Text/Laura Shen
Photo: Review - crab yellow rice, production - seven
Cover image: One Map Network
Text Image Except for Annotations: Netflix Documentary "Indian Matchmaking"
"Note: This article is non-fiction, from real people, all pseudonyms. The accompanying pictures are only schematic diagrams, all from the Netflix documentary "Indian Matchmaking", not the real pictures of the protagonist in the text."
Since graduating from college, the 22-year-old Indian girl Vasha (pseudonym) has become a "trouble" for the whole family, and the family is anxious about her marriage, thinking that after Vasha graduates, the next task is to get married, and Vasha has also begun the Indian-style blind date.
[ Blind Date between Parents ]
"I'm not reluctant to find someone, why am I single?" It's because of Father! Vasha said to me bitterly, "I had a relationship that was torn down by my father. My boy and I are young plum bamboo horses, and our father is also a colleague of the same company. Just because the boy's caste was lower than mine, my father objected, and he even went to the boy's father himself to theorize and warn him to be self-sufficient. "In Hinduism, the high castes do not intermarry with the lower castes, which is the obsession of the believers.
Indians believe that marriage is a matter of two families
图：Indian Matchmaking, Netflix
The pressure on Vasha is even greater after the age of 25, she said, and in India, 25 is the police cordon, and it is dangerous for women to be unmarried if they are over 25. "I had a single cousin who studied medicine and became the object of ridicule from the whole family, and to catch her breath, she fled alone to London to work." Vasha said.
When Vasha was 26 years old, her mother was terminally ill with cancer, and her grieving family once again set their sights on her, hoping to celebrate with a wedding, and the mother also hoped to see her daughter get married before she died. Vasha could not marry, and did not want to fail her mother, and her heart was like a knife. That year, her mother died, her father was white-headed, she was rebuked by her relatives, and the days were particularly gray.
In those years, vaasa and I shuttled between China, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and India, and the work was busy, and with the time difference, we had less contact. Vasha, who lost her mother at the age of 26, is young and lamentable, but at the age of 26, she is unmarried, but it is late and late in Indian society, which is really absurd.
In January 2020, I suddenly got a call from Vasha: "Come to my wedding, come to India, see my hometown." ”
Indian weddings
Pictured: rawmn/Shutterstock
I was happy for her and wondered who my fiancé was. It turned out that they met through a dating site, but the user was not herself, but her father.
In conservative and traditional Indian society, seemingly unreliable dating sites (Matrimonial Sites) are very popular. And the large number of users who sign up for these sites are not men and women who are waiting to marry, but their parents.
India's largest dating site shaadi
Figure: shaadi.com
Vasha's father registered for a dating site in 2019, uploading Vasha's profile, and the father will post the requirements for the future son-in-law, and then sift through a large number of candidates. When he looks at a candidate, he looks at it with his relatives and asks his daughter for advice.
Vasha's fiancé, Sanjay (pseudonym), was also hung on the dating website by his parents, who uploaded Sanjay's information and published their requirements for their future daughter-in-law, and then compared them with big data to screen out candidates.
The parents in "Indian Matchmaking" also demanded the same
At first, Vasha and Sanjay almost missed each other. At the beginning of 2019, the resumes of the two were sent to their parents' accounts separately, and Vasha's family felt that Sanjay could do it, so they contacted each other, but Sanjay's side did not respond.
No response and disregard were common occurrences of blind dates, and Vasha took it for granted and quickly forgot about it. More than half a year later, her father suddenly received an inquiry from Sanjay's side, and the other party issued an invitation to meet.
As the two young men in the documentary meet for the first time,
Parents of both sides accompanied the whole process,
The two young men were overwhelmed
After meeting, Vasha and Sanjay began to get engaged, prepare for the wedding, and get married. It is not so much that they are blind dates, but rather that they are blind dates between the parents on both sides, and the two of them are just tool people.
In Indian marriage, the conditions and standards are very harsh. It is not only necessary to look at the age, height, appearance, education, work, income, property, family background of both men and women, but also to require language, religious beliefs, caste matching, and even astrological matching. Marriage elements are extremely cumbersome, and modern information technology and big data analysis are effective matching tools.
95% of Indians pursue astrological matching on blind dates
Big data and algorithms brought Sanjay, who was far away in the United States, to Vasha. They are both South Indians, speak Telugu, their hometown is the same state, Hindu beliefs are the same, both belong to the high caste; both have studied overseas, Vaasa studied in Singapore, Sanjay studied in the United States, he has been in the United States for 10 years, working as an IT engineer in Los Angeles, the family business; Vasha's father and sister-in-law live in the United Arab Emirates and Singapore respectively, and have relatives in the United States. Sanjay is tall and handsome, the two are similar in age, the stars match, and the birthday is consistent. Everything perfect.
