Click, Connect and Fall Out of Love

The puzzling and heart-breaking world of new-age matrimonial websites in India

“There is an interesting prospect on the anvil. The guy is a CA from Australia and has procured his second CA from London and will be going to America to pursue his MBA again. The family has a 3,400-sq-ft flat in Delhi, which is rented out to Koreans. Also, the boy’s mother is a double MA in English,” my father rattled off the details of a staggering, matrimony-ready profile.

“By the way, the boy has no intention to come back to India. Oh, and also, they have no problems with you working,” he added triumphantly on the phone, unaware of the rising wave of disbelief at the other end of the line. “You’d be a fool to not give this a thought,” pronounced daddy dearest.

When your parents start showing real symptoms of such an affliction, you know you have to take charge of your life. You either find someone yourself or risk being found by the infernal forces of the familia. Yes, it is as neat and brutal as that. For it is a notion universally propounded that a single woman in possession of a decent enough job in India must be in want of a man. Even so, far away from the cloying confines of overly anxious parents with bizarre propositions, from guilt-instilling and harrowing matrimonial sites, there must be a more peaceable way to find a potential mate for people who haven't already found someone to love…

And then, just like that, I stumbled onto a news article which talked about new dating websites for modern Indians via which members ‘choose their own partners and go from dating to perhaps matrimony at their own comfortable pace.’ Having heard a litany of complaints against traditional matrimonial sites and how restrictive and unreliable they tend to be and how casual dating websites like Tinder never really go beyond the realm of, well, the casual—these websites presented an interesting middle-ground, a half-way house full of newer possibilities. Or so I thought. And tumbled headfirst to see what they really had on offer.

What are you looking for?

➢ A relationship that evolves into marriage on its own
➢ A relationship that evolves into marriage in 6 to 12 months
➢ Long term Companionship

Thus flashed an interesting set of options to choose from while filling up an otherwise tiresome, ‘biodata’-like questionnaire for a recently launched matchmaking website that goes by the name of HatkeShaadi.com. Designed with cutesy animated images of a Just Married couple embarking on a hopeful journey full of blessedness and harmony on a dainty little cycle, its home page on the internet does offer a delightful first impression, if only on its design and appearance.

Yes, it could have been a lot more ‘hatke’ if the bride wasn’t shown delicately perched on the backseat of the bicycle, holding on to her partner’s shoulder for support. But then, why bother about such trivial details, right? Still, what was so ‘hatke’ if some of its mandatory questions required me to cite my height, religion and 'time of birth'? Oh wait, it does give you the option at a later stage to state the level of importance you attach to religion, caste, 'middle-class', 'upper middle class', 'affluent' or class no bar. Like any other matrimonial website.

Before you 'connect' with someone online (which can only happen after buying a basic plan of Rs 5,000), you get to see only the profile pictures, age, height, religion, caste, role, education, location, and mother tongue of the members—not their names. You increase your chances of 'finding a spark' by posting status updates. You might start trending too. The only status updates I saw belonged to this one man crouching by a river. One of his many updates had him reflecting, ‘I have always felt having a good conversation with anyone is more exciting than say falling in love or having sex.’ Yes, quite a statement to make in an otherwise inactive forum.

I decided to call up the number displayed on the website and inquire about why this Bangalore-based matrimonial website was called HatkeShaadi.com. “We offer strictly verified profiles.” Also the site does not flood your inbox with more than three new profiles a day. And you can only connect with someone you like if s/he too expresses an interest in you. So very reassuring, except that some of the older, better known matrimonial sites are also fine-tuning their verification procedures, linking registration through Facebook and Aadhar Card numbers. The concept of being able to send messages only after procuring a mutual ‘like’ or interest, however, does not exist on traditional matrimonial websites. And this feature did narrow down my choices to a great extent. I then awaited responses from the few men who evoked my interest, even though I could not shake off the feeling of wading through an HR recruitment procedure.

HatkeShaadi.com didn't start off on such a dull note, however. It was launched last year as a singles' dating website called Twoly Madly Deeply and had received widespread media coverage in all the major dailies and popular blogs, including 'The New York Times’ India Ink blog, which had depicted the site as a possible game changer for arranged marriages in India, how it has been ‘created to fill a growing need for urban Indians seeking educated global professionals like themselves, without regards to caste, region, language or any of the other traditional matrimonial requirements.’ But somewhere along the way, it decided to change track as it “did not want to explore the dating space anymore” and dive into the more lucrative marriage market. Today, it risks being relegated to the junkyard of insignificance—what with big players like Bharat Matrimony and Shaadi.com already chewing the same gum—if it doesn't change its game to honestly address a highly evolved demographic slice in India.

One bad fruit, however, should not sully a basket full of other appetising options. A clutch of Indian entrepreneurs are on a mission to offer more progressive ways to get hitched—ways that greatly underplay the importance of caste and religion, looks and other physical attributes, tedious relatives and phony astrologers. Some of these new matchmaking sites—the likes of which include Sirf Coffee, Urban Tryst, ibluebottle, Match me Cupid, Footloose No More and even Truly Madly—are indeed trying to overhaul the holy estate of arranged matrimony in India as young, urbane professionals, all clued-in and self-reliant, increasingly rule out the intervention of parents when it comes to getting married. These sites try to create a more unhurried and a less resolute atmosphere in bringing two souls together, blurring the lines between what we perceive as dating, wooing and courtship, while at the same time distinguishing themselves carefully from casual dating websites.

Most are betting on offering thoroughly verified profiles and deeply compatible and like-minded 'dates'. So instead of a horoscope-wielding stargazer, you have relationship managers and counsellors trying to perfect the art of creating coupledom based on compatibility algorithms, scientific personality tests or plain hunches drawn from an assessment of likes and dislikes. In fact, their varied approaches in helping their clients adapt to less frustrating ways of finding a mate foster a sort of dialogue on what works and what doesn’t. And sometimes also lays bare glaring angularities.

