Phoren husband? No thanks

I was asked to buy my mother a separate house in New York. He said his engineer daughter wouldn't like to live with a mother-in-law,'' says a very harassed Shravan Gupta, a US-based financial consultant currently in the process of finding a suitable spouse for himself from India. The very firm demand���which, incidentally, was only one in a long list drawn up by the prospective bride���came via her father.
But Gupta isn't alone. The charm of the NRI, once a plum catch for groom-hunting women from India, seems to be wearing off, with many would-be grooms complaining of finding it incredibly difficult to get a desi girl in the marriage market. Indeed, the bargaining power seems to have changed hands���earlier, where NRI grooms came with a list of demands and asked for a hefty dowry, now it's the girls who dictate the terms.
Radhika Kulkarni, a Pune resident who's having a tough time finding a bride for her London-based brother, says that young women today are beginning to reject grooms simply because they work abroad���and if they do consider marrying an NRI, come armed with an interminable list of dos and don'ts. ���One of the most common clauses is the 'no cooking, no cleaning' one. In fact, one girl told me to clarify to my brother that he would have to do the cooking every day after work since she hates spending time in the kitchen,'' says a very amused Kulkarni.
Rahul Tripathi, a Boston-based consultant who works with a banking organisation, agrees that it is ���a strange situation''. Tripathi holds that most NRIs would like to marry a girl who believes in Indian values (whatever that means)���and this is the beginning of their tough times ���because you won't find these values unless the girl has been brought up in India''. Well, the girl brought up in India is evidently beginning to put her pretty foot down.
The question is, why? Naina Raval, a Delhi-based MBA, has a theory���that the quality-of-life issue, which was the biggest lure for wannabe brides earlier, no longer holds true. ���The disparity in salary from which stemmed the vast difference in lifestyle no longer exists,'' she says. ���Today, with salaries in post-liberalisation urban India, particularly in certain sectors, almost on par with those abroad, we have access to everything that Indians abroad were envied for���designer clothes, gourmet food, fancy cars and exotic holidays.'' Agrees Mumbai resident Sheena Malhotra: ���When I can get the same lifestyle here in Mumbai and also get to keep my job and friends, why would I want to uproot myself and start afresh in a completely new setting?''
Another big attraction used to be the getting away from the joint family situation, which was an iffy proposition in India a decade ago. ���In our time, it was impossible to live separately, and I was looking for a bit of freedom,'' says Nandini Mitra, 45-year-old Canada-based housewife. ���The situation is different now, at least in the metros. Many couples work in a different city from their parents; in fact, even in the same city, more and more couples are beginning to set up separate homes.''
Another reason, say observers, could be the steadily advancing age of marriage for women and their growing dedication to career. Around two decades earlier, women would get married (or be forced to) fresh out of college, which gave them the liberty to start their lives from scratch wherever they liked. ���This isn't the case in the last decade���now most women want to kickstart their careers before they tie the knot. Most women wait till they are at least 26 to get married,'' says Sonali Gokhale, California-based software programmer. By this age, not only have they already set a career path for themselves, but they also have created a corporate network and a good friends' circle. Letting go of all these simply for an NRI groom is definitely a tough one.
Gokhale says she went through a similar dilemma when she got married a year ago. ���After having climbed the corporate ladder in Mastek, a technology company in India, coming to San Francisco with my husband was a difficult choice,'' she says. ���However, I got lucky when my company offered me a position in California; this way I could keep my job as well as get married to the groom in the US.''
Doubtless, many wannabe grooms must be wishing they were as lucky with their desi brides.