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matchmakermakeme a

atch

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Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. Thisamiliar line rom The Fiddler On the Roo has a specialresonance or the Indian-American community, wheremarriage is an evergreen topic. Parents o eligible adultsare hardly restrained in voicing their anxieties abouttheir children remaining single into their late twenties,thirties, and beyond. As to the single adults themselves,many may be putting up a nonchalant ront, but never-theless appear to be concerned.

Some are not. A genuine acceptance o the singlelie, as a matter o choice, is also on the rise in the main-stream. And this tends to sit at odds with the social andcultural norms o the Indian community, where marriageis an ingrained institution. Not surprisingly, an environ-ment o tension is oten the backdrop in many amilieswhere old-world expectations are clashing with contem-porary outlooks.

Purvi Patel, 29, rom Lawrenceville, Georgia, exempli-es these dynamics when she talks about how dejectedshe was as she let yet another matrimonial conventionin 2008. There were 350 people there, and none (seemedpromising), Patel says, still sounding a little heartbroken.Following her amilys wishes, she had attended the NewJersey event in hopes o nding someone rom their com-munity o Leuva Patel. With most o her riends married,and amilial and social pressures mounting, Patel hadstarted to eel the void o the companion she was so keen-ly looking or. She describes a quintessential Indian mind-set when she says, It becomes so embedded in our headsrom the time we are little, that no matter what man Imet in recent years, no matter in what context, my mindwould immediately think o his marriage potential!

I it were just the seemingly gravitational push o mar-riage upon the new generations o Indian Americans, thatwould be a story by itsel. But what complicates things

urther or them is that unlike previous generations, whotook marriage in stride as an inevitable event o lie, andwhen the amily and the village acilitated the match-making, now the onus alls largely on the suitors them-selves. Add to it dual careers, extreme mobility, compli-cated personal relationships, and higher expectations olie-partners, and you have an environment that presentsone tough juggernaut or todays nuptial-minded hearts.

New approaches are challenging both thetraditional arranged marriage as well as the

so-called love marriages that result fromchance encounters and dating.

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This is evident in painstaking detailin the book Marrying Anita, where authorAnita Jain narrates her exhaustive andmaddeningly rustrating quest to nd hersoul mate, which eventually leads her toNew Delhi. She touches upon chords that

many with marriage on their mind canempathize with, such as the wide spec-trum o polarities between the Indianand American aspects o todays mul-tidimensional youngsters. The diverse,global, and multiethnic Indian diasporamakes or a complex web o idiosyn-crasies, hang-ups, peeves, preerences,dreams, and passions o an increasinglymultiaceted group o contemporaryyoung peers. How does the serious suitormaneuver through this wide spectrum? Ishe (or she) too Indian or me? Too Ameri-can? Will he be accepting about my thriv-ing career? Will she be orging close tieswith my amily? And so on.

The age-old arranged marriage,while not entirely out the door, is never-theless a relic or most o them. They seeit as something rom a time and placetheir parents belonged to. At the sametime, dating is not an ingrained part othe socio-cultural background o many,i not most, o them. Vinod Jammalama-daka, a San Francisco Bay area sotwareengineer, probably speaks or many o hispeers when he says, I did not have thenecessary liestyle or dating, because Istill lived with my parents in a suburbanarea ar rom the city nightlie. But morethan the logistics surrounding dating, itmay be the inherent reverence that theIndian ethos has or the institution omarriage, and the notion o only one ro-mantic partner or lie that may have col-ored Jammalamadakas views on dating.He elaborates: I eel marriage is a neces-sary step in lie, and something that youonly do once. However, the western cul-ture tends to portray marriage as option-al, and something that can be done multi-ple times i necessary. This also shows upin the requent breakups between boy-

riends and girlriends. This turned meo to dating. I gured there is no point ogetting in a relationship unless you haveintentions o getting married.

Whether they date or not and wheth-er they nd their own mate or get helprom the amily, this generation is cer-tainly dierent rom their parents in that

they do want to ensure compatibility andchemistry. They want to get to know theirprospective lie partner. They have a laun-dry list o wants, needs, and hopes romtheir marriage in which most are ercelyindependent. Unnati Patel, 26, has been

married to Jaydeep Patel or six monthsthanks to an introduction by a commonaunt. The traditional, arranged aspecto their match ended soon ater the in-troduction. Ater that, it was Unnati andJaydeep on their own, working their wayto a love marriage. Describing the court-ship, Unnati said, We decided to pursuethe relationship and meet each other a-ter exchanging emails and talking or twomonths. We were both able to talk openlyand basically hit it o. Overall, we becamereally good riends. We were able to talkopenly, and enjoyed hanging out witheach other. We also had common goalsabout lie and amily, and shared manyo the same Gujarati values and morals.I guess ultimately, it was that unexplain-able gut eeling that you get that hewas the one.

