Friends, I'm about to do something that I never ever thought I would do.
And I was gonna tell you about it overlooking Delhi and sitting on my khat.
But it's 39 degrees. So I'm gonna look like I'm being tortured.
So let's go into my room. Let's go inside and I'll tell you about my marriage and my weird ideas about marriage.
I've been keeping a huge huge secret from you guys.
So I have been dating a girl and she's been cropping up in a few of the videos, you might have noticed.
And we're getting married soon.
But actually I've never ever wanted to get married.
I'm 34 and you know, happily unmarried.
But in India, there's only so long you can date a girl before the pressure of marriage comes up.
And we're doing things very differently, very untraditionally.
And so, I'll tell you all about that.
I'll tell you about how I met her, how I met her parents,
what's gonna happen at the wedding and what's gonna happen after marriage to me.
Because you know, I'm a foreigner and usually the girl goes to the guy's house, right? So I'll tell you what's gonna happen.
Our relationship started 4 years ago when I met her in Malviya Nagar
at actually my apartment.
She came over to meet my flatmates and they were having a birthday party for her.
And I just remember opening the door and just going like whoa. You know.. who's this.. you know..
When you meet somebody sometimes, something just clicks in your head
and you're just attracted to them and you're just intrigued by them.
You wanna know more about them.
That was, you know, the first feeling I had with Manisha.
So I got to know her over the course of her birthday party at my apartment and...
I asked her out on a date after that and we went to Lodhi garden for a walk..
for our first date just to get to know each other better.
But then I had to leave India.
I was only in India for six months at that point..
just travelling around and enjoying India.
I wasn't here permanently.
So I went back to New Zealand and of course, I came back a little while later and
now we've been dating for two and a half years.
We just picked things off where we left them when I came back to India.
And actually I'm saving the full story. It's a long story for a Bollywood film
because it's a Bollywood style love story.
A little bit of masala and drama in there.
I guess Aamir Khan, I'll let him direct it.
Kangana Ranaut can be Manisha. I'm actually ready to do the music and
I don't know who'll act as me. Maybe I'll act with Kangana.
Anyway, after I got back to India, after like a year or a year and a half of being here,
it was to meet her parents.
She told them about me and now was a big moment.
Now Manisha is a jaat from Haryana
and jaats and Haryanvis are traditionally really really conservative people.
So meeting her family is a big big deal because
here in India, you're not really meant to or allowed to date or marry a foreigner.
For some reason, it's just frowned on.
So I knew I really had to like impress when I went to meet her parents but
But honestly, I had to idea what I was doing.
I was staying in a hostel and the day before I was going to meet her parents,
So I met this guy, as you do in hostels.
We just started chatting and telling him what I was doing and why I was here in Delhi to meet my girlfriend's parents.
And he's like "I'll do it. I'll give you a little class on what to do".
And the things he told me.. I was just like "what?". I had no idea what I had to do. My girlfriend hadn't told me.
So the best thing, the most important thing to do if you're meeting your girlfriend's Indian parents and this is what this guy told me..
He's like "you have to bend down as soon as you meet them and touch their feet with your hands"
At the door, as soon as you meet them, just go down and touch their feet.
And I was like eh? What is this?
And he explained it to me and then I messaged my girlfriend.
I'm like "do I have to bend down and touch down your parents' feet?"
She's like "Nah, you don't have to".
But the guy said "No, no. You have to.
Indian parents love this. This shows, you know, great respect for them".
And so, that guy couldn't have been any more correct or right.
Oh my god. So as soon as I got to the front door and rang the doorbell, I was so so nervous.
And her mom and her dad comes up to the door. They open the door
and I'm like "Namaste!" and I just bent down and touched both and both feet and
you know, one of the first things her dad said was "Wow. Indian values".
And it was the best way to start a relationship with her parents;
by showing them this respect and adapting myself to their culture.
And I just started the meeting off so well on such a positive note.
But you know what? I really hit the jackpot with her family.
So even though they're conservatives from a village in Haryana, now living in Delhi,
they're open minded and open minded enough to meet me at least and..
you know, not have been pushing their daughter into marriage
because she was 29 at the time when I came and met her parents.
And that's, you know, really unusual for India as well as for a woman in India.
And I should say like.. so many women get pushed into marriage here.
But people never thing about the men too. So..
Men also get pushed into marriage here.
It's just as big of a problem for men as it is for women getting forced
or pushed into getting married to whoever their parents want them to marry.
It's really bad here.
Anyway, that's a topic for another kind of video.
