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• Monday, August 11, 2008 09:13 PM

  If you are serious...I have some ideas for you--assuming that you will read these letters

  1. Look over Shaadi.com and Bharatmatrimony.com. You have to be very patient with these sites, and you have to be genuinely open to meeting someone with our (East) approach to marriage--that is, look for compatibility, family background, potential of growth, father material. Don't look for romance and long walks in the beach. Those things may lead to a relationships, but not marriage. Make sure you carefully study family background and what will be expected of you in a marriage--something determined by your future inlaws. So, basically, these sites are not your Western Match.com deals, which lead to hook ups, etc. The men on the shaadi sites are serious about wanting to get married.

  2. Create connections in your community--in your area temple, or even mosques (if you are not against meeting a Muslim man), or just in immigrant pockets (new desis). Get your parents involved. If you want an assisted marriage, then you know that most of the legwork for marriage is done on your behalf by your community or family. If you can get a ghotkali to work on your behalf, then you will just need to sit back and read the biodatas.

  Frankly, sorry, but in the excerpt, you don't seem to really be ready for an Indian marriage. You basically want a westernized relationship with a Eastern man. It seems that you are arbitrarily picking an Eastern man because he appears to be more marriage minded, compared to hook-up generation Western men. So I would recommend that you think about where you are at.

  Also, a marriage is successful only if a society is supportive and only if you are also willing to be a good wife to a good husband, and a good daughter-in-law to a good set of in-laws. It is a serious paradigm shift, especially for a western woman.

  HOPE FOR YOU: Most of my desi female friends in Amrika got married through arranged/assisted marriage, and we (family and friends) found their grooms in the U.S. These are modern marriages, but South Asian style. Just so you know, arranged marriages are VERY common in America--but you must get a desi (maybe a Jain) community to do the work for you. In Muslim communities, it is almost impossible to find marriages that are NOT arranged. A few years back we found my Sunni girlfriend from D.C ( who was in her 30s and working at the World Bank) a husband from Pakistan (that is how hard a community will work for you). He is a doctor, and the couple have a beautiful daughter, with another child on the way.

  You don't have to travel to India to find someone.

  I don't know how strongly you have assimilated into U.S. culture, even as a second generation desi. If you are, then you know that because of our close knit communities (most of Amrika do not even know about our lives here), you may have a hard time getting in. BUT we (all Asians) are welcoming, so make the effort. Also, consider talking with Chinese and Korean communities. They have similar approaches to marriage and are a very marriage-oriented/cohesive family-driven culture.

  —LilyRose Read LilyRose's other letters
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