I recently got to know of a matrimonial website called mysonikudi.com via a friend who thought I should check it out. Right away, the premise of a website offering ‘made to order’ brides triggered my feminist mode; the human inside me was revolted at the idea of ‘choosing’ brides from '20 unique categories'. And how was Gul Panang is involved in all this? Turns out, I need not have been revolted – read on to know more.
… Fair, Sanskari, Agyakari, English Speaking, Dancer! These were the ‘categories’ that men and presumably their families could choose from. The ‘About Us’ segment of the website said this: We know how difficult it is to choose the perfect bride for your home… And finding the right one in today’s scenario, rife with creeping western culture, is not just difficult but next to impossible.
Well trained? Really? Is it a pet you speak of, I fumed? The website is peopled with women not planning to study further, single point matrimonial agendas, ambitions to shop and transform houses into Bollywood style homes. Some described themselves as ‘biddable’ (agyakari), singer, dancer, slim, fair, low maintenance, having something called ‘5-star etiquette’, (gasp!) ‘NRI Ready’ and (gag!) Black Beauty. The site also has helpful guides for the ‘ideal Indian bahu’, and ‘bride selection tips for future husbands’. My eyes widened in horror as I saw more.
Then there were the testimonials from satisfied buyers grooms and their families who found what they were looking for, from the ‘widest selection of brides’. By now I wanted to do someone some grievous bodily harm, I don't mind admitting.
“If this doesn’t make us cringe what will?”, tweeted actor, model, and politician Gul Panag. Do we really need to change just to get married? #ChangeHerNot she tweeted.
People had similar reactions as mine to the site, its ‘offerings’, the profiles and worst of all the ‘categories’ and the ‘filters’ for prospective brides. Some likened the site to ordering a pizza or buying a pet, some wondered what sort of people even used such a site. Is the site offering robots or slaves, wondered another.
Following the outraged reactions to the website, Gul Panag clarified the situation via this tweet. This website is not real (thank goodness!) but a part of a social experiment designed to start a conversation around the idiotic expectations that people have of women in general and brides in particular. Women are expected to change their ambitions, their nature, their habits, their names; everything to fit in with the expectations and the demands of their husbands and their families and nobody thinks to question this.
The mock website may not be a fact but that doesn’t mean that Indian families are not looking for the ‘obedient’, ‘low maintenance’, ‘fair’, ‘gharelu’ bride for their raja-beta. They very much are. Women have to make most of the sacrifices and are required to mould themselves according to their new homes and families. Most people think that this is only as it should be – that as the upholder of Indian culture, a woman must sacrifice and adjust, for these are the hallmarks of the ‘ideal Indian woman’. It is also true that many families have one set of expectations when they go bride hunting and a completely different set of expectations when they go groom hunting.
So will this social experiment with a matrimonial website change anything? Perhaps not much – right now there are too many people in India wishing that such a website was a reality. But this is a good initiative nevertheless. At least a few people got thinking, a few more started to talk. And if it made a few people angry, so much the better!
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