Aishwarya's Manglik Dosha

Interesting analysis by Urvashi Butalia in the Outlook, on how the Bachchans have tried to remove Aishwarya Rai’s manglik status before she weds Abhishek Bachchan, and what this portrays of Indian society heading into the 21st century.

For, did the Bachchans, for example, visit temples with such regularity when their daughter Shweta was getting married? Or is it that there's something different about the marriage of a daughter and that of a son?

For even though the Bachchans, like anyone else, have the right to their private lives, it's when they make them public, and when the media works hard to do the same, that these questions begin to be asked. Why does it matter so much that a woman, otherwise perfectly articulate, independent, successful, needs the backing of the gods to marry the man of her choice? Look at the characters involved and their stories: both independent, both successful, both modern, both at the peak of their careers, both with pasts that hold other involvements. They decide to marry, a decision no doubt born of a combination of emotion, logic, reason. And immediately, enter the family, enter the pandit, enter superstition, enter the temple.

So perhaps there's something to be grateful for here, for the Bachchans' temple visits remind us how deep superstition lies in our lives. Can we, in this day and age, really believe that marriage to a tree first will take away the 'inauspicious' nature of someone born under a constellation of stars? While Aishwarya and Abhishek go through their rituals of appeasement, we have the same thing played out in a serial on television, where a man thinks nothing of marrying a perfectly capable woman simply to remove the curse that he is told his kundali carries, for she will then take on the bad luck and he can marry the woman of his choice. And is it surprising that in all of this, it's the woman who is the one up for sacrifice—whether it's marriage to a tree or a life sacrificed, in the end, her sacrifice is needed to make the man happy. Is this the 21st century we are talking about?