Friday, March 19, 2010

Marriage? We want Indians only :)

Am I the only one who finds matrimonial adverts fascinating?

Here are four ads from the Hindustan Times.

The first two are from Indian boys living abroad who want to marry girls from India. This of course, is a common phenomenon - taking a 'family-oriented' and 'cultured' bride from India is the norm (as opposed to the wild American memsahibs, I suppose, he he).

But the last two ads are from Indian girls abroad, who are looking for boys from India. I must confess, I was a little surprised.

Take a look.

Hmm, hmm. The boy wants someone sophisticated, attractive, well-educated, career-minded, but *also* family-oriented. Looks like his parents wrote the ad.

The girl's family must be educated and accomplished? OK, whatever :)

Hmm, what do we have here?
A girl studying medicine in the USA. Would like to "explore the possibilities of meeting prospective persons" on her India visit. I like the sound of that :) I think she wrote this herself, maybe. "Boy must be well educated". Nothing about the boy's family, he he.

Clean shaven Sikh boy wanted, one that's willing to settle in Australia. Hmm.

These ads, by the way, are from a special column in the matrimonials reserved for NRIs (overseas Indians). The column occupies significant newsprint space. Obviously it's not just a few odd-balls who still yearn for India. It's interesting to watch how the Indian diaspora grows, but never really separates from the motherland. I wonder what "cultural values", if any, these new brides and grooms are exporting from India.

3 comments:

Anu Karthik said...

it is similar to everything being online now in matrimonial sites but lots of people are so horoscope driven. modern means of match making unfortunately doesn't translate into modern thoughts and open ideas :(

John B said...

lol.. the only thing I could say is the old ways of marriage still shows up in this day and age. Never have people given any thought to the likes of their children. Finding a bride or groom for their sons/daughters seem to be the ultimate responsibility of the parents. This system can only hurt the Indian society where people are becoming more independent. As we can see with the growing number of divorces the system of arranged marriages are probably getting a little ancient.

But I do not know how to answer the question of Indians always wanting Indians from only the same community, caste religion and so on. In this age of globalization I think we need to be more open minded to progress far more and become a greater nation. An the only way to do that is to break free of this narrow minded views of religion, caste and society.

After all we are human beings first before being branded by societies names.

Dang never knew I fell so strongly about this when i started replying to ur post.Didnt expect to write this much..lol..but good post.

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