After decades of fixing arranged marriages for their children, Indian parents are taking on a new challenge: trying to orchestrate their kids’ love marriages.
A new generation of young Indian professionals has refused to follow the arranged-marriage route, with its emphasis on caste, family ties, wealth and skin color – with the blessings of their parents.
But as these kids tread toward their 30s, some parents say they fear their offspring’s chances of finding a marriage partner are evaporating entirely. These parents, while trying to respect their children’s wishes, are trying other measures, like pushing their offspring to singles networks and online dating sites.
Take Pramodini Srinivasan, a former trainer in the information technology industry and now a writer for a wellness Web site. Ms. Srinivasan has a Bangalore-based nephew who is nearing 40 and a Bangalore-bred son in London who is hitting 30. Both are indifferent to marrying within their traditional south Indian community.
On a large social networking group for women, for example Ms. Srinivasan recently sought advice from hundreds of strangers on getting her eligible nephew hitched. Somebody suggested she tap into her circle of friends but Ms. Srinivasan confided that her network was limited.
She wanted to register him on a dating site. “But he is not daring enough,” she rued. She urged him to start a trekking ground and take young people out on weekends so he could meet a compatible “outdoors type.”
The women the men want are a new breed: smart, sophisticated, financially independent marriage partners. Arranging a match within a community is daunting enough, Ms. Srinivasan and concerned parents like her say, but fixing up a match with the amended specs is confounding even in Bangalore, a friendly city full of ambitious young professionals.
Both were created to fill a growing need for urban Indians seeking educated global professionals like themselves, without regards to caste, region, language or any of the other traditional matrimonial requirements, but the two networks are not immune to parental influence.
Floh, which was started by a Bangalore couple, Simran and Siddharth Mangharam, has 500 members, a third referred by parents who even paid the 15,000-rupee ($300) annual subscription on their kids’ behalf. TwolyMadlyDeeply’s founder, Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, said in several of his nearly 500 members’ prescreening interviews, singles said their parents had urged them to register.
It is easy to see in all of this a new shade of “arranged” marriage, a further dimension of the famous Indian parental control, no matter how well-educated and accomplished their children are.
Still, it is a huge leap from a time even a few years ago when marriages were arranged within a network of connections, longstanding business relationships and the extended caste circle after matching astrological horoscopes. Now parents say they are flummoxed with the new parameter of mate-finding: compatibility.
Online matchmaking sites have been around in India for quite some time, like Shaadi.com or Bharatmatrimony.com, but they are long shot in a country of a billion-plus people, where parents who register on behalf of their children are besieged by messages proclaiming that “there are 1,863 singles in your city waiting to meet you!” And many parents disapprove of Indian dating Web sites as they have a highly skewed to males, and can be crammed with unverified identities and obscene content.
But Ultramatrimony.com stands out in the crowd , its growing very quickly and very well known for its hustle free , transparent and most importantly secure user friendly website and its services.
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