Through modern technology and parental matchmaking, Vasha seems to have met her true destiny and perfect other.
"This must have been arranged for me by the Mother of Heaven," said Vasha, "and we must be happy, right?" ”
Wedding statue of the goddess sita in Hinduism
图：Digital Cloud /Shutterstock
[ Wedding Supermarket ]
Vasha and Sanjay's first meeting was witnessed by the parents of both sides. The second time they met, it was at their engagement ceremony. The third time they met was in Singapore, and it was the only time the two of them were alone before marriage.
"When we don't have family, we relax a bit, but we're more embarrassed, we're complete strangers and don't have any emotional basis. We tried to find some topics, but no, and our biggest common topic was: why we got married. Vasha said.
A month before the big wedding, Sanjay began to hesitate. He said he really didn't know why the two of them were getting married, so let's just forget it? Vasha was nervous, the wedding invitation had been issued, and remorse would damage the family's reputation.
Worried that Sanjay might run away from marriage, Vasha walks into the wedding scene, where she meets Sanjay, the fourth time they have met.
India is the birthplace of many ancient wedding ceremonies in the world, against the will of children, never met before marriage, blind marriage and other phenomena, in today's India has been greatly improved, children's voluntary choice is the most Indian urban middle class to pursue the norms, in the dowry, wedding costs, but also men and women share. Nowadays, there is no such thing as arranged marriage in India, only marriage and love marriage, and marriage is a matter of two families, which is related to the credibility and property of the two families.
Introduce today, meet tomorrow, get married the day after tomorrow,
The Indian blind date marriage process is time-sensitive
However, the union of an Indian marriage, which contains a large number of complex elements overlapping and indispensable, has spawned India's prosperous marriage matchmaking service, which is a huge industry, according to the New York Times, there are more than 1500 dating websites in India.
Top 10 dating sites in India
Figure: Medium.com
On a dating site, users can sift through a wide variety of candidates like a supermarket. Websites usually categorize candidates by race and language, and show successful couples, and the client enters the desired religion, caste, state, city, occupation, etc., and can be selected.
Home page of the Indian dating site Bharat Matrimony
Some websites have also developed more refined services, customers can choose from targeted services such as elites, overseas Indians, late marriage, remarriage, engagement, etc., and can also be screened according to caste and occupation preferences, whether they like bosses or wage earners, self-employed or civil servants, they can always find the one they want.
Indian dating site Wedgate offers numerous services
Pictured: Wedgate
Due to the need to match a large number of condition elements, Indian matchmakers need to master superb information collection and data analysis capabilities, and conduct big data matching through algorithms. It's not hard to see why, in conservative Indian society, online pairing has become mainstream.
Indian matchmaking agencies offer thoughtful services, and some top matchmakers even need to travel long distances around the world. A famous matchmaker in Mumbai often travels to and from Mumbai and Delhi, as well as Houston, New Jersey, Santiago and other places in the United States. She would fly to these cities herself and do her due diligence.
The marriage broker will personally go to the client's home to meet and talk with him,
And observe the family's way of doing things
The marriage broker personally walks into the client's private house and observes his living environment,
Judge their personality preferences
Indian dating platforms or matchmakers are also known as marriage brokers, like stock traders, who charge expensive consulting fees, rely on word of mouth and success stories, and confidentiality of customer privacy.
For the first time, a man and a woman in India meet on a blind date
(In the presence of parents and matchmakers)
India also has marriage detectives, who are professional blind date investigators who help clients conduct secret background checks on their favorite candidates and flesh out their private lives and personal histories to satisfy their desire to fully grasp the information.
[ Fragility and Reinvention ]
Since the superb blind date service has been used, if a marriage is dissatisfied, the customer will be aggrieved and will be very persistent in defending his rights.
In the film, the customer believes that if you pay money, you should get happiness.
Otherwise it's the platform's fault
After the wedding, Sanjay returns to the United States, and Vasha waits for a visa to the United States. At the beginning of 2020, the covid-19 pandemic that swept the world spread and flights were cancelled. It was really uncomfortable to mutate the country as soon as they got married.
