner of online and offline ways in which a boy meets a girl, that a star, the heartthrob of millions, the former boyfriend of many a nubile actress, should choose this way to find his life partner might be a whole new chapter in the country's conduct.

Forget the fact that Kapoor's act is courageous enough in itself, given that tradition had earlier required Indian actors to play down - and often conceal - their marital status for box office considerations. Even a star like Aamir Khan had to throw a discreet veil on his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Reena, during the early days of his career.

When Hrithik Roshan married Sussanne Khan, there were many in the industry who thought that his career as the dreamboat of India's women would evaporate overnight. A decade later, the fact that Aamir Khan's nephew faced the same naysayers when he decided to marry his fiance, Avantika Malik, only proves how deeply entrenched this belief was.

Mercifully, that has changed now. Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan are happy to be seen as householders. Abhishek Bachchan, Ajay Devgn and Saif Ali Khan are not only married, but they also chose women as high profile as themselves. Ranveer Singh and Ranbir Kapoor give every sign of being on the verge of settling down with leading ladies. And it is only the lone wolf Salman Khan who scorches his own bachelor trail outside the domestic enclaves.

By going through with his "conducted before a nation" wedding and stepping out in public, proudly holding his wife's hand, Kapoor has firmly put an end to that nonsense.

But what about the fact that this thoroughly modern and worldly man of means and status, not without well known past relationships of his own and the object of many ladies' desire, has chosen to embrace one of the country's oldest traditions?

Kapoor is a much-respected figure in contemporary life - a man who waived his fees to work in Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider. A man with the emotional intelligence to negotiate an unusual background of domestic strife and parental divorce and remarriage (at last count he is supposed to have had three sets of parents). A man said to be especially close to his many stepsiblings.

Could this man be guilty of reviving what is considered by most a regressive and archaic tradition - one that a modern and young India would do well to eschew?

After all, arranged marriages are predicated on the archaic belief that our parents know best and that love can be incubated within an artificial construct of caste and clan. They hint darkly of khap panchayat, dowry and Ekta Kapoor serials.

But I think, rather than upholding an out-of-date institution, Kapoor's marriage might be a postmodern acknowledgment of the breakdown of modern methods of behaviour and how very fraught the relations between men and women have become.

Perhaps this bright and sensitive actor, having seen the debris of the past generation, has chanced upon a whole new way of conducting man-woman affairs.

Perhaps, given the film industry's sway over the country's thinking, more young people will opt for arranged marriages from now on and it will have a far-reaching impact on many areas of Indian life.

It might not appear so, but the Kapoor-Rajput marriage is a significant chapter in the way young India lives and loves.

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasmumbai@gmail.com