For instance, the two-year-old Gurgaon-based match-making site iBluebottle.com plays marriage broker for top Indian professionals, with an MBA-focus as its USP and B-school grads as half—or at least half—its intended user base. It has separate membership criteria for males and females, you see, and that’s where it ventures into uncomfortable territory. Male members necessarily have to belong to its list of qualifying cities in India, with a ‘Minimum Gross Annual salary…excluding bonus’ of Rs 5 lakh if 25 years of age or under. And then there is another list of ‘Qualifying’ Business schools in India and overseas that the candidate must have an MBA from. In contrast, female members may come from any part of India, and need to fulfill any one of four criteria: minimum salary (with a lower cutoff), special professions, qualifying Indian B-schools, or a set of colleges and foreign universities. Apart from unapologetically reflecting and perpetuating the trend of skewed salary structures in the corporate world, the website conveniently assumes that women “are more likely to shift” from their current residence post-matrimony, in the words of Akhilesh Sharma, co-founder of the website.

On second thoughts, I wonder if there was at all a need for a matchmaking site designed primarily to attract MBAs, since almost 75 per cent of the profiles I came across on HatkeShaadi and Truly Madly were Business Studies graduates! Where were all the artists and filmmakers and writers and photographers or even journalists? Isn’t there a truly liberal matchmaking website which can lure this gadabout tribe of dreamers and chatterboxes? At least they can be trusted to write full sentences unstained by ‘lol’ and ‘hw r u’.

Sirf Coffee, yet another exclusive matchmaking website that started in 2008, caters to upmarket and ‘internationally minded’ Indians who would not shy away from shelling out $250 for a six-month membership. ‘We are discreet; no browsing profiles online, sending witty introductions, or hoping to get your picture ‘liked’,’ for the dates are carefully matched based on a thorough personality analysis conducted during extensive interviews said to determine how interesting the person is beyond his or her day job. Says Naina Hiranandani, a co-owner of the website, “A modern Indian enjoys a date. Our culture doesn't allow us to socialise too much in public. Look at the conversation these days… it’s shit. We want to people to meet, have a good time… We are so hard on ourselves, young people don’t enjoy the process of finding partners.” And therefore, Sirf Coffee allows you to ‘directly meet a ‘chosen’ date over a cup of coffee (or cocktail), and get to know them in person, as opposed to the internet.’ However, the word ‘chosen’ is the operative word here, since your dates will be handpicked based on the instinctive judgment of the site’s operators. And the blatant elitism is bound to evoke disapproval, even though it does not want to get too snooty for its own good. Every website needs some numbers. “You need not be from Harvard,” says Hiranandani, “but you can be from LSR.”

On the contrary, Footloose No More works on the simple mantra of ‘meet, mingle and marry’. This popular matchmaking site hosts events for its members in various formats (sometimes you can bring your family members too), most of them in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi. At these gatherings, you are on your own and can strike up a conversation with anyone you find interesting without the intervention of a counsellor or relationship manager. Aditya J Dwivedi, 37, an entrepreneur by profession, is a member of Footloose No More and has attended a number of its events. He is thoroughly pleased with the way the group works. “The members come recommended,” he says, “Their events have a very relaxed, informal feel to it. I have met so many different kinds of people here. It’s a great platform to network. In a way, I too have found a partner here. A business partner. We went on to open a restaurant together.”

Varsha Agnihotri Vadhyar knows this is the most natural way to find a mate. She and her brother started Footloose No More five years ago and will soon witness the 52nd marriage facilitated by the group. Vadhyar and her brother also found their respective mates—who they went on to marry—at one of these events. “How will a computer determine who is the perfect match? Or I may have a list of preferences in mind about my right kind of guy, but does it really work out that way in reality? You may end up liking someone completely different,” says Vadhyar.

She is right, but so is Hiranandani to an extent when she says, “Social meet-ups don't really transpire into anything real. In these event set-ups, you'd have identical conversations and talk about yourself in 16 different ways.”

As for me, my first real unarranged date was a software engineer, or so I assumed from his job description. Yes, I gave in to the inevitable. This is the best I could find on HatkeShaadi.com. At least he was good-looking. In the profile picture, that is. When we met offline at a coffee shop in south Delhi, the 29-year-old wasn’t so strikingly handsome. He looked a little dead beat. Gracious as he was, he thanked me for expressing an interest in him, and I knew the outcome of this date even before it had really begun. He was warm and genial in his own sweet way. It was the first time he was meeting someone via the internet. He claimed to have created a profile on the site only under ‘societal pressure’ and that he was in no hurry to get married. He was eager to share several titbits about his life—how he loved to travel, to stay fit, how much his sister loved theatre, what a fascinating city Bombay was, and how he once read some interesting piece on Sachin Tendulkar in Open. A wee bit self-conscious and eager to please, he seemed like a nice dependable kind of guy, and that was that. We parted amicably and we both knew this won't go anywhere.

But I had another date I was looking forward to, not with a flutter in my heart, but perhaps with forced optimism. He did sound like a fitting match.

He was a 32-year-old social media consultant who claimed that he is a little less selfish at this point in his life. Needless to say, he was keen on ‘Long Term Companionship’. He was a reasonably good writer and seemed to have an interesting social life. He considered most of these matchmaking sites, where I found him, positively tacky. “I believe in serendipity, in miracles. Love comes like surprise ice on water. It’s found at the most odd places.”

That’s it.

I knew it right then that I was looking for love in the wrong places.

Footloose No MoreHatkeShaadi.comMatrimonial websitesSirf Coffee