Sanjay found that the marriage was far from his requirements and wanted to repair it: he asked Vasha to cut off her long hair and keep it short; he asked Vasha to wear pants and no skirts; he thought Vasha was not independent enough to be as free as an American girl. Vasha is also full of disappointments about marriage: in order to go to the United States, she gave up her job in the United Arab Emirates and suffered unemployment losses; foreign separation made her unable to be accompanied, marriage is no different from being single; she suspected that her mother-in-law asked her to do housework; she wanted to move out of her in-laws with Sanjay, but Sanjay ignored it.
Through the perfect other half accurately matched by big data, is this? Say good happiness?
Vasha and Sanjay discover that they are nothing more than two strangers living within the framework of marriage, forcibly stuffed into the container of marriage in order to make the marriage look like it should be.
In Indian society, under the wave of technology and globalization, consumerism and individualism have spread, and personal interests, costs, rights and risk aversion have become entangled with love. Sanjay can't accept Vasha as she is and wants to transform Vasha into his ideal wife; Vassar, disgusted by Sanjay's finger-pointing, refuses to change, complaining about the burden of going to the United States to find a new job. They were all Western-style educated and longed for freedom and romance, but they accepted the blind date arranged by their parents. They want to maintain their individuality, unwilling to give and sacrifice, but let the old ideas of India's male superiority and female inferiority, virtuous wife and mother seep into marriage. The two continued to tear each other apart in their contradictions.
People regard marriage as a product, buy it and go home, but find that there are many missing parts in it, so they rush to send it to the repair shop for repair.
Vasha and Sanjay try to repair their marriage and decide to go to counseling. The counselor believes that Sanjay cannot accept the fact that he is a married man in his heart, he does not admit that it is his marriage, he cannot accept that his wife and life will be like this; Vasha thinks that marriage is equivalent to love is taken for granted, and Sanjay should love her, be considerate of her, and care for her, but he does not know that these need to be worked on. What they see is only the other half of the fantasy in their hearts, but they can't see each other.
American journalist Elizabeth Flock's book The Secret of Maintaining Marriage documents the marriage of three Indian couples
According to the Belgian psychologist Esther Perrier, in modern marriage, people's expectations of the other half are almost religious, the only one, the Messiah, the savior. In an individualistic society, a person hopes that the other half can verify all his past choices, pin all his sense of belonging, sense of identity, and sense of value, and expect that this is the positive result of the cultivation of true love, the end of loneliness, unconditional acceptance, the highest level of spiritual satisfaction, and the meaning of life. Romanticism makes people expect religious expectations of marriage, but when marriage goes wrong, people's response is consumerist.
Before marriage, Vasha and Sanjay ask each other, why are we getting married? After marriage, they started asking each other, why don't we divorce? If you can't fix it in a repair shop, then it is better to simply divorce it.
Vasha filed for divorce, and Sanjay agreed. Vasha's family also compromised and agreed to her decision. But Sanjay's parents came forward, hoping to save the marriage.
"From the moment we got married, we kept getting divorced. Amazingly, we're still together and not divorced, and maybe that's why we got married! Vasha said.
The vigorous divorce ultimately failed to materialize. After the epidemic stabilized, Vasha flew to the United States and met Sanjay in San Francisco.
"Marriage is not a goal, but a starting point. It took me a long time to realize this. We began to get to know each other again. Vasha said.
They had their suitcase stolen by thieves in San Francisco, which was enough to cause the two to complain and quarrel again, but they did not, and they calmly called the police, took notes, and found the suitcase in the trash can the next day. "The feeling of losing and regaining. It's nothing to lose something, but thankfully the two of us are still there. Vasha said.
They dragged their thieves' suitcases and traveled around the United States for a month, a precious time, and they traveled together, facing problems like marriage.
Photo: PratikPalke/Shutterstock
A phone call from India broke the sweetness, and Sanjay's father fell ill and he was going to fly back to India immediately.
After returning to India, Sanjay became as irritable and irritable as ever, and the two once again tugged over whether to stay in the United States or stay in India. Sanjay no longer contacted Vasha, who lived alone in the United States, and she knew that Sanjay would not return to her. A month later, on a Florida morning, a call came from the Indian end, and Vasha understood that it was Sanjay who was going to say goodbye to her, and she answered the phone.
"The matter in India was settled, and I decided to go back to the United States." Sanjay said." Don't you want to come to the United States? Vasha asked.
"Because you're in America, I'm going to be with you." On the other side of India, Sanjay's voice warmed Vasha's heart.
Pictured: MNStudio/Shutterstock
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