6. The Facebook heartbreaker

When Rishi and Jia caught up on wednesday at " Beyond coffee ", the coffee and hookah lounge, Rishi gave Jia his sister's wedding invitation card, and when she asked about how the arranged marriage girl search was going for him, he ranted his displeasure on how his facebook page seemed to be lowering the chances of him getting good prospective bride matches. He told her the first thing a person who gets an arranged marriage proposal nowadays does, is look up their Facebook page. If the girl or guy in question was'nt good looking, or seemed to have questionable pictures of maybe with a cigarette /glass of alcohol/ an unrelated person of the opposite gender hugging them ,he/she is discarded as not good marriage material and the marriage proposal is turned down. Not just that, they seemed to be spreading the word of this absurd inference to the rest of their friends and considering gossip spreads like wildfire, the marital prospects for the person are reduced considerably. When Jia met with Sita that evening and told her about Rishi's issue, Sita told her that she had a similar experience when her parents were looking for matches for her before she married Ram. She and her parents liked another guy's match and Sita and the guy started to speak with each other regularly, getting to know each other day by day till she opened up her heart to him completely, after which one day the guy suddenly called off the marriage saying she should be careful what kind of an image she's portraying to people through the pictures on her facebook page where she had her hands on her MBA guy friends' shoulders and seemed to be partying hard. Jia and Sita agreed it was a good thing the match broke off anyway cos that guy seemed like an idiot and Ram just happens to be her dream guy. Nevertheless, poor guy Rishi now is very careful about what kinda stuff is up on his facebook page, lest he stay unmarried for the rest of his life! ;)

4. Is choosing your life partner your choice?

Looking at most of her friends getting married, Jia was amazed at how people find their life partners; whether by arranged marriage or by love marriage. Many friends were having arranged marriages and she'd been with them throughout their search for the perfect person. It seemed that finding the right guy became increasingly difficult From the time girls crossed the 25 years of age barrier. The average age for a woman to get married here is 22 and the average age for a guy to get married is 26! Considering the girl is almost always younger than the guy, once she crosses 26, she's registered in almost every matrimony site there is in India, not to mention that every single person she knows would also be dedicatedly on the lookout for her potential soulmate. Like her friend Priya commented  'the good guys simply get taken when they're still in college by the sensible girls'. It was obviously easier for the guys coz the girl can be any number of years younger to him, but for a girl the guy has to be older, so the older she gets, the fewer her options get. When Jia asked her 25 year old guy friends why they don't indulge in wooing a girl and getting married, they simply said they crossed the age for doing that, that now they are just too lazy to do the whole drill, they'd rather just get married via arranged marriage. This sounded more like a south Indian and conservative approach. north indians have examples of finding their life partners even at 28 or 29. even in western countries theres no age bar for dating and finding your life partner. So why do guys here not want to look out for potential life partners? Especially the businessmen. the ones in corporate offices still seem to have a little bit of energy left in them to do so. is it because businessmen come across less prospective people even though they attend a lot of social gatherings? Or the corporate world has a more college feel to it? In any case, people's patience to date seems to go down with age, atleast in Hyderabad. Maybe its more to do with pleasing your family by giving them the choice to select your soul mate?