'Net' your dream spouse

Matrimonial websites offer a variety of services... from astrologers and online horoscope matching to marriage contractors. They have come to fill the gap when conventional matchmakers are not easily accessible, says VISA RAVINDRAN.

CYBER SWAYAMVARS seem to have come to stay. When conventional matchmakers are not easily accessible, the Net fills a gap in yet another way - matrimonial websites are beginning to be accepted for a variety of reasons which have made conventional ways of bride and groom-hunting inadequate.

Offspring growing up in nuclear families are not in regular touch with relatives and the usual family gatherings do not attract the fullest attendance. When it is difficult for even members of nuclear families to have one meal a day together, with quality time to share experiences and ideas, members of the extended family often have no idea of what grown-up nieces and nephews are like, let alone what they expect out of their future life partners. The diaspora includes Indians in the farthest reaches of the globe, transplanted from their cultures into totally alien ones, with different generations looking for different qualities in the future 'mappilai' and 'mattuponnu.'

Even within our shores, it is becoming increasingly difficult for young people to mingle in mixed company, to meet members of the opposite gender in entirely spontaneous or natural ways. E-mail and chat rooms have taken over where aunts and conventional brokers - in really traditional societies long ago in India and Spain, the local barber was a respected functionary in this area of family life, we are told -have left off. Domainhosting of matrimonial searches has begun to play a big part in bringing families together in marriage.

"My cousin started this as a service," says my neighbour, Romila Viswanathan."His beautiful sister never got married and realising how difficult this process has become when ties to the native State are no longer as strong as they used to be, he decided to do this, and he doesn't charge anything to carry ads," she says.

Another friend agrees. "It is so much easier these days when daughters go abroad for studies and the boy you consider for her, may be in a different city. It makes sense for them to e-mail each other rather than wait till the yearly visit. I regularly look up certain recommended sites for suitable candidates." Some use the website as a double assurance even while sounding personal contacts to recommend suitable boys and girls, in the conventional way.

There is, though, something of the fairyground in the tone of some of these sites: "We cater for every religion...from the Punjab to Kerala, from Bombay to Calcutta... Whether you seek a Punjabi lawyer or a Gujarati doctor, there is sure to be someone here for you. If you are looking for marriage, look no further. The husband or wife of your dreams is right here..." They serve a useful social purpose but I do wish quacks selling fancy medicines in the village fair wouldn't come to mind everytime I read this kind of site promotion!

Some sites are cosmopolitan, others go by region or religion. They have not really undermined the print ads in journals but the Internet has added a new dimension to the hunt for the right partner and it being a youth-friendly medium is another attraction, apart from its reach. The danger of fraud or the question of invasion of privacy did not seem to worry the parents or the young people I spoke to.

The couple of bachelor friends, whose help I enlisted to identify some good sites, found the photographs so engrossing they got more than a little involved and I had to plod through on my own. FAQs, telephone numbers, picture gallery, personal details were all there, some optimistic enough to undertake city- wise wedding services also. Some offered rewards to those placing links in their websites to increase the number of ads. "In an effort to take some of the hard work out of organising the wedding , we bring you a directory of matrimonial services in India and around the world..." offered one, but my random attempts at finding local wedding halls for instance, were most unsatisfactory. The types of service offered included everything from astrologers and flowers to online horoscope matching.

A survey conducted by the Family Planning Association of India revealed that 60 per cent of urban Indians in the age group of 15 to 29 preferred arranged marriages to love matches. I found some ardent supporters of Valentine's Day and its attendant commercial frolic also joining this group when the quest became serious.

Looking at the sites for girls looking for Mr. Right, I discovered that quite a few fought shy of giving the address and telephone number while the guys looking for girls were quite free with theirs. One girl posed with a baby and I found that quite intriguing when her marital status said 'never married.' Brutal honesty or an attempt to prove maternal feelings, I still wonder.

Young homebodies to technologists and scientists numbered among the girls on view. They came from all over - Lucknow and Kanpur, Seattle and Salzburg.

Another intriguing feature was foreign men, mostly Americans, looking for Indian wives. I was reminded of a holiday in Kulu- Manali, long before the Internet made such a splash, of course, when an illiterate American truckdriver who'd played the lottery successfully and made enough to retire in Florida, joined us everytime we tried to take a walk, trying to persuade us to find 'a nice Indian girl' for him in Delhi where we lived then. We put him off, of course, seeing through his elaborate ruse, but I wondered casually now, how he might have used the matrimonial sites through some cooperative computer-literate friend...

Swaroopa Iyengar and Manu Joseph, in an article, quote a marriage broker in Mumbai talking about the craze for IT professionals as grooms - "Definition of heaven: American salary, Indian wife, Chinese food and British accommodation. Definition of hell: American wife, British food, Chinese accommodation and Indian salary."

Tastes are turning multinational in the marriage market also and in the context of difficult or stilted mixed gender social gatherings, absence of clear behaviour norms when these are organised/engineered, the withering away of the family grapevine and the near extinction of the village network, the matrimonial website is an idea whose time has come.

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