So I'm sitting there and it's like, just like you see in the movies.
So there's two couches: one on the left, one on the right.
Her parents are on the right. I'm sitting here on the left. In the middle is a table and there's like a samosa on it and
I don't know.. some biscuits and tea, chai as well.
And her parents just start all those, you know, typical Indian kind of questions.
What do you do? Where are you from? What do your parents do?
And we didn't get to the, you know, the big elephant in the room question
which is "How much do you earn?"
They actually actually ask this question.
Or they ask "How much property do you have?"
These kind of questions.
We didn't.. her dad didn't ask me that straightaway.
But, you know, we got there later in the day when he asked me how much I earn
and, you know, I just told him right like.. there's nothing to hide.
So I know a lot of people will find that, you know, totally not the right question to ever ask somebody.
But the idea behind it for Indian parents is that they want to make sure that you can look after their daughter.
So yeah.
They don't want to just marry their daughter off to just anybody.
For me, money is not even a, you know, a question when it comes to who I'm gonna marry.
It's all about the person but, you know, it's a little bit different here in India
and I understand the logic and the thinking behind it.
And the Indian parents and the Indian families, they make you feel like a family as soon as you step into their house
and kind of.. one really cute thing her dad did was
he ordered a tray, an entire tray, of Coca-Cola cans
because that's what the thought foreigners like to drink.
And when I heard that, I was like oh my god. That's such a sweet thing to do for somebody.
You know, to put yourselves in their shoes and think you know,
"Okay. He's in India but what can we do to make him feel a little more at home?"
So that was really sweet even though I don't drink coke.
But anyway, I'd rather have masala chai.
So yeah. That was really sweet of him and
you know, when I met their family for the first time, they just welcomed me in
and I spent the entire day at their house with them, meeting them,
you know, walking around the neighborhood, going to the park and
just doing all these kind of normal things and they were just kind of sussing me out and working out who I am
and just getting to know me as a person.
I've never dreamed of being married or having a big fat wedding.
I don't see the point in marriage actually.
Like, why do I need a piece of paper that says I'm married
I can be in a perfectly good relationship, a committed relationship without being married.
I don't need to be married for me to have a committed relationship, right?
Like, what's the point?
And once you learn how much money Indians spend on weddings, especially here in Delhi,
it just blows your mind.
So an average kind of middle class Delhi wedding might go for between a 100K to kind of 200K dollars.
And when I learnt this, what my friends are spending on their weddings,
it just blew my mind and I'm like "I cannot be responsible for burning that much money on you know, a big party.
Like, that's too much. There's so many more things you can do with that money.
You can invest that money. You can buy a house. You can buy anything with that much money in India.
I don't need a big fat wedding and a podium for Manisha to fly down onto the stage and like...yes.
To me, it's burning money, right? Like..
I don't even want to get.. I don't even see a point in that.
So why would I want a big fat Indian wedding as well?
But you know like.. it's about compromise, right?
So you can't be in India and be dating someone for so long and not get married.
It's.. I'll get into the compromise part later anyway.
And it's the same thing with diamond rings, right?
Diamond rings are a complete scam and they are monopoly.
And the price is controlled by one company.
So I don't care about marriage and I don't care about diamond rings.
And luckily Manisha feels the same way about marriage.
Maybe not about diamond rings, na?
But about marriage you know... you don't need to be married to be in a committed relationship.
And you know, for us, or at least for me, marriage is about companionship... having a life companion..
someone who you can spend your time with, share your life with
That's what it.. that's what a relationship is about for me.
By now, you can probably tell I'm not that romantic or sentimental.
I'm stubborn, maybe a little bit selfish and...
I can't just do something because society tells me that I need to be married or that I need to have a big wedding
or that I need to do anything like..
I make my own choices in life.
I think about things and decide what's right for me.
I create my own life. I create my own path in life.
I shape my own world, basically.
i can't just do things because society tells me to do them., right?
And I told Manisha all this stuff at the very beginning of the relationship before it got too far because
you know, so many girls want the big weddings and are so excited about marriage.
So I really got lucky to meet her and for her to understand all this about me.
And I know a lot of you will probably think I'm crazy and quite selfish because of not wanting to get married
and not wanting to have a big fat Indian wedding but...
you know, it's because here in India, the individual is less important
and the group or the society is far more important here.
So throwing a big wedding celebration is very important here because it's just part of how society operates.
And the society is a lot more communal here in India.
In the West, it's a lot more individualistic and that's where my ideas of doing what I want to do come from.
