Sweep Stake ; Technology, Television and the Fast Pace of Modern Life Have Dramatically Altered the Rules of the Dating Game. Today, an Increasing Number of Indian Youth Find Their Match at Organised Forums.

India Today › July 22, 2005

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Summary

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell's seminal book on the power of instinct, the author makes a compelling reference to speed-dating: "Speed-dating has become enormously popular around the world and it's not hard to understand why. It's the distillation of a date to a snap judgement. Everyone who sits down at one of those tables is trying to answer a very simple question: do I want to see this person again? And to answer that, we don't need an entire evening."

Yamini Gupte, a 25-year-old architect from Mumbai, agrees, "I'm big on first impressions. I know in the first 10-15 seconds whether I'm interested in the guy." Gupte, a tall, attractive woman of varied interests, is currently dating a 26-year-old entrepreneur she met at one of the speed-dating events in Mumbai a month ago. Speed- dating, a succession of 15-20 three-minute dates where the women are seated at separate tables for the evening and the men rotate from table to table, is becoming increasingly popular in Mumbai since it began on Valentine's Day this year. If both the woman and man tick "interested" on the list, the dating company swaps e-mail ids and the couple can take it from there. But belief in snap judgements is not the only reason why Gupte and a bunch of her friends signed up to speed-date. "We work 12-hour days, six days of the week. There's no time to meet interesting men," says Gupte.

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Extract

Sweep Stake ; Technology, Television and the Fast Pace of Modern Life Have Dramatically Altered the Rules of the Dating Game. Today, an Increasing Number of Indian Youth Find Their Match at Organised Forums.

Twenty-somethings in urban India are increasingly turning to organised dating forums like speed-dating events, singles nights, television and radio shows, dating portals and SMS dating to find a date. Technology, television and the fast life have dramatically altered the rules of the dating game, while long workdays and an aversion to arranged marriages mean it's even harder to find a mate. Add to that a floating work population and the influx of global trends and you see why dating companies like BombaySpeedD8 and 5minutesdate.com, channels like Play TV, sho...

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