Arranged marriage is still quite common in India, and one important phase in an arranged marriage is the process of selecting the bride. Mind you, I said “bride selection” and not “groom selection”. An important component of this process is to visit the bride’s home and conduct an interview of the girl to figure out if the girl is a suitable candidate. In some cases, the girl is not only asked to provide verbal answers to the questions, but also demonstrate their gait, posture, length of the hair and also their artistic, musical, and culinary skills. This cartoon was drawn to emphasize on this aspect of the selection process – the girl demonstrates her gait by walking on a tight rope. After all, that’s what she will have to do everyday at her in-laws family – walk the fine line with amazing dexterity, balance and skill. Women of our country may not be participating at the Olympics gymnastics events, but this skill of walking the horizontal beam is in their genes. This cartoon was done for Proma (published from Kolkata) few years ago. I thought this would be an interesting post during this Olympic season.