Beauty creams, boy drama and matrimonial ads: Inside one woman’s search for Mr. Right in Kerala

A wife complained to her husband: “Our new neighbour always kisses his wife when he leaves for work. Why don’t you do that?”Her Husband replied: “How can I? I don’t even know her.”All of us are acquainted with numerous marriage memes and jokes. One of the popular jokes I have heard is: Marriage is a three-ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.


As a girl born into a traditional Syrian Christian family in Kerala, I was introduced to the idea of marriage probably from when I burst out of my mother’s womb. It was built up through insinuations from grandparents and relatives. The first sign of a pimple in my teens caused such a consternation resulting in ocean loads of creams and countless visits to the beauty parlour. When my weighing scales tipped the balance to the heavier side, my grandfather remarked, “Don’t eat too much. Nobody will marry you if you become fat”. Things came to a head when I stopped performing in my 11th grade. My father exploded,” If you don’t study, I will get you married”. I looked up at him and replied, “Thank you very much.”
Not following up on his threat, he sent me to college where I had a blast for four years as the college belle enjoying the boys’ attention and getting adequate envy of girls. My parents didn’t let this continue. “Enough is enough,” I was told one fine morning, and was brought back home to “settle down with a husband”. My mother declared, “We will have to push you into the marriage market”. Marriage market? As a business graduate, I was acquainted with the stock market, commodities market, equities market, vegetable and fruit market – even fish market which is what our town often looks like – but Marriage market?

The marriage market

This was new and mysterious to me. I soon learned the hard way that the marriage market also functions like any other market subject to market fluctuations and vagaries in demand and supply. For instance, the ‘demand’ is pretty much based on product quality – in this case is the prospective bride or groom. According to the laws of economics, I was supposed to be snapped up like hot cakes, but life often does not follow the principles of economics.
My parents started out with the good old newspaper advertisement in the reputed Malayala Manorama. I still remember my first time in the Manorama office trying to come up with a catchy yet crisp advertisement so as to not shore up a large bill. The next Sunday we were bombarded as the phone rang non-stop. With so many to choose from, it became a laborious process to separate the chaff from the grain.
My parents then decided to move with the times, and explored the fledgling online matrimonial websites. They prepared a nice profile of me, put it up on the website and, with bated breath, waited for the responses. Again, we were inundated with the huge inflow. I realized that Indian matrimonial websites were a very lucrative business model with the ever-expanding marriage market. It is the Indian version of Hitch.
For those who are not acquainted with the movie Hitch, Alex "Hitch" Hitchens is a professional "date doctor" who coaches men in the art of wooing women. The online matrimonial websites helped but without success, unlike Hitch. I could relate to Katrina Kaif in Namaste London as she saw several prospective grooms. As time wore on, the profile my mom had created got leaner and leaner.
Her predicament can be best summed up by Bishop Chrysostam, the head metropolitan of the Mar Thoma church, known for his impeccable sense of humour. A couple went up to the bishop to help find a bride for their son with a list of attributes they were looking for: that she must be beautiful, qualified, well-behaved, a good homemaker and God-fearing. The bishop looked at them and said, “If such a girl existed in the Mar Thoma church community, I wouldn’t have become a bishop!”.
All I can say is that the search continues, and one day I hope to get my Hrithik Roshan, so that I don’t end up like the bishop.

Authored by: Zarine Susan GeorgeIf you too have a soul-touching story to share, then send it to us at: soulcurry@timesinternet.in