THE BRAINS UNDER THE HAT

Individual as well as families have several faces and a few well-hidden skeletons in their cupboards. There are masks under masks. We are mostly deceived by outward appearances and are not able to break the shell that hides the kernel“.

There are several areas where info has been provided but needs to be verified. You could be in for serious trouble if you go by the unverified information. In cases where marriage is contemplated, some info is verified while some other needs to be collected. Pre marital verification is perhaps the most important one as it could make or mar the whole of your life.

Marriages are made in heaven but consummated on earth. Long as they live, parents continue to worry about their children. They take care of them to the best of their ability. Parental care in India, commencing at birth, includes health, education, career guidance, financial help, marriage, advice and assistance in almost everything. Despite the weakening of family ties, most marriages in India are still arranged by respective families. Finding grooms and brides, suitable ones, is the most onerous responsibility discharged by parents. An error of judgment here, and your life is likely to come off at the seams.

As marriage is considered to be a lifelong relationship, precautions must be taken. Enquiries are made to gather as much info as possible about the prospective bride or groom. Relatives are pressed into service; neighbors are discreetly questioned about the family’s financial standing, habits, physical fitness, character, and past record etc. Investigation agencies could come into play in gathering such information. Astrologers are also consulted. Horoscopes are matched. This practice is now not as common as it used to be, but is still followed by a large number of Hindus. Astral protection, nevertheless, is no guarantee of a successful marriage. Demands of human nature are much more powerful than all the planetary influences put together.

While marriages are rarely arranged in the West, Indian culture continues to prefer them by and large. A marriage could be a love-marriage, arranged marriage or forced marriage. Whatever the nature of the marriage, its success depends upon the nature of the individuals involved. To gather information about that very nature is the real purpose of a pre-marital verification. It’s not an easy job. But then, marriage is not an easy relationship. Mundane facts, even when most desirable, don’t lead to a successful matrimonial alliance. World is full of divorcees whose horoscopes matched or who married out of love. Investigation agencies can definitely help to reduce the number of divorce cases pending in courts.

Divorce is not considered a stigma in the West. In India, however, it’s a social as well as financial draw back. Most of our girls become merely housewives after marriage. They remain unemployed and have no money of their own. If divorced, they will have nothing to fall back on. So they continue to compromise. Divorce cases take years to be settled and in a corruption-ridden society, conclusions are foregone. Who would marry a poor widow, particularly one with encumbrances? So, once a woman becomes a divorcee, her family life is finished, her financial resources are gone and she is a burden for everybody, including her own miserable self. To avoid such an eventuality, it is imperative to have an exhaustive pre-marital verification and gathering of necessary information.

You may be able to avoid some of the repercussions of divorce if you are educated and employed. But shock, tension and disgust will persist for years to come and even after a second marriage; the girl may not be able to enjoy a normal family life. As they say, prevention is always better than cure. Pre- marital verification is an attempt to prevent break up of marriages, at least a substantial number of them, by trying to assess the suitability of an alliance.

An unsuitable alliance and a broken marriage could equally adversely affect the life of a boy too. Only boys are in a better position to take care of themselves. They can contract a second marriage with comparative ease and in case they are rich, they can bribe their way through a court case without too many problems. The investigation agencies are not meant to fight the corruption in the system but it can certainly help you avoid facing that corruption.

Complexities of modern life make it almost impossible for a family to go beyond the superficial. Individual as well as families have several faces and a few well-hidden skeletons in their cupboards. There are masks under masks and only the persistence and expertise of an investigation agency can unmask the truth. Most people are deceived by outward appearances and are not able to break the shell that hides the kernel. As a result, marriages flounder and finally break up.

Besides a family’s suitability from all angles, a pre-marital verification deals with pre-marital affairs also. Families may be important but individuals are much more so. An emotionally unstable person, for instance, can never be the best choice as spouse. Normally, pre-marital love-affairs are discarded as soon as a marriage contract is made. Emotional attachments, however, are hard to shed. They have wrecked many a marriage and have led even to bloodshed. Of course, there are lots of post-marital factors which ruin a marriage, but a pre-marital enquiry has no access to them. Thus, pre-marital enquiries and verifications merely help, through material and psychological input, in reducing the risk of a marriage break up.

Whatever the nature of investigation, operatives have to be persistent, alert and observant. Their job is unenviable and involves risk. People are full of subterfuge and situations are often tricky. Things may not be as hunky dory as they appear to be. Those who are deceived by appearances never deliver the goods. Working in the field also requires toughness, sound judgment, commitment and the ability to move around or stay rooted to the spot. A superficial investigation will yield only superficial results, negating the very purpose of information input. A successful investigation requires suitably endowed operatives as well as the necessary gadgets.

A pre-marital verification gathers relevant data to establish the suitability or otherwise of a proposed alliance. A lifelong partnership should never be contracted without understanding all the risks, without choosing the best available partner and without informing yourself about the family that you propose to enter.

Investigation agencies collect data verification with regard to general reputation of family and the subject or they may provide analytical reports prepared after exhaustive investigation. It could include their own questionnaires and would make it easy for you to make up your mind. Secondly if clients do not require data verification or analytical reports but simply wish to learn about the routine activities performed by the subject; there is a kind of surveillance to monitor the daily activities of the individual under probe.

Sometimes, clients don’t go for a thorough and exhaustive enquiry. They have already made up their minds and merely want their information and views to be corroborated. That kind of attitude may very well defeat the purpose of an enquiry. Moreover, investigation agencies must be honest and above board they must not fall prey to allurements and greed.

All this is the sine qua non of success in the field of investigation.