Wednesday, October 24, 2007

INDIAN AUCTION!

Aren’t arranged marriages like auctions? Think about it, your parents are basically hoping to put you up for sale and also trying to get the best bargain in terms of buying themselves your other half! Seriously, I have studied several types of auctions, forward auctions, English auctions, dutch auctions, Japanese auctions, backward auctions so on and so forth. I suppose the concept of an arranged marriage is the home –grown version of an auction, the INDIAN AUCTION!
Have you come across any other culture that propagates the sale of the children of their house (it might be a tad over-fetched to call arranged marriages that but all the basic necessities of an auction are here!)

You have an auctioneer, usually in terms of someone who knows both the parties.
You have the sellers and buyers in terms of the families of the ones to be married.
You have a bid and someone to declare the bid as closed!
You have the basic malpractices of an auction too such as mis-representation, failure to deliver the promised goods, etc!

This of course would be a special type of auction where both the parties are both the sellers and bidders! There you have it then, an auction for your kids so they may be married!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

yeah...i agree..but in dat case..lov marriages r lik direct marketing..isn it..??u put urself for sale..sum1 buys it..he/she pays.. done..in a nutshell..transaction takes place frm both d end..! wt say..??
wt matters is Risk n utility.. which r both inversely related.. in either case..both exists..bt jus d proporption mite differ..bt again.. its subject 2 chnges..

Mulling Over My Thoughts said...

yup... completely agree.
i have a complete theory relating all our interpersonal interactions to a market...
but i guess its very very demeaning to compare life to a marketplace, after all life is too beautiful for us to do something like that. hence i guess its best to leave such a theory out of the purview of this blog!
nonetheless, i write about the INDIAN AUCTION because i suppose this is the oldest form of auction and history might want to stand corrected but then again, its a personal view (and even worse, a BIKRAM perspective!)