Life Matters: The Matchmaking Indications

Marriage, it appears, has become a trickier issue than before. So many things to factor in; peer pressure, parental anxiety, ideological angst and pragmatic desire. The new generation seems to be torn between a life of choice and its consequences and a life of compulsion and its potential but indeterminate joys.

The market dynamics continue to play a not-so-subtle role. A mutual fund company says ‘congratulations on your marriage. Falling in love, wedding, and honeymoon is all ok, now think money’. Another company says, ‘Choosing a mutual fund is like choosing a life partner. Requires careful consideration along with a fond hope.’ And matrimonial sites gloss over their precisely priced packages with romantic, mushy taglines.

Amidst all this melee, steadfast remains a channel that is somewhere between a well-meaning traditional matchmaker and a modern dating site. The classic matrimonial ad! The ads that are lined up in full pages in newspapers that are spread across Sunday breakfast tables by hopeful parents. The red circling of the relevant ads, a flurry of calls and follow-up are activities familiar to parents across generations.

Much research has been done on what the ads themselves indicate. Spousal expectations, gender stereotypes, vocational preferences, personality choices, the emphasis on the fair and the slim, on the caste and the clan, the familial quirks and ads ranging from the rigid to romantic to the accommodative.

In recent times, an ad that appeared in a national daily, by a mother seeking a groom for her son, marks a watershed in Indian matrimonial advertising. And, it serves to show the researchers the need to take a relook at the good, old ad configured with the crucial details of age, occupation, caste, height.

The advertisements have made a subtle but unmistakable departure from the old format, incorporating clauses that speak of a greater acceptance of the changing times and of the preferences of their offspring. So, in place of ‘traditional, conservative, homemaker’, we find parents asking for educated girls, of professionally qualified girls only and even an express desire for a girl who prefers to work. Ads that mention that the ‘girl can wear jeans occasionally’ and ‘a teetotaler girl preferred’ have also been spotted in recent times, marking a mindset that acknowledges that girls can and do have their own lifestyle preferences.

There are also more prospective grooms themselves seeking out a life partner, instead of a coy, straitjacketed ad from the parents, and those which, broadcast their own ‘progressive’ attitude by claiming that they need no dowry.

While at the superficial level, there is evident change in social perceptions, deeper down it appears there is also a shift in the way Indian population is trying to tie up the various loose strings and get the best deal possible. Even as there is a fierce protection of the caste on one side, there is also an aspiration to get of the new social pie and the trappings and advantages that come with it - What could be tentatively termed as an attempt to broaden the gene pool, while staying within the framework that draws peer approval.

The ad for gay marriage is a case in point. While it seeks a ‘well placed, animal loving, vegetarian groom’, it does slip on the C-factor, irresistibly spelling out that ‘an Iyer is preferred.’ And in an unintended irony, mentions no specific preferences for physical attributes, since it is not a girl who is sought but another man.

This is a column that is ignored for years by the general newspaper reading population, except on two occasions, when one is ‘looking’ or one is a parent. But matrimonial ads are in themselves a social construct, reflecting a larger fluidity in social situations. They throw up a sharp divide in the contemporary society, between a section of population that has access to new channels of finding a life partner, such as forums and dating sites and, in general, an outgoing lifestyle, and a group that is not fully free of convention and has no opportunity to explore new horizons. It is an urban middle-class predicament of parents to let go or not, and of youngsters to date and be damned or to yield to the collective matchmaking process in the family and doubt forever.

Though research has not been extended to the after-match aftermath of a newspaper-mediated marriage, it appears matrimonial ads remain the best bet for the ‘modern’ parents who have outgrown matchmakers of the traditional kind and care for their kids’ likes and dislikes but would still like to have a finger on the control button. And for those who prefer the middle way. And they go to show that Indians are quite capable of stretching the boundaries and customising their preferences as it suits them, from ‘nothing else’ to ‘no bar’.

Usha Turaga Ravelli