“Unlike in Bollywood movies,†Mr. Siddharth said, “we fight. We are totally opposite, but she is mine.â€
“New York can be a very cruel city,†he said. “There are days when it can eat you up and spit you out. Sapna is my private escape. I always love to come home to her knowing that she brings peace to my chaos.†(link)
(Unless I am mistaken, this is where some readers might swoon a little. Others may find it all too cheesy. To each, her own.)
The part I personally liked the best had to do with the way they met, twice, online:
Dr. Chaudhary, a specialist in family medicine in New York, had posted her profile online at an Indian introductions site. She first heard from Mr. Siddharth, an advertising executive and stand-up comedian, in June 2005, in a response that was impressively lively. But after she replied, he seemed to vanish. That is, until September, when Mr. Siddharth’s second e-mail message, nearly identical to the first, landed.
To that one, she replied: “Maybe you should try and keep better track — or maybe you were just so overwhelmed by my beauty that you had some short term memory loss.†(link)
Let’s get this straight. Guy sees picture of a lady on Shaadi.com and thinks, “Me likee.” He shoots off his generic self-introduction, which in this case is pretty good, because homeboy has, as we’ve already established, the gift of gab. She replies encouragingly, but now (presumably) he’s already preoccupied emailing someone else, and as a result he blows her off. The other thing doesn’t pan out, and three months later he sees the first profile again without realizing it (her new pictures are “sexier”), and shoots off the same generic self-introduction, albeit a little puzzled that Gmail already seemed to know her email address.
And three years later, they’re getting married in style (seriously, check out those pictures), and bragging about it in the Times.
One quick side note — I like that the Times reporter describes the site through which they met as an “Introductions” website, not a “Matrimonials” site. It seems to me that “Introductions” is a better fit than “Matrimonials,” a descriptor that would require an obligatory reference to the “exotic” Indian practice known as “Arranged Marriage” ™.)
Anyone else have interesting Matrimonials/Introductions website correspondence snafus?
“I don’t think that the “vast majority” of Wharton or Harvard Med School desis are married at 25 . . . .”
They’ll be married by 27-28. Everyone who’s desi on this board knows this. We marry early as a rule. I’m not saying its right.
i’m not averse to getting married. i’m just not sure if i know how to deal with desi in laws. my parents are liberal and our extended family was always independent and spread out so i don’t know how i would be able to manage if i was plonked into a traditional desi family.
“i’m not averse to getting married. i’m just not sure if i know how to deal with desi in laws. my parents are liberal and our extended family was always independent and spread out so i don’t know how i would be able to manage if i was plonked into a traditional desi family.”
I understand where you are coming from. I am from a liberal spread out family and I am dating someone who has very traditional parents. It is very different than anything I have experience before. Her and all her cousins are not very traditional. They all date like normal american kids. They all lie to their parents. The parents happily believe that dating is something outsiders do and it does not happen in their family. Even the kids who have gotten married never outed the fact that they dated to their parents. According to the lies they told their parents they were “friends” and decided to get married. They then base their new family life on a lie and the parents live in ignorant bliss. According to my girlfriend I am the first brown family she has ever met that is not like that. All her friends in college lie to their parents and that is just a cultural trait of indian people. I will never fit into this well and don’t believe that lying like this is moral. My family is really different….perhaps its because they are north indian. I have no idea how these things work. All i know is something is odd that I have never thought of this and apparently every single brown person she has met lives a lie. Is this common? It is fairly painful.
I think lying to your parents in HS or college might have been normal for some desi kids who had parents that just wanted them to study and not date for the fear that they would end up dropping out of school or pregnant or “in the wrong crowd.” But I agree with the above comments that lying to your parents when you are an adult is quite strange. I also come from a very liberal family-and are all very spread out. I am not very close to my family either (I know-a shock for an Indian girl to say this!) and don’t talk to my parents daily so they don’t need to know every detail of my life and they don’t really care either-they let me live my life which isn’t always the case with a lot of desi parents I have noticed. The in-law thing worries me the most also, I have noticed with some of my girl friends that have married into traditional families that this is their biggest stressor in life right now.
“The in-law thing worries me the most also, I have noticed with some of my girl friends that have married into traditional families that this is their biggest stressor in life right now.”
Yeah…thats what my rents keep telling me. “They are not like us. You will have a lot of problems”.
Is having that kind of relationship a north indian thing? Any south indian families out there work this way? Is it normal for girls? I am trying to figure this out. Is this a regional cultural difference? Thanks.
it’s not normal, but it’s common among south indians as well. families are different, but mine def. have made it clear that they don’t believe in dating. the thing is, sometimes, with some parents, it’s just not worth the trouble to tell them the truth – some people are just not fortunate that their parents will be OK with everything they do. clearly, you are. but if you’ve ever been in the situation of telling your parents something you thought they could handle and then have them bring it up (unnecessarily) again and again, it’s clearly not worth the hassle. basically, for many, it’s an issue of choosing your battles wisely. i have a lot of friends who are open to their parents about dating, but would never talk about sex or the fact that they drink or smoke.
Datings not part of desi culture. It’s not until recently that it has become semi accepted in the big cities of India. Sure our parents may have been here for 30 or 40 years but are deeply connected with folks back home and care about what they think. They also have to prove that they’ve not traded their Indian values for a piece of American Pie just because they’ve migrated. My parents wanted my sister to marry a highly successful young man in India that was known to our family since forever and if she would’ve dated and slept around over here there is no way that marriage could’ve taken place. She still may have dated and slept around for all we know, but we don’t and so she was able to marry the guy. That’s part of what destroyed my first marriage as well but that’s another story.