Even amongst those who have nohang-ups about dating, time constraintsmake it harder to be out there. It is nowonder many antasize about the seren-dipitous encountersthe love marriag-es where the couple meet naturally inthe course o working and living. But notmany o the nuptial minded are holdingout or such antasies o just running intotheir Prince Charming on a white stallion.Unnati Patel, or one, believes such atedencounters are rare. You go to collegeand you hope to nd that guy or that girl.Some do, but or the most part, it is a Hol-lywood antasy.

When Facebook groups titled Bolly-wood Gave Me Unrealistic Expectationsabout Love crop up, its a sign that manyhave stopped romanticizing and are readyto take proactive and practical steps.

In this regard, the Indian-Americansuitors are not alone. The mainstream tooseems to refect a trend that avors pro-

active solutions over relying on encoun-ters o ate. A strong indicator o such atrend is a spate o reality TV shows thatdeal with matchmaking. The Bachelor andThe Bachelorette are running up ratingson the Nielsen SoundScan, while The Mil-lionaire Matchmaker (BravoTV) and TheConessions o a Matchmaker (A&E) are

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Ater having mentallyscanned most men she met

in her adult lie or theirmarriage potential, and

having fown 800 miles toa matrimonial convention,

Purvi Patel ound her matchin Harris Patel, whom she

had known or twelve yearsand who was living just a

couple miles rom her home.

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glamorizing the matchmakers. The mes-sage, it seems, is that running into yoursoul mate by ate is an increasingly elu-sive prospect. I top-o-their-game mil-lionaires need the help o proessional

matchmakers, where does it leave the av-erage Joes, one can cynically ask.

Cultures and methods rom the main-stream and the desi worlds, too, are mor-phing into each other. The act o choosingone man or woman out o 20, as in showslike The Bachelor is no dierent rom hav-ing an Indian amily running down sta-

tistics on a potential liepartnerminus the 10 hourso lming, o course. Thearranged marriage, a quint-essential Indian phenom-enon, is also nding a place

on American TV. Sourcesat the Fox BroadcastingCompany shared highlightso a new reality televisionshow centered around ar-ranged marriages.

While America may beexperimenting with arrangedmarriages as a novelty, it hasbecome only one o the grow-ing numbers o ways IndianAmericans are approach-ing marriage. When todaysgenerations nally brave this

decision, they ace an explo-sion o approaches. Its nolonger a simple dilemma ochoosing between arrangedmarriage and dating. Nowthere is a whole panorama ochoicesonline matchmak-ing Web sites, mainstream

Web sites, desi Web sites, matrimonialconventions, speed-dating, and even ca-reer matchmakers.

Matchmaking 2.0One denite beneciary o the chang-

ing dynamics is the online matchmak-

ing industry. The unprecedented successo sites such as match.com and eHar-mony.com show that there are majorshits in how Americans go about ndingtheir mates.

Described as a wholesome mar-riage-oriented site in a recent article inThe Economist, eHarmony now boasts 20

million paying subscribers. Even with thecurrent recession, online-dating sitessuch as eHarmony.com and OkCupid.com have seen business look up, ac-cording to the article. Visitors to online

dating sites increased by 57 percent in2006, outpacing the 22 percent overallgrowth o the Internet, as reported by Ju-piter Media Metrics, a business and techresearch company.

The Indian online matchmakingsites have not only grown as ast or asterthan the mainstream ones, but also havea higher success rate o their matches re-sulting in marriages. According to ValiniDSouza, a spokesperson or the compa-ny that owns shaadi.com, their site hasresulted in the marriage o over 800,000couples. BharatMatrimony.com claims 10

million members and, in its 10 years, amillion marriages!

Neil Arora, 27, is one o the many whopreer online matchmaking sites. Datingis not a surere bet, he says. I have dat-ed, but nothing has developed towardsmarriage. And once the decision to marryhas been made, why not be a bit moreproactive? I like the autonomy (o onlinedesi matchmaking sites) as opposed tothe prospect o arranged marriage, whereyour amily has to guess who would beright or you. He eels even i his parentshad wanted to help, they dont have the

kind o deep networks that many Patelsdo. He nevertheless keeps them involved,telling them about any developmentsrom online matches. He and his parentslike being able to view a potential bridesbackground and even their personalviews about work, amily, etc.beore anymeaningul entanglements.

