Lament Of A Traditional Match Maker

One essential feature of daily life my dear wife and I enjoy most within our gated community for the last decade is our evening walk.  We try not to miss that and the wife makes such a song and dance if I were to be the reason for the walk not being part of the day, because she believes the quality of her sleep deteriorates sans the walk.  That the fact is she sleeps 15 minutes more overall on such days,  is another matter but then who wants an argument over this! Under the circumstances, I was a bit perturbed when she recently started postponing the time of the walk, converting it from an evening walk to an almost nocturnal exercise.  It seemed like she was trying to avoid something or somebody, but wouldn't brook any discussion.  Until one inky dark night,  when there was minimal scope of anyone recognizing anyone else unless the two parties were to collide violently into each other and then engage in an intense identity quest.  We were confronted by a diffident couple, who were more like contacts in a common, large WhatsApp group for us -- not even acquaintances, certainly not good friends.  Laced with great hesitation, they nervously but quickly, without preamble, requested our help in identifying a match for their son and left us perplexed, without further ado.  My wife finally chose to throw some light on her attempts to delay our walk-time. `See, this is why I want to walk even later.  I have heard from some other distressed parents, who think we have a magic wand.  I know we can't help much'.

Let me clarify, we are not some wizards in the business of match-making; never ventured close to this rather sensitive activity till about six months ago, consciously or otherwise.  The genesis of this current situation happened when we had two families well known to us, right in our line of sight, struggling to find suitable matches for their son and daughter.  Even a dim-wit would have seen the opening and introduced the two families for further discussions.  We did just that and lo and behold, the union was concluded; boy and girl are happy; parents are over the moon.  We were obviously thrilled and happy that we could help.  But there was this surprising twist to the outcome too, in the aftermath.  Some other parents who were on the look-out for suitable matches for their children probably thought we are a massive data-bank teeming with brides and grooms, all lined up for diverse eventualities.  A few more chats with parents and we realised how desperate people are, caught in a painful cleft stick.  Peer pressure is crushing them with its weight on the one hand,  while on the other, the perpetually procrastinating youngsters are completely devoid of any interest in marriage, driven by their own easier social environment.

Recently we attended a couple of weddings and found that if one were to throw a well-made `laddu', one would score hits with ten sets of parents looking for matches.  And certainly enjoy a bonus of  at least a couple of noble souls who consciously and bravely make efforts to connect families, as a social service; such parents who constantly suffer from acute anxiety, acidity and ulcers, among other ailments. A pow-wow with a two such brave-hearts enlightened some of us about the thorny issues they and the anguished parents face in the context of the wards' marriage.

Here is the litany of the problems enumerated by the duo with a lot of angst.  In order to appreciate the current tangle well, we need to go back and get a crash course on the process prevailing two decades back.  Earlier, the match-making process was relatively straightforward, even though as long as parents were involved they unfailingly contrived to inject some dose of complication.  And, if they were not the juries and judges in the match-making decision, the level of complexity ballooned multi-fold, simply because of the age-old parental belief that they know best.  Generally, parents got the chills when the boy or girl returned home late from work periodically, with what sounded like glib lies for explanation. Palpitating heavily, they started pestering the ward to get hitched and proceeded with the opening manoeuvre, ignoring all protestations, tepid or robust, from all sources.

Enter the Traditional Match-Maker (TMM), typically a genial, good-samaritan lady, with dollops of leisure on hand and bagful of contacts, the package enhanced infinitely by a gift of the gab and praiseworthy patience.  The TMM was given the details of requirements, expectations etc of the parents, ignoring the wails of the wards.  This TMM was a veritable mobile data bank, relying completely on her roving memory, with an astounding ability to do a RAM search and match whenever a new candidate was introduced.  When the TMM sensed she had even a nebulous chance of success, she connected the two sets of parents and disembarked, relying more on hope than on conviction.

Parents talked, matched/mismatched horoscopes, ferreted out trivial family background information going back a couple of centuries, seemingly with the intent to reject the match.  Then, if it was a no-go everyone pretended all was well, buried the case and went back to target-practice, harassing the wards. If it was a go, the families jubilantly met to do a stringent character assessment/assassination of the grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, other kith and kin, with the unifocal objective of running the match aground on some count.  Finally, all such nefarious attempts failing, the boy and the girl too met for a few minutes - if they were fortunate and the parents, very liberal - not to decide their own fate, but before saying `yes' to parents.  Usually, the final edict was issued by the patriarch, normally the one with the loudest voice in the family, and all dissenters meekly fell in line with remarkable alacrity.  When the wedding was done, the TMM notched one more chalk mark on her board and moved on.

Cut over to the present day.  Invariably, all the middle class kids study, scrupulously and deliberately avoid jobs in their home city, find something at least half a world away in order to escape the clutches of the parents and fly the coop. They exploit their new-found freedom to the hilt at the other end.  What this means is when the parents start piling the pressure on the wards to marry, a perfectly antithetical situation emerges, with the elders intent on forcing the ward into wedlock `now' (You are already 28!), while the boy/girl wants to remain free for another 4-5 years (No one marries before 32 today!).  The dexterous ones manage their `freedom' plan skillfully by breezily telling the parents to use the TMM route, while they also look around, to select a few prospective suitable matches.  They simultaneously keep well researched reasons to say `NO' when something does come up.  After all this TMM business helps them postpone decision for considerable length of time.  So, while the TMM-Parents syndicate works feverishly to put some options on the table, the process never reaches the  next stage.

All the new matrimonial sites with various classes of service (Diamond, Platinum, Copper, Steel, Aluminium etc) have added another compounding angle to this confusion.  During all this time, probably the ward has already identified a suitable candidate, but shields this carefully from the parents for as long as possible, if only because the latter would explode and evaporate in fumes when they find out the truth!  The TMM is left adrift finally when the boys and girls identify and marry their own partners.  All the TMM has accomplished is a lot of frustration along the way and disappointment at the end.  The hit rate has come down drastically and this obviously fuels discontentment among the TMMs.

The other major problem TMM faces today is that the demands from the boy or girl, which have become part of the process unlike earlier times, have gotten very progressive and bizarre.  'Potential candidate based in and around a city in California' is par for the course now.  A strictly `No-Return-To-India' policy is a non negotiable condition often.  Another strident rule is from the girl is `In-laws cannot stay with us for more than 6 hours and two meals at any time, except when I need them'.  `We need to date and go out for 6 months before deciding'; `I can only consider this if we can live together for a year' - these are some more pre-conditions faced by TMMs.  The quaint TMM concept, which had worked well in a conventional social structure, finds it rather difficult to deal with such turbulent waves and is crumbling. So, many TMMs have sought and taken voluntary retirement and the tribe is probably dwindling by the day.

The dividends the TMM used to get for all the troubles were rather sparse in the good days.  They were driven more by the satisfaction of rendering some useful social service and seeing couples settling down and living happily.  This is also getting dicey now, what with marriages breaking down in haste for what would seem flimsy reasons to most people.  So, the veteran TMMs we met and interviewed, advised any budding TMM (if such a species exists) to tread carefully and never take any credit for anything in the first place.  Who knows what will follow??

Under the circumstances, if TMM as a tribe becomes extinct, that won't be a surprise!