A Suitable Girl ; the Average Urban Indian Male Is Showing a New Sensibility in Discarding Traditional Attributes in Favour of More Practical Ones, As He Redefines His Choice for the Ideal Bride, Recent Surveys Show.

India Today › October 13, 2009

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Summary

When he was 28, his parents looked for a girl from the same caste. When he turned 34, they looked simply for a Hindu girl. And now that he is nearing 40, they just want him to find "a female". His father, a retired IIT professor, doesn't understand what he wants. His mother, a university teacher, knows what he does not want. Confused and perplexed, they have retreated to the background, leaving the quest up to him.

And 37-year-old B.K. Krishna, a techie based in Hyderabad, is surfing online matrimonial sites looking for a woman he would feel "comfortable" with. That definitely rules out those who are "young and immature", whose primary virtue is beauty, are fixated on caste and horoscope-matching, or are overly ambitious.

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A Suitable Girl ; the Average Urban Indian Male Is Showing a New Sensibility in Discarding Traditional Attributes in Favour of More Practical Ones, As He Redefines His Choice for the Ideal Bride, Recent Surveys Show.

"She must be honest, independent and her own person, not propped up by parental guidance," he says. And, most importantly, he should be able to "hold a conversation with her".

We love to put the modern Indian woman under the scanner. We count the ways she has arrived. We obsess over what she wants. We analyse her life in the light of the new laws and the logic of the marriage market and love to award the "achiever".

But rarely do we talk about her "significant other": how the average Indian man looks at her; what he expects out of the holy institution of matrimony and who he considers a "suitable girl".

All tha...

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