There's a juxtaposition I don't get - on one hand, the super high prevalence of arranged marriages in Indian culture, on the other hand is the super high prevalence of "finding romance" stories in Bollywood movies.
I’m not an Indian, though I don’t find that paradoxical, since I know how influential the story of Rama and Sita is to the Indian culture. That story is held as the ideal of relations between a husband and wife.
And then there is the story of Krishna and the cow maids.
When you watch the “Indian matchmaking”, you see the parents of the current generation letting their kids find their way, even though they themselves did not. But you also hear about how the older generation met — it’s an arranged marriage, but their parents typically let their kids choose from a small pool of their choosing.
