[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.]
By Saritha Rai
 |
| Courtesy of Floh.inFloh members interacting at an event in Bangalore, Karnataka, on March 31, 2012. |
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.
But neither
has made any headway in finding a wife on their own, even though Ms. Srinivasan
has declared that she would be happy for them to fall in love and marry.
Having
agreed not to tap the network of Ms. Srinivasan’s traditional community for
suitable wives, Ms. Srinivasan is now laying out her son’s and nephew’s specs
to everyone she knows.
On a large
social networking group for women, 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.
The
alternative for parents like Ms. Srinivasan is to nudge their children to sign
up for online singles networks. Two of them, Floh and TwolyMadlyDeeply,
are based in Bangalore but have operations in other Indian metropolitan areas
too.
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.
In contrast,
singles networks like Floh and TwolyMadlyDeeply,
with their “verified” memberships, appeal to parents because they promise the
exact opposite of digital anonymity. TwolyMadlyDeeply’s members are vetted on
the phone before they can join and can only then interact online or through
real-time events.
Floh’s
members are gainfully employed singles between 25 and 35 who are sussed out
personally by the co-founders. “Our operation is so legit that parents feel a
comfort level,” said Mr. Mangharam, who had worked at Coca-Cola and McKinsey
before teaming up with his wife to create Floh 18 months ago.
The members
are then invited to paid events in informal settings such as wine-food
pairings, dance workshops and Hollywood-Bollywood movie quizzes — meetups of
the type common in the West. A majority of the members are well-heeled
professionals and business owners.
“At our
events, singles get to know each other at a nuanced level, minus the posturing
that is a trademark of parent-arranged meetings,” said Mrs. Mangharam.
There are
still many skeptical parents out there who distrust these new-age devices.
Mala
Bhandary, a Bangalore homemaker, balks at the thought of registering her two
eligible offspring, a United States-educated son who is now based in Bangalore
and a Bangalore-raised daughter who works in New York, on matrimonial Web sites
or dating networks. “Nobody can tell what kind of riffraff is there,” said the
outgoing Mrs. Bhandary.
Instead, she
relentlessly taps into her personal networks to find mates not just her own
kids but those of her friends and relatives as well. So far, she has met with
little success. “It is very stressful,” said Mrs. Bhandary.
Floh’s
founders say they expect it to only be a matter of time before more parents
come around. At a wedding recently for a couple who met through Floh, the
Mangharams were accosted by a parent of the bride. The man effusively thanked
them for performing, as he said, a “social service.
Saritha
Rai sometimes feels she is the only person living in Bangalore who was actually
raised here. There’s never a dull moment in her mercurial metropolis. Reach her
on Twitter @SarithaRai.