According to shaadi.com, about 68percent o the proles on their site areplaced by the individuals themselves,and the rest by parents, riends or amily.Yet, unlike in mainstream matchmakingsites, a certain amount o involvement

rom amily is the norm.Online dating and marriage services

are growing rapidly and are becomingthe new orm o arranged marriages,says Saunia Ahmed, a counselor at SouthAsian Couples Counseling, a program un-der York University in Toronto, Canada.There is little stock in serendipity alone.So, many are just pushing it along.

The Millionaire Matchmakeris one o the many reality TV

shows about proessionalmatchmakers and

matchmaking that suggestthat the mainstream, too, is

choosing proactive approaches

over the hope o meeting thatspecial someone by ate.

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Archith Narendhra Seshadri, 26, isactively involved in the Indian communi-ty and his outgoing and riendly personamake him a perect candidate or ateulencounters. Seshadri nevertheless let hisparents put his prole on Bharatmatri-

mony.com. He thinks o it as a blind date.I get to know someone with a similarbackground and i it goes well, then mar-riage is an option, he says.

Dr. Zhenchao Qian, a proessor osociology at Ohio State University, eelsonline dating is popular among Asianimmigrant communities because, manyassociate love marriages with risk-taking,and with Americas high divorce rate, theconcept o arranged marriage eels morestabilizing.

But online matchmaking is not with-out its pitalls. Online dating is a greatavenue to enlarge your universe to meetsomeone, but there are two drawbacks:it is time-consuming and misrepresen-tations abound, cautions Jasbina Ahlu-

walia o Intersections Matchmaking, anational, elite, personalized service orselective South Asian singles as she de-scribes it. According to Ahluwalia, herrm takes over the time-consuming tasko screening, so clients are able to stra-tegically spend their limited time andenergies ocusing on matches with real

potential. Our service involves a highlypersonalized, consultative and eedback-centric process. Beore a client meets anymatches, I get to know our clients needs,wants, values, priorities, liestyle, person-ality and background via an extensive

personal consultation.How does such an elite service are

in recessionary times? Ahluwalia claimsa close to 300 percent growth since thedownturn last year. In the process shehas gained many insights about the mat-rimonial needs o Indian Americans. Shestresses that most o them are seekinglie partners rather than molding them-selves into traditional roles o husbandor wie. Not surprisingly, she armsthat gender roles are in transition. Wom-en are looking to be treated as equals andmen increasingly want to do so.

Ahluwalia also eels that despite themore visible inter-racial marriages thatseem to be on the rise, there are manySouth Asian youngsters who seem topreer meeting people o similar back-grounds when it comes to seeking a liepartner. Not having to explain oneselrom a cultural standpoint is a major rea-son or this, she eels.

Falling back into the foldI was searching everywhere, going

on blind dates, meeting parents and theirdaughters, and this whole time, my uturewie was just 2.7 miles away, says HarrisPatel, a physicians assistant and athletictrainer who ended up marrying Purvi Pa-tel, quoted earlier. His story, much dier-ent rom his wie Purvis, is also a state-ment on the trends in the Indian datingscene. Harris Patel, 34, grew up in a moreliberal household, and had some expe-rience with dating. I was just going totry this, what could it hurt? Harris says.Rather than hurt him, it helped him re-alize that he preerred to marry someonerom his own cultural background.

Qian notes that the by-product o dat-ing various people but winding up with

your own ethnicity is one o natural con-clusion. In high school, there is the ideao individualism and experimentation,and its natural to try dierent things,but when it comes to marriage, thingschange, Qian says.

Dr. Pawan Dhingra, a sociologist atOberlin College in Ohio, concurs. When

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Even some o the mosteligible bachelors are not

just relying on the promiseo the love marriage.

Archith Seshadhri is quitevisible in the communitybut that didnt stop him

rom allowing his parentsto put his profle on

bharatmatrimony.com

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the second generation was younger, theywere open to marrying anyone, but asthey get older, their desire alls back ontheir own culture, Dhingra says.

Cupid beyond conventionsIn an environment where the whole

exercise o nding a lie partner haschanged dramatically in a single genera-tion, those who are less bound by normsor conventions nd it easier to succeed.Take the American notion about personalriends being o limits or romance ormarriage prospects. This is uniquely di-erent rom the Indian trend where mar-riages, when not arranged, requentlyhappen within a circle o riends.

