Comprehension questions and tasks. 1. Should youngsters stick to the rules their parents set for them?

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4. Think of possible ways of relieving tension in a family. Share your ideas with your peer-student.

When Frank Sinatra sang about love and marriage going together like a horse and carriage, he might not have considered that much of the world puts the cart before the ox. Marriages are arranged by parents in China, India and Indonesia – three countries with 40% of the world’s population – plus others that practice Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism. Couples don’t date. They may get a 15-minute meeting followed in a few months by a wedding.

But sparks are flying, and love marriages are breaking out in India, the world’s largest democracy, with 1.1 billion people.

Friendship blossomed into love, and Ravada and Rani got married last year. Americans would hardly consider that unusual. But to Indians, it’s much more typical when people get engaged and married on the basis of a photograph and one phone conservation.

The couple is part of a growing love-before-marriage trend that began slowly in the 1970s and 1980s, and then took off with the software boom of the late 1990s that brought the global economy into India’s insulated society. The Indian government does not differentiate in its marriage statistics.

But young Indians interviewed say their observations suggest that between 10% and 20% of their friends are having love marriages, and expert Poonam Barua says that is probably true in most of India’s cities.

There are several forces at play, and as the giant exporter of jobs and culture, the USA might be more than a little responsible. Indian TV has been invaded by shows such as Friends and Oprah. Playboy magazine said last month that it will publish and Indian edition featuring Indian models. Indian soap operas are rife with secret love affairs. Bollywood movies such as Salaam Namaste borrow heavily from the age-old formula where boy meets girl, they can’t stand each other, then fall in love.

Khushboo, a famous Indian film star and TV game show host, sparked demonstrations last year when she said Indians should no longer expect brides to be virgins. More and more aren’t. Twenty-five percent of women aged 18 to 30 in 11 major cities including tech centers have had premarital sex, according to an India Today magazine survey.

U.S. companies bring with them American-style workplace diversity, which puts members of the opposite sex in neighboring cubicles. Americans know what that leads to: Half of U.S. workers have dated a co-worker, according to an annual Valentine’s Day office romance survey.

Entry-level IT workers in India often start at more than $6, 000 a year. While low by US standards, many Indians in their 20s are out-earning their parents. That chips away at parential influence, which is so important in India that Sierra Atlantic invites India parents to job interviews to OK the hiring of their children.

Ravada was on the traditional path. His parents were looking for his bride. But Ravada found himself stuck in indecision as he met and rejected a string of girls after 15-minute meetings. That gave him what he says was a “bad complex, ” because the girls seemed perfectly fine, and he knew he was hurting their feelings with his rejections. He asked his parents to delay their search while he buried himself in work that kept him in the office until nearly midnight. There, too, was Rani, and the two often waited late for phone calls from project managers waking up in California.

Love is gastronomically blind, and Ravada, whose caste members are strictly vegetarian, fell in love with Rani, whose caste members eat meat. That alone would have made an arranged marriage impossible.

Horoscopes also play a big role, but Rani says her parents are “liberal” and wanted her married to someone who would make her happy. Most Americans would agree, and consider the system of marrying complete strangers to be implausible. But even Indians in love marriages defend arranged marriages as proper and successful. They point to US divorce courts full of head-over-heels lovers who found that courtships proved meaningless in the long run. Three-quarters of a million American children see their parents divorce each year.

Indians say parents might not be perfect at selecting mates, but they are better at it than hormone-crazed youth. If divorce is no longer as rare in India, love marriages are largely to blame, they say.

“All my family members had arranged marriages, no complaints, ” Rani said. “They are very happy. You fall in love and get married, or you get married and fall in love.”

Few Indian families would force a marriage on a child, but it is still common that the couple have no more than 15 or 20 minutes together to make the decision. In arranged marriages, the man is usually three to six years older than the woman, but can be decades older if the woman is considered unattractive or has a tarnished reputation. If the woman is good-looking, then the boy had better have promising prospects. Dowries paid by the brides’ families are officially illegal in India, but still common, and attractive daughters save their parents a lot of money. (Abridged)