Arranged Marriages, Minus the Parents
For Some South Asians, Matrimonial Sites Both Honor and Subvert Tradition
By REENA JANA
ARSHA KUMAR, a 29-year-old technology officer for an e-commerce
company in Westborough, Mass.,
wanted to find a wife. And Mr. Kumar, who
was born in India and educated in the United
States, wanted to begin his search in a way
that blended both Old and New World sensibilities.
"I knew I wanted to marry an Indian or
Indian-American woman, but arranged marriage seemed unnatural to me," Mr. Kumar
said.
"Meeting someone online seemed more
natural to me, maybe because I work in e-commerce and am on the Internet and using
e-mail a lot already."
In January 1998, Mr. Kumar signed up
with Internet Matrimonials (matrimonials.com), a service for people of South Asian
heritage.
Traditionally, many South Asians
have arranged marriages through relatives
or "marriage bureaus," paid matchmakers
sometimes called bride brokers. In addition,
publications like India Abroad and The
Times of India have carried classified ads
usually placed by parents looking for serious
prospective brides and grooms. But in the
last few years, matrimonial Web sites have
offered an alternative.
Internet Matrimonials says that it receives nearly 40,000 visits a month. The site
charges customers $30 apiece to advertise
themselves to potential spouses by indicating their religion, occupation, cultural background and location.
Through Internet Matrimonials, Mr. Kumar began sending e-mail to a law student in
Bombay named Hema Sastry twice a day,
once in the morning and once at night.
They
found that beyond having compatible biodata
-- the term used for the résumé-like summaries used in each matrimonial ad for each
person's caste, education and physical attributes -- they also shared an interest in
Indian music.
They soon exchanged photographs by
mail.
In February 1999, Mr. Kumar decided
to make the trip to India to meet Ms. Sastry
in person. They became engaged and in
December 1999 were married in India. Mr.
Kumar's wife then moved to the United
States.
"Some people might think it's crazy that
we began our relationship via e-mail," Mr.
Kumar said.
"But I think we communicated
more than some people who date one another once a week.
We probably even communicated more than we do now, living in
the same house as a husband and wife who
get too busy caught up with work and errands."
Matrimonial Web sites seem to strike a
compromise between ancient South Asian
social traditions and the contemporary attitudes of many Indian- and Pakistani-Americans by cutting out the intermediary of
arranged marriages: the family. Just as
online trading is starting to cut out the
middleman in the investing business, the
Web is being used to help arrange marriages without relatives or marriage bureaus. The sites can be particularly useful
for South Asians abroad; in 1998 alone,
36,500 Indians and 13,100 Pakistanis moved
to the United States.
Mr. Kumar said that his parents had not
been put off by his lack of interest in a
traditional arranged marriage.
"They got what they wanted and I got
what I wanted, and the match was even
better, I think, than either an arranged
marriage or a 'love marriage,' " Mr. Kumar said, using the term for unarranged
marriages that result from dating. Love
marriages are still looked down upon by
some conservative South Asian families,
both in this country and abroad.
Mr. Kumar's experience was so positive
that he recommended the Internet Matrimonials site to his sister, Reshma, who also
lives in the United States.
She met her
husband through the same service.
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