“at the end of sex in the city all of those women found the right guy though-did you see the movie?”
Umm, yeah I like any woman would end up with a guy, who strung her along for 6 years (dated her, dumped her, married another, cheated with her, divorced another, did NOT come back to her, moved away, came back when she moved on, and then co-habited with her for 4 years) and did NOT marry her until she dumped him for walking out on their wedding. Yeah, he sounds like the ‘right’ guy. At what point would you have told your friend to move on? Season 2, 3, 5, 6, big screen?
I think that the concept of “the right guy” for you and I and maybe most of the people reading this blog may not have been the same as what the women in this show decided was right for them but that does not mean that they didn’t figure out in the end what was right for them. I do believe in the different strokes for different folks theory and what is right for one isn’t for another-and the only two people that understand a relationship are at the end of the day the two people that are in it. It’s like how some people can keep in touch with an ex and become great friends while others cut off all communication right away. I also do think that a lot of people have that one person out there that we look back on our lives and think “what if” and “only if that could have worked out”. Most of us will not end up with that person-but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be willing to forgive some great things for this one person that we would never do for anybody else…..life is just funny that way.
got it….dating not in indian culture. lying through teeth is…err….
Where in that entire comment did I say anything about lying??
“I also do think that a lot of people have that one person out there that we look back on our lives and think “what if” and “only if that could have worked out”.
I think a lot of people do think this way. What a lot of people don’t think about is how to make THEMSELVES into the person they want to attract. Social matching theory bears out over msot cases: we attract those that are like ourselves. The kicker is when we don’t like ourselves. So we blame the ‘other’ instead of improving ourselves. But then show me anyone who in their heart of hearts doesn’t believe themselves ‘perfect’ 🙂
sorry….i was supposed to quote this comment.
If dating is not allowed in our culture than what other choice do we have but to lie? It’s a survival tactic.
Is there a rule book that says it is not “allowed”? or is just not as prevalent as the West?
I think the acceptance of ‘love marriage’ or dating might vary based on which region of India you are from. My parents are bengali and even for the previous generation, it was widely accepted unless there was a compelling reason to go against the relationship.
My parents were seeing each other for 5+ years in the late 60s and got married in 71, I understand is different in different parts but dating not being allowed is unfounded.
my parents dated for a year in india before getting married
Fine. Now compare the number of married couples who dated in India compared to the ones who had an arranged marriage.
Still doesn’t make dating not allowed, please don’t use these phrases loosely as this site is read by many people who don’t know anything about India and the comments go a long way.
121 · umber desi said
Not dating, just kissing…
118 · umber desi said
This thesis may or may not be complicated by the fact that umber desi was born in 1970.
i’m not going to have an arranged marriage however, i’ve noticed that among friends and family abroad and in india, those who have arranged set ups have a much much higher rate of the marriage working out. divorce is more common with people who have had love marriages. i’m not sure why this is the case.
Well, some do say that arranged marriages have a higher rate of success comparing to love marriages. The reason could simply be the fact that people who decided to make choices for themselves are also the ones who can walk out instead of staying at a bad marriage. On the other hand, those who let parents/others make the match, ended up compromising when the marriage didn’t seem to work out. I am not saying one is better than the other – it is just that statistically it may not necessarily reflect a higher success rate in terms of happiness in a marriage.
No divorce does not = happy marriage. Parents will arrange your marriage but they will not arrange your divorce, except in rare cases like mine, long story. The concept of divorce is new to desi culture and it’s not a big hit. I still think that in general dating and divorce are not “allowed” in desi culture, though that is slowly changing in the urban centers. I’m almost 40 and even 20 years ago in my crowd the girls were lying to their parents in order to date and that was here in North America. Puliogre said his girlfriend is lying in order to date him and that she told him every desi she knows does that so it appears that while things have changed they’ve also remained the same. My parents tolerated me going on a few dates but it was out of the question for my sister. After my divorce when I moved out of their house and into my own space I went wild and there was nothing they could do about it. I’ve been married for the past year and a half to a woman that I met through a desi uncle (semi arranged) and I do feel more obligated to her than my first wife who, although pushed to marry her by my parents, was found by me on one of those desi matrimonial sites. Traditionally in India if your marriage has been arranged by family there is no question of divorce. It is unthinkable and the laws reflect that fact.
@ 126. mr write, how do your current wife’s parents feel about you being a divorcee?
She is also a divorcee and that was one of the criteria in the arrangement since it is very difficult for divorced desi women to find takers amongst desi bachelors who have never been married (and vice versa to a large extent). The desi uncle who introduced us took all of this into consideration beforehand.
@ 128. mr write, what a nice uncle. my relatives keep suggesting total idiots as potential partners. the way they describe the person, one feels one is going to meet a guy who is like sabeer bhatia and hrithik roshan combined. but when i finally meet up with him he turns out to be horrid. i don’t mind if someone is not rich or good looking but i can’t deal with people who have horrible and unpleasant personalities. i’m not really in touch with these relatives any longer so they have ceased matchmaking.
its still potentially hurtful to the partner if they dont believe in sneaking around like that…
The desi uncle was not my blood uncle but an older co-worker. I don’t think I would trust my blood relatives with such a task. They were the ones that pushed me into marrying my first wife too soon and then pushed me to divorce her which is odd for desis but the circumstances were such that they did. I met my first wife on the internet and was happy with her, until my family got in between. Try the internet or just hang out at desi events.
i actually went to high school w/sapna … she was such a jappy bitch back then!
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