✰¢reative ¢onstellation✰: #436 Is love really blind?

Is Love Really Blind?

Image Source: Google Images

There have been a lot of changes in my life since my last post on the blog. It’s not that I have given up writing in this blog, I am constantly writing, if not for this blog, then for different platforms. There have been several unfinished articles that are lying as drafts which I will complete soon, I hope so and keep posts coming in this blog.

This post is based on a reality show which I came across recently. When I searched for popular shows of 2022, got the suggestion about a show named “Love is Blind -Japan”. On researching more about it, I found that this show has two more versions – Love is Blind: Brazil, and Love is Blind: USA. This show turned out to be a reality show where unmarried men and women have come to try their luck at finding a suitable partner for themselves. This idea of the show was contrary to what I had anticipated from the poster and title of the show. I was thinking it to be fictional series. I thought of trying to watch something different from my usual choices and it was the first dating show for me to watch.

The show starts by presenting some women and men in different arenas of a hotel where the hosts welcome them and describe the rules of the show. This dating show is an unconventional one as compared to many other dating shows in the sense that the contestants have to talk to each other through their pods without having a look at each other. That's where the word ‘blind’ in the title comes from. After the hosts explain the rules, there are introductions of the individuals when they speak about their age, the place they’ve come from, their professions, and expectations from the show, in form of a small chit-chat with their fellow contestants. The language used is Japanese. My lack of knowledge of the language made me completely rely on the English subtitles. One of the contestants of the show is Priyanka Yoshikawa, who became the source of motivation for me to continue to watch this show with subtitles. Priyanka’s fluent Japanese made me research her, and I got to know that her ethnicity is Indian-Japanese as her father is from West Bengal, India, and her mother is from Japan. Surprisingly, she is also a title holder of a beauty pageant – Miss World Japan,2016. From her Ted Talk, I got to learn that she is the second one with mixed ethnicity to win this pageant in Japan. In this show, everything about her stays under the veil.

There are pods in a row that are completely closed from all sides, in front of this series of pods, there lies another series of pods -closed and isolated. Each series of pods is for men and women. Suppose a female contestant enters the pod, the pod in front of it would be occupied by a male contestant. They would be allowed to communicate without seeing each other. They would just exchange information about themselves verbally. One can see them carrying a notebook where they note down the important takeaways from their conversations with different contestants. You can imagine how difficult it is to even imagine the person they are talking to, simply through their voices. According to the rules of the show, if their vibes match with the other, the man can propose in the pod, and they would get engaged outside of the pod. That will be the first time, they would be able to see each other in person. After the engagement, the betrothed couples will be allowed to spend time like being in a staycation to check their compatibility before taking the decision to marry. However, it’s also possible for the couples to break up if there arises any issue of incompatibility.

Images of pods. Image Source: Google Images

I won’t be spilling beans about the show in this post as this post is not at all a spoiler for LIB-Japan. The reason for writing this post will be clear soon. While watching contestants talk with one another [It was a one-to-one conversation]in the pod, I could easily relate this phase with that of an Indian arranged marriage system when the first phase usually begins with the conversation with the prospects. These days, mobile has both facilitated as well as misled some communications. Just like the contestants, the girl and boy start talking to each other from their respective pods. Here, pods are their homes, hostel, office, etc. The contestants find it extremely difficult to process information (without seeing the other person) and connect emotionally to arrive at the biggest decisions of life i.e marriage. Having gone through a similar phase myself, I could relate to several emotions like confusion, disbelief, despair, hopefulness, etc. of the contestants. Life in the pods is very different from real life. This is evident from that part of the show when the newly betrothed couples are allowed to go on a staycation where they realize the differences and incompatibilities between them and the fake promises made in the pods. That’s the reason why only a few betrothed couples took the decision to be married in the end. This is something very unlike to happen in an Indian Arranged Marriage as the couples are made to live with each other after the marriage and whatever loopholes come into the picture, are compromised.

What I like about the experiment of this show is that it allows knowing someone in a true sense through a both-sided conversation without getting deceived by physical appearance which reminds me of the famous proverb to not judge the book by its cover. I feel that physical appearance sometimes biases our judgment of the person and distracts us from the depth of the conversation.

The reason for the success of arranged marriage could be a lack of expectations from both sides and a willingness to accept the outcomes. What and how can you expect from your partner when you’ve hardly seen them or spent time with them? There are innumerable sacrifices and compromises to make it work. Bringing up points in favor of arranged marriage, in no way, implies that I am against love marriage. Many successful people of today’s era have chosen their partners themselves and it somehow shows the clarity they’ve acquired in their lives including taking responsibility for their personal lives. It makes me so confused when I hear stories of incompatibility in love marriages where couples, after spending considerable time (several years) knowing each other, fail to make their marriage work whereas it’s the absolute opposite in the case of arranged marriages. In some arranged marriages where the selection process begins with Kundli matching, this Kundli matching process is least cared for, in love marriages. Why such hell and heaven difference in the processes of these two marriages and shockingly opposite results!

Love is a beautiful feeling beyond any condition. Blind love is unconditional when it considers no color, creed, caste, religion, or even gender. One manifestation of such unconditional love is the one that our parents/siblings have for us. They easily forgive all our mistakes and are ready to accept us anytime in any condition. The door of parents is always open for us and there’s no condition against our entry into it. Another such love is a spiritual connection with the divine which needs no condition. That love doesn’t discriminate against anyone and is supreme bliss. The love, that is felt within, from a sense of gratitude, without requiring someone to love externally, is the love that can love others blindly.