A friend of mine was getting (arranged) married sometimes ago, and the would-be-bride's relatives somehow tracked me down to know about him. Their questions were:

i)You were his college pal, did he have girlfriends?
ii)how was he ? drink, smoke, bla bla

Now, how could I answer? He was my friend, but not close enough. How do I know he didn't have some other secretly kept girl friend? People don't necessarily share these things with friends anyway. Furthermore, I didn't really like the whole inquiry thing. I mean, why should all those shits matter? The past is past, people need to look forward, not backward.And then I thought about myself.

Personally, I had one very emotionally involved relation long ago. I still feel afterglow of it. It was platonic, but overwhelming. If I end up having this arrange marriage thing with some unknown girl in the future and she asks me about my past relation, I am not going to lie about it. Why should I ? I am not going to go back to this relation again, (she is happily married, we are friend but we don't talk, it is something painful, and we respect inviolability of family life/responsiblity). I don't think it was a crime.I don't want to think it was a crime, it pains me , and I want to think it as something beautiful and innocent, not as an ugly crime.

Why people try to go back to the past, and unearth the ghosts in Nepal , I don't know.Why do people ask about the past I don't know. Should they? Why don't we just look at the present and think about the future. Why do we think love as a crime? Why do we expect people to grow up in solitary and be alien to the concept of love? Why a broken love is a stigma? My fellow sajhaites, would you lie about your past affair with the girl you so much loved in your teenage ?

I wouldn't lie about my past....there is no point in lying. I would gain nothing. Besides I would want the other person to know everything about me anyway because marriage is a commitment and if they don't find out now...they probably will eventually. It's better for them to know from you than someone else. I think that if you have to lie about it then it's more like you have something to hide. It's true that parents shouldn't be poking around your past but it's an arranged marriage and they don't want their guy or a girl to hook up with some pervert or something. It's good to know these things before hand anyway...but mistakes nonetheless happen no matter how careful you are. People who hide things are good at it....no matter how hard you go about in searching about their past ..or their current lifestyles...they will hide it. In arrange marriage you don't know the other person...it's a gamble. All you can do is trust that other person is good...and i think some research will not be so bad. Asking friends for opinion is not so bad.......(not like everyone is going to tell the truth) but you get the general idea.