Strangely though, the notion oriends being o limits also contradictsanother popular notion made amousby When Harry Met Sallythat men andwomen cannot be just riends. ShivaniAgarwal, 23, took this notion and ran withit. In the beginning there was no attrac-tion beyond riendship towards (KaushalSharma), but as we became best riends,got to know each other and just reallyunderstood one another, I slowly real-ized that I elt more or him beyond justriendship, says Agarwal, who has beendating her beau or six years. Its not thatAgarwal is against traditional routes andhelp rom amily. She concedes that thepeople who know you and love you willpick someone to your liking. But shedidnt limit hersel either, when she eltsure about her eelings or Sharma.

I dating one personat a time doesnt workor you, you can alwaystry speed dating, whichis hardly unconvention-al anymore. The conceptis in stark contrast to theserendipitous roman-tic courtship stretchedout over months andyears, where acets oones personal lie arerevealed slowly, oneater another, like lay-ers o an onion. Partici-pants reveal almost theentirety o their back-ground, interests, goalsand ambitions within aew minutes.

Nick Shah, a youthcounselor who is also pursuing his post-graduate studies at Columbia Universityin New York, went to a Jain Samaj speeddating event hoping it was the perectsolution or his time-starved schedules.But he ound himsel a bit uncomortable,switching rom chair to chair, acing a di-erent girl each time. He had a good time,he conessed, chatting with many o thegirls. But he ound it awkward to try tojudge another human being, in a mattero minutes, and that too or nothing lessthan spending the rest o my lie with. It

bothered him that he ound himsel com-paring one with another, as i making aconsumer decision.

Shah believes that speed dating isne i its not too ormal and i it is notorganized as a matrimonial event. Other-wise, the pressure and discomort is notworth it. While many speed dating eventsare businesslike, others arent too rigid.Those organized by the Network o Indi-an Proessionals (NetIP), oer busy SouthAsian proessionals an ecient platormto engage in whatever their participantsquest may bemarriage or dating. Raj

Kalli, president o NetIP-Atlanta, doesstress that marriage is certainly the goalo many o their participants, but theydont necessarily mandate that.

Nationally, NetIP speed dating eventsin partnership with Bharatmatrimony.com each had an attendance o about 500.A recent such event in Atlanta in part-

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shaadi.com claims to havebrought over 800,000couples to matrimony.

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nership with Indiandat-ing.com saw young SouthAsians focking to it all theway rom North Carolinaand Florida. Kalli recalledone young man who fewrom Dallas just to attendthe event.

The ring of weddingbells

Getting married hasnever been a breeze,whether now or in generations past. Thespecic nature o problems and settingsmay have changed, but the underlyingpressure o entering into a lietime ocommitment with another human beingremains constant. Youngsters today maynd the process o nding a

mate and getting married adaunting task; but beore theyview the simplicity o theirparents times with envy, theywould do well to heed the seto challenges their parentshad to endure. Would any otodays young trade the com-plexities o choices and ap-proaches with the compul-sions o parents, amily, andsociety that suitors o genera-tions past oten endured?

Pravinbhai Amin, a

Gujarati senior citizen livingin Lawrenceville, Georgia, whowas a district judge in ruralGujarat, recalled that marriagewas always a daunting taskladen with issues such as heavy socialexpectations and norms, rigid parentalimpositions, dowries, and lasting stigmaattached to the slightest wrong move,such as a broken engagement. Comparedto that, not seeing eye-to-eye about dualcareers seems tame.

Amin eels that the challenge or to-days Indian-American generations is not

necessarily in nding a mate, but ratherin sustaining the marriage through a lie-time. Neil Arora agrees that the currenttrends o matchmaking, while being morecomplex and nuanced compared to pastgenerations, also oers more personalreedom, choice and satisaction. Theonly reason, he eels, it may seem scarieris that the happily ever ater part is nolonger as assured as it used to be.

What may be gratiy-ing to many parents is thatdespite the emphasis onpersonal reedom and indi-vidual choice, many o to-days suitors neverthelessrespect their parents choic-es and opinions. A surveyconducted by Bharatmat-rimony.com ound that 59percent o women considertheir parents decision the

most important priority in nalizing amarriage decision.

Purvi Patels upbringing led her tomake sure that her parents wishes wererespected. As you grow up, you slowlyunderstand that your parents are right in

a lot o ways, she says. Religiously, cul-turally, what they are saying is makingsense, so you try to abide by that. HarrisPatel refects this stress on amily whenhe says his primary concern was to makesure that his uture wie would not just behis wie, but another daughter and sisterto his already close-knit amily.