But what can I do? You know, this is me and I'm proud of the decisions I make and the way that I choose to live.
Okay so you know like I'm not having a big Indian wedding but that's not to say that I won't compromise.
So I compromised with her family, we both compromised, and decided yeah, we will get married
because, you know, they have been so good to her and so good to me that..
you know, that's a compromise I'm willing to make.
I will get married. We will do.. we will get the bit of paper signed.
We decided that we'll have a court marriage. We'll get married in court.
I'm gonna film the entire thing so you can see what a court marriage looks like here in India.
And then we'll have a small reception later in the year when the weather is better
and we will bring all my family over from New Zealand and..
You know, there will be a party of some sorts.
It just won't be 10,000 people coming to a big wedding ground here in Delhi
over the course of a couple of days, you know.
It's gonna be a small reception of our close family later in the year at some kind of small wedding venue.
So, you know, this is a compromise we made.
We're getting married and we're having a small reception and..
you know, I'm happy because we're not burning all that money and..
I'm not gonna have to be the center of attention at a wedding and yeah.
I'm really happy with how everything turned out and how open minded her parents were.
And as you can imagine, for Indian parents, this is all a complete shock because
what we're asking for and what we're doing is so so untraditional.
And remember I said that her parents were quite conservative.
So I have so much respect for aunty and uncle because of how open minded they are and
the compromises they have made to bring me into their family.
And actually it's more than that because they have gone against society three times now
for me and for Manisha.
So they're allowing her, firstly, to have a love marriage.
Secondly, they're allowing her to marry a foreigner.
And thirdly, they agreed to not have a big fat Indian wedding
and not waste all this money on a big fat Indian wedding.
So that is mindblowing and that is amazing, you know, in India.
But uncle took a step further.
So rather than spending a ton of money on Manisha's wedding,
he's invested it in something for Manisha under Manisha's name.
So she gets that money. She gets the revenue generated by..
I can't really say what it is. It is up to her to say, you know, what exactly it is if she wants to.
So yeah. Uncle has invested all that money in Manisha's name.
And now she benefits from that rather than us all, you know, just having a big party
and just burning it on a wedding.
So this is all quite quite amazing for India and quite unheard of.
Like, all my friends are getting married and they're all doing it in that traditional way and..
yeah, we are doing it so untraditionally and uncle and aunty going up against society and up against family
saying, you know, "this is how we're doing it."
There is so much kick back from Indian society and, you know, people in the immediate vicinity about how
untraditional this is and.. you know, uncle has to explain what's happening and why he's doing it and..
you know, the compromises.. it's..
He's a hero.
Aunty and uncle are real heroes, both of them.
And so now you can probably understand why I have so much respect for them and
why I'm so happy to be part of their family
and that I feel so grateful that they've accepted me into their family and worked with me on what we're doing in our marriage and our wedding.
And you know, they do it because they love their daughter.
It's as simple as that.
Now so after marriage, it's all happening in reverse.
So usually, the girl goes to the guy's house to live
but in this case, I'm coming to Manisha's house to live in a joint family situation with her family and
I've seen how this can't work and I've seen how this can work.
You know, the biggest issue is a lack of privacy in a joint family.
But I learnt from my friends in Baroda that if you have a big enough apartment or house, you know,
you can make that private space for you guys.
So how they live is they've a three storey house.
In the first two storeys, the whole family shares it, right?
Then on the top floor, they have their own private floor with their bedroom, their gym and everything.
So that's the goal here.. to live in the joint family situation but also have your own privacy as well.
And if it doesn't work out, we can always go and get an apartment somewhere.
It's no issues.
And after marriage, don't expect anything to change on this channel.
You guys know that freedom is really important for me.
So I will always have the freedom to travel where I want and do what I want even after marriage.
Nothing will change.
Oh, yeah. I had to tell my parents too, right?
So they'd already met Manisha actually.
So they already loved her and already accepted her and...
they always trust my choice anyway.
I've always made good choices in the past.
So yeah. It's no issue. My family easily accepted Manisha and loved her and yeah.
Oh, and there's no plans for us to move to New Zealand. No plans at all.
We are remaining here in India. I'm sure I've missed so much of the story and you guys all have so many questions.
So Manisha and I, we're gonna do an 'ask us anything' livestream.
So put your comment in the pinned comment in the comment section.
It can be anything. Ask us anything. Literally.
And if you guys want to congratulate us, just do it in the comments.
No gifts. Nothing like that.
You know, all I want from you guys is your support and your friendship.
Jai Hind!