The Hindu Business Line : Weddings: Back to newspaper ads?

DOTCOM marriages, Internet betrothals and wireless divorces are passe. The billion-dollar brick-and-mortar Indian marriage industry has got a second lease of life.

Doctors, engineers, MNC professionals and bank executives are flooding the market and finding favour with demure Indian girls of marriageable age. The globe-trotting information geeks with their H1-B visas have been erased from the scene.

Shunning the `Hindu rate of growth' of the 70s and 80s, the urban elite has begun to own a `hamara Bajaj' in increasing numbers, `dream of a Maruti 800' and to persevere after `Sachin's Palio' with unabashed material glee. As the material and social aspirations have begun to resurface, the insurmountable caste divide has begun to ease — albeit very slowly.

It was, no doubt, the information geeks who catalysed the change. In their busy schedule between Boston and Chicago, they had no time for romance, no running between trees and singing old Rafi numbers. Instead, they met in transit rooms of airports. Had a hot and fervent electronic romance over e-mail, while they wearily wait for their delayed flights.

As their jet engines slowed to a crawl in Seattle, they had a sedate wedding watched by their family and friends on the Net. There was no barat, no shehnai and no wedding feast. The malik of the pandals, decorators, videographers, wedding caterers were aghast. The billion dollar wedding industry had ground to a halt.

Then the dotcom revolution crashed. The information geeks became outcasts. Internet weddings were ridiculed. And Mira Nair's film Monsoon Wedding ran to packed houses in all the metros in the country. The wireless wedding culture had been vanquished. The pandal malik was very much in demand. The caterers took a break between serving soup and souffle. The Internet was forgotten. Newspapers were once again full of matrimonial columns. But there was one major difference. The strong presence of caste-based advertisements was slowly and grudgingly giving way to cosmopolitan advertisements, at least in the metro papers.

Doctor, engineer, MBA/CA, NRI sections have been eating into the space of Khatri, Brahmin, Kayastha and Marwari columns. The software engineer is prominent by their diminutive size and fonts.

Social background has become quite important in the pursuit of matrimonial alliance, often at the cost of caste necessities. Social aspirations are also much in evidence in the matrimonial columns. Alliances are today sought for nationalised bank girls only from professionally qualified boys from foreign banks. A pervasive pecking order lies hidden beneath the matrimonial columns.

The social aspiration of the cooperative bank girl is to step into portals of an old generation private sector bank, a class apart. The aspirations mount from private sector bank to its nationalised cousins, to the swank new generation private sector bank and thence to the exalted heights of a foreign bank. The social hierarchy is clear and distinct, so is the social aspirations. Given a choice, most urban bank girls would today prefer alliance with a boy from a foreign bank, even from a different caste. Boys of the same caste from a co-operative bank would trigger family feuds. Grandparents would invariably have a fit.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section
Weddings: Back to newspaper ads?

A green desert