Make me a match

When you live in a country that boasts of a billion plus people, you would think that everyone would be spoilt for choice when it came to finding a partner to settle down with. But surprisingly for many youngsters, it is becoming nearly impossible to find that one person they can say “I do” to. The reasons are many. To begin with, the arranged marriage scenario is dying in India. Parents are finding it impossible to find a suitable bride or groom for their well-exposed, well-qualified child within the community. Love marriages are on the rise but youngsters want parental approval and are not entirely comfortable about marrying someone the family is wary of.

Today’s generation is also very particular about what kind of life partner it wants. Rather than just going by community and kundli, singles want partners who are on the same wavelength and as qualified as them. They are looking for fellow MBAs or doctors or engineers. Some want teetotalers, others can’t imagine getting stuck with someone they can’t share a drink with! One guy broke up with his vegetarian girlfriend as he felt if they couldn’t even share a meal, how would they share a life! And in the case of girls, here is a fact many swear by: once they start concentrating on work, they don’t want to get married at 23 or 24 and want to wait a while, whereas boys are ready to settle at 26, 27 and don’t wait. So when the girl finally decides to tie the knot, she is a bit stuck as most of the boys she knows are already married.

So now you have a whole industry dedicated to finding you that one-in-a-billion match. Welcome to the world of professional matchmakers and brokers who have sprung up in almost every corner of the country.

Novelist Ira Trivedi, who interviewed many marriage brokers for her book India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century, endorses these professional cupids. “Matchmakers are a great help because they are a midway option between love and arranged marriage. They will introduce you to the kind of people you and your family will like and then leave the rest to the couple.” She adds, “The trick is in finding the right matchmaker for you; someone who understands your wants and also has a good instinct. He or she should also be a bit of a counselor.” Ira met so many matchmakers that in the process she ended up getting four of her friends married with their help.

Matchmaking is a huge business, services include everything from matching kundlis to in-house detectives carrying out background checks. They even offer packages which list things like how many boys a girl will be introduced to. Online portals like Shaadi.com and bharatmatrimony.com are there but many are still wary of the Web and want someone who will personally go and ask difficult questions. But don’t expect them to find you a partner overnight. It’s a time-consuming process. You need to give it at least six months. Mumbai-based jeweller Vidya Zaveri says she has noticed that most youngsters expect their ideal partners to be “above average looking, well-turned-out, well groomed and should know how to conduct themselves with friends and family. And boys want girls who have a career and are capable of joining family businesses.”

According to Gopal Suri, the founder of one of South Delhi’s most popular agencies, A to Z Matchmakers: “Some people who are flexible and easygoing see up to 20 profiles before they make their choice while the rest go through an average of a 100 profiles.” In Suri’s case, his wife was the 81st girl he met through ads in the matrimonial section in newspapers. Suri charges anything between Rs 40,000 (which will give you profiles of prospective brides/grooms with their pictures and contact details after ensuring they are suitable. Meetings are arranged if required) to Rs 10 lakh. Rs 3,50,000 is the matchmaking charge and this involves a very elite circle. A further Rs 6,50,000 is charged when the wedding is finalised. For this hefty price tag, Suri’s team will visit your home, conduct meetings and coordinate everything till the wedding date is finalised.

While A to Z Matchmakers has a fixed fee structure, many brokers operate on percentages. They charge a certain percentage of the total cost of the big fat Indian wedding. Others leave it to the families. Ravi Ram Mohan Rao, who has been in the profession for over a decade, says he meets up to 10 clients a day and when a wedding is finalised, the grateful families give him a hefty pay packet.

R. Prabhakar Reddy, who specialises in finding matches for software professionals in the Reddy community, charges '1 lakh each from the girl and boy’s side once the wedding is finalised. Potluri Gopalkrishna Murthi, a popular marriage consultant in Vijayawada, is a distant relative of the late Telugu actor Sobhan Babu. He became a consultant after realising that his hobby made for a lucrative career choice. His daughter-in-law Lalitha has joined him and they fixed the wedding of Tollywood music director K. Chakravarthi’s daughter.

Nobody feels guilty about charging a hefty price as Lalitha says, “It’s a tough job. We need to first find out what the person is looking for, find people who match their wants, conduct background checks, ensure finances are in order. It’s not easy to fix a marriage, it’s a Herculean task.” Kosaraju Koteswara Rao, a former sarpanch of Kurumaddali village in Andhra Pradesh, re-invented himself as a marriage broker after retirement. He has “fixed” 500 alliances, the most recent being the wedding of the son of AP’s agriculture minister Pattipati Pulla Rao.

The marriage business is not cheap, but there are also people who are willing to find you that perfect someone for free. One such person is Vidya Zaveri. Talking about why she does this, Zaveri, whose family has been in the jewellery business for over 30 years and deals with high-end diamond jewellery says, “There is a lot of trust involved between us and our clients and many end up becoming friends. Once, a lady from Kenya had come to order jewellery since her younger son was getting married. In conversation she told me she wasn’t happy about her older son still being single and asked me to help out. I did some spadework, found out what the boy wanted, looked around and suggested a few girls he could connect with. He liked one of them and got married.” After this success, Vidya decided to help more friends. “I call what I do ‘connecting’, because if two people can’t connect with each other, they can’t get married.”

Another person who doesn’t take money for his efforts is businessman Shankar Reddy of Gadwal in Telangana. He realised he had a knack for matchmaking three years ago when “a top cop got in touch and asked me if I knew a particular family. He was looking to getting his daughter married. I called up the boy’s family and checked if they were looking to getting him married. The cop and I became good friends and slowly through him many IAS, IPS officers and politicians got in touch with me to find out if I knew of eligible singles for their kids and if I could play the mediator.”

— With inputs by P.N. Srinivasa Rao