Matrimonial Ads Promise So Much
By Melvin Durai
Melvin Durai is a U.S.-based Indian humorist. He recently used Matrimonials.com to find his wife.
I recently found myself looking at Indian matrimonial ads on the Internet, studying them with more intensity than I ever studied for an exam. There I was, absorbed in the soothing paradise of matrimonial language: "Young, slim and attractive... highly educated… good mix of eastern and western values... enjoy cooking Indian food... great sense of humor... friends say I look like Aishwarya Rai…" Then a voice suddenly shook me back to reality: "Melvin, my dear son, please stop kissing the computer!"
Actually, my mother would never come between me and a potential bride. She's eager to see her 35-year-old son married. So eager, she's willing to consider matrimonial offers from outside our culture, even offers from outside our species.
So why am I still single? Well, finding a perfect match isn't easy. It's too bad I don't know any cricket players. I've heard they're really good at match- fixing.
Go ahead and laugh, those of you who think you'll never be so desperate. Your time will come. One of these fine days, you'll realize that your "soul-mate" isn't going to appear out of the blue, that you won't run into him or her at the local Indian restaurant, festival, or sari shop. Even if you carry a sign that says, "Marry me and my father will give you the keys to his Mercedes."
Yes, you'll soon realize that scanning matrimonial ads is the only way to keep your pesky relatives from setting you up with one of your unemployed cousins. The one whose main hobby, other than watching Hindi movies, is smoking bidis.
In my younger days, I would have bet any amount of money that I'd never have to look at matrimonial ads for a wife. No, not me. I knew that matrimonial ads are quite common in Indian culture. That's how many people hook up. But having grown up abroad, I thought I'd be able to escape the trouble of sorting through ads in which every other woman is "beautiful," every other woman is "fair" and every other woman is "lying."
I was wrong, of course. I have recently spent more time gazing at matrimonial ads than I've spent gazing at actual women. Which in itself is quite a miracle. My matrimonial research, not surprisingly, has left me with dozens of unanswered questions. Here are just a few:
-- What the heck is an INNOCENT divorce? I've never heard anyone say they had a guilty divorce. Maybe that's because people consider marriage a life sentence. You have to be innocent to be released. Or perhaps the divorce court judge made a ruling like this: "After considering all the evidence, I find you, Mohan, completely innocent. You have been unjustly punished. Guards, please set him free from this marriage. But I find you, Sharmila, guilty as charged. You deserve to be punished. I sentence you to three more marriages. Guards, introduce her immediately to Mike Tyson."
-- If you're a single doctor, is there some kind of law that requires you to marry another doctor? I've come across so many ads in which doctors say they are seeking other doctors. This confuses me. Do they want to get married or are they trying to open a clinic? Doctors marrying doctors seems so unfair, because it deprives the rest of us of free medical attention. All of us deserve a spouse who knows how to work on us. Medically speaking, that is. Some doctors, perhaps desperate to get married, are willing to consider engineers, computer programmers and other professionals who fall into the category of "not doctors but still making tons of money". But many still insist on marrying within their profession. Just once in my life I'd like to see an ad that says: "Parents of a 26-year-old physician girl, educated at top medical college, beautiful, fair, Hindu, U.S. citizen, seeking responses from qualified janitors, truckers and waiters. Preference will be given to those with a high school diploma."
-- If a woman is attractive, can she also be homely? And if she is homely, can she also be outgoing? And if she is outgoing, can she also be reserved? And if she is reserved, do I need to knock off the guy who has reserved her?
-- Why do people list the qualifications of their relatives? "My brother is a medical doctor, my father is an engineer, my sister is a software professional, my uncle is an accountant, my aunt is a professor, I myself am a high school dropout."
I'm not trying to bash matrimonial ads. After-all, I've placed a few myself. And thanks to them, I've met several terrific women, including one special lady who has made me stop looking at matrimonial ads altogether.I really wish she'd move that gun from my head.
Melvin Durai is a Shippensburg, Pa.-based writer and humorist. A native of India, he grew up in Zambia and moved to the U.S. in the early 1980s.
Here are some more funny and entertaining articles by Melvin. Enjoy.
Married Life May Be Easier Than The Wedding
Perfect Wedding Hard To Attain
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