Fair girl seeks blah blah

Matrimonial classifieds, in which boys claim MNC employment, girls announce their fair skin and divorcees say they are 'innocent' have always been a special part of Indian literature. But they had a limitation. Since every word cost money, the messages were brief and hurried. Now, the incredible weirdness of Indian arrangement marriage has been set free on online matrimonial sites which come with eat-as-you-much-can virtual real-estate.What used to be restricted to a few lines of boasting, conditions and demands is now unbelievable matrimonial prose with pages full of gems.
One of the matrimonial websites has a 2000-word testimonial posted by a well-settled Brahmin male which begins with, "I am a simple boy with a few important features I would like in my to-be wife." Apart from the regular must-haves like beauty, colour and shape, he wants someone who will, "make sure not to fight with me. I am a fan of Amitabh Bachchan and want my wife to like his movies too. She should not be snoring in the night and should be willing to sleep on the left side of the bed each day. She also must know Ramayana and Bhagwatgeeta by heart because my mother likes it."
He says towards the end of the profile that he believes in honesty and doesn't want to fool his wife-to-be, hence the detailed description. By the standards of what Indians are writing on matrimonial websites the boy's demands are not unusual. Some men seek 'height like Shilpa Shetty'. Other men seek homely women who would be prepared to have exactly two children. Women seek 'salary in the range of 15 lakh'. Some describe themselves as, "Madhuri lookalike" or having, "a pout like Angelina Jolie" or being built "like Beyonce". And many say bluntly, 'non-NRIs need not apply'.
These online classifieds become even more verbose if the profiles are created by would-be mothers-in-law, one of whom has sought "milk-white" girls. It is common for these mothers to post long profiles of almost every member of the whole extended family including pets, parakeets even.
Needless to say, matrimonial sites are replete with profiles that carry blatant lies. "A slight fibbing or fudging could be ignored, but one simply can't understand the psyche of those who lie outright about themselves," says Ranjan Mitra, who has suffered many such disasters. He once met a girl who had claimed she was a 5-foot-11-inches tall Aishwarya lookalike, fluent in eight languages and in possession of a 2000 sq feet apartment in Malabar Hills. The only information that turned out to be true about the girl was that she was a girl.
There are men who respond to some profiles just to gawk at the pictures of girls in the marriage market and satiate their libidos. Also, some matrimonial sites are being used as respectable fronts for seeking extramarital affairs. "It's a great place to look for a simple extra-marital. Just place a classified asking for 'open minded' women and you will strike gold," says a matrimonial website surfer.
Inevitably, these sites are also abodes of countless virtual relationships. Boys and girls exchange their pictures and profiles and build a bond online. Girls, particularly, prefer this approach as they believe it is less heartbreaking when things go wrong. But, eventually, they cannot escape the reality of a more tangible courtship. And many find that virtual men are vastly different from the flesh-and-blood version. Sheila Malhotra talks about one such case where her friend, after having lived a two-year-old virtual relationship, found out that the man she finally got married to was nothing like the online character.
"A virtual relationship gives you the opportunity to consider your actions calmly, imagine yourself in the situation and then decide on an option that seems closest to what you would do in a sane frame of mind. In the real world on the other hand, no matter how much you try to use logic and reason, let's face it, the left brain doesn't stand a chance when emotions come into picture," she says.