Lessons From the Sunday Papers

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times A wedding procession in New Delhi.

In case you were curious, the new ideal Indian man is very fair, very handsome and works at a Multi National Company (MNC) in the National Capital Region (NCR).

Since we haven’t yet had a timelier or more accurate monitor of the notoriously changeable Indian society than the matrimonial pages in our Sunday newspapers, it is with unquestioning awe that I receive revelations such as the above every week.

No, they haven’t lost their edge in the face of what seems like an overwhelming threat from matrimonial websites. Instead, their reputation as a reliable source for cultural shifts is vindicated because of the inherent limitation of space (3 cm by 5 cm) that makes people prioritize their biases, compelling them to choose between desired attributes such as, say, wealth and sophistication.

The 1,200 to 1,500 items that appear across 3 or 4 pages of the biggest Indian newspapers, like The Times of India, the Hindustan Times and Dainik Jagran, are categorized by caste, religion and profession (well, in the case of doctors), and lately by the quality of being “cosmopolitan.” The newspapers charge by the space used (say, 3,200 rupees for 25 words).

Courtesy of Hindustan Times A screenshot of a section of the Hindustan Times’s Sunday matrimonial.

Naturally, a number of things have changed since entire families actually sat and waited for the Sunday matrimonials. To begin with, there’s much new jargon â€" including abbreviations for software (SW), Gurgaon (GGN), and people from Lucknow who are employed in Bangalore (WKG BLR FR LKO).

But first a quick, if not so reassuring, summary of what hasn’t changed:

1. The family is in charge of setting up working adults in India, evident in email addresses such as umeshchacha@yahoo.com  (“Umesh Chacha” = Umesh Uncle) that are provided at the bottom.
2. A dentist will typically only marry another dentist.
3. A Jain will never ever marry a non-vegetarian.
4. The list of undesired aspects, namely gotra or village (“avoid Chhaunker, Sinsinwar, Dagur, Machar, Dhaiya”), far exceeds that of the desired ones (“Bank Employed Girl”) for the Jat community.
5. Divorcees must be “issueless” to even think about another marriage.
6. The ultimate purpose of an Indian matrimonial service is apparently to unite the country’s endless number of mangliks â€" people born under a complex astrological arrangement that is considered inauspicious for marriage.

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Regarding what has changed, nothing seems more radical than the new template for the desirable man. Not only is the “well-settled boy in reputed family business” trumped by the MNC executive from Gurgaon (overlooking the occasional “two Bajaj Motorcycle Dealerships & one TATA Car Dealership in Moradabad”), he is supposed to be as good-looking as the girl he wants for himself, going by the proportion of “brides wanted” ads that now start with “V Fair V Handsome”.

One among the many columns of similar ads in last week’s Times of India went: “fair h’some Mglk boy 5’9’’ BTech/MBA wkg in MNC Ggn 7 LPA”.  The “Mglk” is for Manglik, if you were wondering.

Inspired, no doubt, by the very recent concept that regular men must be, well, fair and glowing â€" sparked by India’s leading fairness brands shifting their focus to men, with products such as Emami’s Fair and Handsome gel endorsed by none other than the ultimate male idol, Shahrukh Khan â€" this level playing field marks a new chapter in the history of Indian matchmaking.

What’s even more fascinating is the MNC revolution in the Indian matrimony, with even sample ads using the term to illustrate their formats.

It might mean a job at a corporation with operations in more than one country, but the three-letter acronym actually stands for a way of life that is most aspired to in New India, in which it is supposedly possible to marry into a home theater-fitted apartment next to a golf course (or an F1 track) and order Mexican takeaway for dinner. It also means that one could be a managing director in Noida and the other a sales representative in Ranchi â€" but as long as they work for an MNC, any MNC, they are together in this extended fairytale.

Speaking of aspiration, up there with the MNC worker is the NRI groom, a phenomenon that many of us associated with the last millennium. Surprisingly, despite all the talk about reverse brain drain, a large section of Indian men still “settle” in the West, and, worse, are still considered a catch. “Brinda got married to a software engineer in California. Brinda is now happily married for seven years and residing in San Francisco. Her children speak only English at home. Many of Brinda’s relatives residing in India are envious of her being an NRI and ask her to sponsor her cousins to study abroad,” gloats a success story on the NRI matrimony page at www.shaaditimes.com.

Not every NRI man inspires queues of women like the headline-making 69-year-old Parsi billionaire who flew himself to Mumbai earlier this month to pick up an “Indian woman with a slim figure.” He bought an entire matrimonial page in the Times of India’s city edition, publishing photos of assets such as his twin-engine plane. But all of them must expect women to line up, as frequent announcements like “boy will be coming to India on 14 April to meet interested girls” in the NRI ad section suggest.

Of course, NRI hunks visiting the homeland to choose desi bride are torn with anxiety, as the most basic research will confirm.

“The boy will be thousands of miles away from home working for a foreign company, while parents look for a bride. All the decisions are made fast…. after looking at a couple of photos or web cam chats,” starts a post on jaanlo.com, “the how-to site for Indians worldwide,” which is titled How to Know If Your Indian Wife Is Really Beautiful.

Divided into sections such as “Photographs Lie” and “First Meeting is Not Enough”, it goes on to dispense sharp nuggets of advice meant to protect the NRI groom from undeserving Indian women.  “The life you earned after years of struggle and hardworking (sic) - she is going to get it all. All she has to do is make you fall for her in these 10 minutes. So she will make sure, she packages herself nicely, conveniently masquerading behind a Saree.”

Another thing that hasn’t changed in Indian matchmaking? There is no guarantee against coming up with losers.

Snigdha Poonam is Arts Editor at The Caravan. She is on Twitter at@snigdhapoonam