24/08/2010

Arranged Marriage


May I present Ashanka.
Ashanka is my dear friend who lives now in Milan but is originally from India.
We met for an icecream in the weekend.
Ashanka is the most positive person I have ever met.

One day at the University in Milan we had to present ideas of our group work to a professor. All groups were gathered in the lecture hall and the professor was randomly choosing a group that could go to talk to him next. After the talk, you could go. Finnish as I am I was completely frustrated with this system! Time is money! Good and exact organisation is the key to happiness! Where is the discipline? So I was whining "Noo, in Finland things would not go like this. In Finland each group would get a time, be there at time, present the project to the professor and that's it. No waiting. If the group would be late you would be thrown away from the course. Easy". Marcos, the Spanish group member was also a bit frustrated. He didn't enjoy waiting silently either. He said that in Spain everyone would take a queue number, go out in the sun to drink a coffee and one of the group members would go to check whose turn it is every once and a while.

Ashanka looked at us and said "guuuuyys, come on! I have my laptop, let's watch pictures from my trip to the rainforest!"

Ashanka also always answers to anything "It's quite difficult but it's not impossible!" and does it. Whatever it is.

Anyway, the reason why I think Ashanka is amazing, is his attitude to his culture. Ashanka will soon have his 30th birthday and in his culture he has to be married by then or he cannot return to his home village. This would of course cause a problem as in his culture he has to take care of his parents when they grow old, as they took care of him as a kid. Ashanka has been searching for love but it hasn't appeared... so guess what happens now? He will have an arranged marriage! Ashanka's mother will send him a list of appropriate girls (girls whose information matches to his. Information that is calculated from the Earth's position at the moment you were born) and he can choose the one he wants.

Incredible.

2 comments:

Kwil said...

oh wow. i personally wouldn't be very positive about arrangements like that. hahaha i'd certainly be shun for life.
all the power to him for having an outlook like he does!

Saara said...

He is incredible! I could never do something like that!