For now, it seems that matchmakingor this generation seems to have settled

into a happy blend o personal reedomand parental involvementsomewhatlike the increasingly requent arrangedlove marriage. The matchmaker mayhave moved to the cyber world, but herjob security is as assured as it ever was.

Vinod Jammalamadaka,rom the United States withhis fanc Ahalya Nellore oNew Zealand, a testament

to the global reach o onlinematchmaking.

Far Right: With not one, butover a dozen meaningul

conversations aboutmatching up and marriage

on the same table, speeddating cuts to the chase.

Right Middle: JasbinaAhluwalia o Intersections

Matchmaking eels thatonline matchmaking

is great to expandyour universe, but shepoints out two distinct

disadvantages o thispopular approachit

is very time consumingand misrepresentations

abound.

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It does not surprise me that when we go to Indianweddings or parties, my mother has an eagle eye on thebachelors and is aster than a scout at a Braves gamein nding their stats. Devika, hes in med school, 27,and a Punjabi, she would say, excitement shining in

her eyes.No matter how open-

minded my parents are,it hasnt stopped mymother rom anticipatingmy marriage. The num-bers game went like this:when I was 18, she wouldwant me married by 23.When I was 21, shedhope I was married by 25.At 23, a good age or mar-riage would be 26 and ababy by 28. At 24, will you

at least consider being ina relationship, Devika?

Blame it on the re-lationship-obsessed cul-ture o America, or blameit on my liberal parents,or blame it on my rooted culture whoseprimary ocus is on proessional suc-cessbut nding someone has neverbeen my goaland still is not.

I was not brought up surrounded inthe Indian community. I was never en-rolled in classes or Indian dance, music,or Hindi. My parents let guring me out

up to me. I was given the reedom to ndmysel. And so, my time was spent doingthe craziest o thingsbaton twirling,soccer, gymnastics, tennis, cross coun-try, summer camps at the YMCA, bandcamp, yearbook camp...name it and Ihave done it.

This, not surprisingly, led to manyadventures and encounters with boys. Iwas rst asked out by a boy at age 12,whom I respectully declined because we came romtwo dierent worlds. I was in gymnastics camp andhe was in basketball camp; I, peanut butter and jelly,and he, peanut butter and bananas. It would have

never worked.As I grew up, relationships were in my aceex-

pressed louder than any other trend. In my high school,my peers were dating by the droves. Classes wereonly llers between the hook-ups and the break-ups.It seemed as i nothing else mattered in the world tomy ellow hall-walkers. In magazines, I was bombardedwith messages that my sel-worth came rom a boy andonly i I looked and acted a certain waynone comple-menting my band geek persona.

The independence that was thrust upon me re-aligned my ocus. Familial circumstances pushed meto worry about what mattered most, and to believethat everything else would all into place. I did not datethrough high school, but held crushes here and there,

eventually making themriends o mine. I gotinto a serious relation-ship with an Americanboy when I was 19, wedated or two years andthen, he broke my heart.At the time, it was gut-wrenching, but today, itis empowering. Betweenthen and now, I havegone on dates with acatalog o men rom alldierent backgrounds,

socio-economic sta-tuses, and ethnicitiesnever holding onto anyas a relationship, buteach making me growas a person.

As an only child, I had to compensateor the lack o the son my dad didnt have.So I became his junior apprentice as wexed things around the house, his LittleLeaguer as we played a game o catch,and his buddy when he taught me sports.I now hammer o stats at the local brewhousewith makeup, hair, and eminin-

ity in place (thanks, Mom!). This adap-tation led me to have more guy riendsthan I would have otherwise had.

But o course, my parents indepen-dent streak is wavering, as they hanker tobecome grandparents. They cannot helpbut wonder i one day, one o these menriends will become their son-in-law.Well, what about ___? He is in IT, wantsto go to law school, has his own house,

and really likes you! or What about ___? He is going tolaw school, he is mature, and he certainly likes you! orHow about ___? You have been riends or years! Youknow, Devika, best relationships come out o riend-

ships, and oh yes, he really likes you!Personally, all I know is that none o this is a guar-

antee. Dating, relationships, or marriage. Its a risk thatI am not willing to take because I eel I have not doneeverything I want to doproessionally or personally. Iam not saying that I cannot achieve all I want i I hada man by my side. It is just that I am not ready to beresponsible and considerate o someone else beyondwhats required in a riendship. Its a selsh statement,I agree, but honest, to say the least.

Matchmaker,Please Dont

Make Me a

MATCHBy Devika Rao

CoverStoryPerspective