A Brain Wave on How to Look for Your Soul Mate

Lazy Sunday afternoon. The make do blanket curtain on my window flaps vigorously as the breeze battles to enter. I pin the curtain with my head as I lean on the wall below the window on my Kurl-on mattress. The flapping has gone down but the auto noise outside my room spoils the perfect mood brought forth by “o sathi re” emanating from my laptop. The breeze is now restive to get inside and throws it weight on my curtain. But I won't let it go.

I desperately want to nail down the melogy humming in my mind all afternoon. I can't remember the pestering song. The lone clue was that Kishore Kumar sang it. Raaga.com has 23 screenfulls of Kishore Kumar songs. The hums multiplied as I prodded through the list that had “C A T cat mane billi” and the like a myriad times. The song is still elusive. Despite annoying “X O O M xoom daat caam” league ads, Raaga.com is still the best site for Hindi, Telugu and Tamil melodies.

(Caution: paragraphs below are male centric)

For once, I thought matrimonial websites changed the marriage broking business like Raaga.com did to listening to melodies. No way. Four to five of my-age friends were frustrated when I asked them their own tryst with bride hunt. A friend wondered “I have been looking out from long. Where have all those girls gone?” My question is, are you doing the search right? Particularly if you are looking for a well educated girl, which is a rare breed in India.

It takes two to tango even in the pseudo arranged marriages of these days. If you think you hooked up to the latest fad in the matrimony business and the search has to be easy because the Net has changed it all, wake up! The crowd that invades the Net does not mirror that in the brick and mortar world. Y! chat rooms and the blogs tell you the story. Most of the net inhabitats (in southern India at least) are twenty something males. Not the 'decision-maker'-parent of a bride-to-be. Many girls' “profiles” on the matrimonial websites are written promptly by girls themselves disguised as their parents or relatives. The decision-makers, for all practial purposes, are among the most computer and internet illeterate groups. If you put up your profile on the yet another matrimonial website and are awaiting a response, good luck.

Market place mismatch (I just put a tag on what I described above) sure has it role to play making matrimonial sites ineffective but the importance of the decision itself forces the parents to look for reliable sources of good grooms. They seek advice from their friends, go to marriage bureaus, and advertise in specific newspapers (in Andhra, it's Eenadu and in TN – The Hindu).

So the strategy for a successful search is not very different from what they teach you in marketing classes in b-schools. Look for the decision maker. Go do a song and dance in places where the decision maker goes when he/she is looking for your “product” so you can grab their attention and move your agenda forward.

If you choose to advertise in a newspaper, do it right. I gave an ad in a newspaper giving just my email id. It evoked luke warm response if not a dismal one. I readvertised after a couple of weeks with my telephone number and my cell phone was flooded with numerous calls. In majority of the cases, girl's parents don't use the internet or email. Period.

Well the third reason why internet does not work is that internet sites fail to capture the information that either the parents would like to give or the information that groom's parents look out for. [Without getting into ethics of it,] Wealth related information and dowry seem to figure among the first calls between the parties [unfortunate, but true]. Websites do not “capture” this information and hence provide partial information for “decision-making” (whether to contact the other party).

If you are doing the search yourself or if you are away in a foreign country, you are likely to rely excessively on the matrimonial sites. I hope the gyan given above will give you the wherewithall to get back into the game. Good luck.