COVER STORY
DOES MATCHMAKING ADD UP?
The reality is that dating is difficult. It’s hard to create organic connections in this day and age, in a fairly digital world. Image credit: SPORA WEDDINGS on Pexels.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
In a casual conversation about family, a lady talks about her grandson’s new girlfriend. “I wonder how long it will last,” she says, displaying no signs of concern.
Responding to the reaction that flits across my face despite my best efforts, she adds with a laugh, “Oh, children these days go through at least four or five relationships.”
She proceeds to tick them off on her fingers to emphasize her point. “One-two-three-four-five... just like that. At least. Nothing is ‘final-final’ before that.”
Her grandson is in his early 20s. She is in her mid-80s and belongs to what is considered a conservative community. And someone who was vocal about her disappointment in not having been able to “choose” her son-in-law.
Are established desi cultural norms undergoing a seismic shift?
Whatever happened to the sentiments expressed in the songs I grew up listening to? The ones about Pehla nasha, pehla khumaar, etc?
Young women, specially, are delaying marriage, choosing instead to focus on academics and career prospects.
But marriage and relationships are two different things. Everyone, it would appear, is looking for love.
There’s a whole slew of desi rom-coms – The Love Match; Jasmine and Jake Rock the Boat; Sugar, Spice and Can’t Play Nice; Isha, Unscripted; The Mis-Arrangement of Sana Saeed; To Have and to Heist; The Letters We Keep; The Curious Secrets of Yesterday – to name just a few recent ones.
Priyanka Taslim, Sonya Lalli, Annika Sharma, Sajni Patel, Noreen Mughees, Sara Desai, Nisha Sharma and Namrata Patel are among authors writing about looking for love. Namrata Patel and Nisha Sharma have released their desi romcoms recently. Their books are fun, irreverent, with a delicious side of desi slice-of-life situations. And, of course, a meddling aunty or two. There are ups and downs, hook-ups and break ups and plenty of drama to go around. But true love finds a way in the end as they head into happily ever after land.
For those for whom this dream scenario remains elusive, there’s always Seema Taparia aka Seema aunty.
She described herself as someone god had sent to help people. Viewers got a taste of her help in Indian Matchmaking. The show was such a success that memes on her went viral. In an interview, Taparia talks of the kick she got out of one that said she would help Bill Gates find a match after his divorce. In an interview she claimed that she is a “global world-famous icon, everybody knows me” and that students at Cornell, Yale, or UCLA are “huge, huge, huge – I will say it three times – fans of me”.
Then there was Desi Me Dating, that promoted itself as a web series “with no gimmicks or overly edited scenes, just two people learning about each other, sharing an experience, and exploring what could be”.
The press release outlined the premise: The reality is that dating is difficult. It’s hard to create organic connections in this day and age, in a fairly digital world. Not only are we constantly bombarded by friends and family members trying to play matchmaker, the continuous rotation of dating apps are no help and only send us into further angst as we go on this quest for love. PopShift’s Desi Me Dating was born out of the frustration that many popular dating shows on OTT platforms leave out the real and raw struggles associated with dating in the South Asian world.
Desi Me addressed the star in the room. “Move Over, Seema Aunty! Shows like Netflix’s Indian Matchmaking have paved the way for South Asian, or ‘desi,’ dating and marriage trends to be viewed by global audiences. Still, these shows often emphasize outdated ideals and double down on existing cultural stereotypes (like gender roles). Though important, it’s often hard for the broader diaspora to connect with these antiquated narratives led by matchmaking aunties (especially in the era of dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and Raya).”
Taparia reiterates that she is promoting good old Indian values in her interviews.
The same values that many young desis distanced themselves from.
Parents of a certain age get together and shake their heads over their offspring going to matchmakers and even looking at astrological charts after teasing their parents about how their marriages were arranged.
But young desis are also discovering how difficult it can be to meet someone they see a future with in lives that leave no time for anything but casual dates.
Back in 2009-10, Fenulla Jiwani brought a quirky, deeply funny but oh-my-gosh-this-is-so-true experience to theatre audiences.
30 Dates, written and performed by Jiwani, was about looking for love – over 30 dates. She played Priti, a 34-year-old caught up in the long hours of the corporate grind with friends who are all married or in relationships.
And so, the search continues. In old ways that are being co-opted into new technology.
In an effort to bridge the connection between astrology and dating, the dating app dua.com conducted a comprehensive study analysing more than 500,000 of its users. The study used the birthdates of users to find their zodiac sign and analyzed how each sign behaves when it comes to dating. The data taken for the analysis included information such as profile completion, smoking habits, parenthood preferences, desirability, and zodiac sign compatibility.
The results, according to their press release include the following:
Virgos are the most desired ones.
Libra females and Pisces males regret their matches the most.
Scorpio and Cancer are a match made in heaven.
Leos claim the crown in wanting kids, followed closely by Aries and Capricorn.
Scorpio males are the most invested in making a relationship happen.
Cancers are the largest user group within the app (10%).
Sagittarius is the adventure-seeking type, leading the #fun tag
Pisces is the most friendly zodiac sign, leading the #friends tag.
In terms of the desire to have children, Leo (12.55%), Aries (11.82%), and Capricorn (11.59%) took the top positions on the list.
Monika Bunjaku, the data scientist from dua.com, said: “It was fascinating to see how users’ interactions and preferences aligned with astrology. This study added another layer of understanding the user behaviour within the app. This brought clarity to the enigmatic world of zodiac signs, especially their impact on romance.”
A recent Ipsos study found that 77 per cent of Gen Z and millennials believe that the majority of people will meet their partners online in the next 10 years.
Over the past few years, online dating platforms skyrocketed in popularity. Over 140 million people started online dating in the last five years, with the total user count expected to hit 438 million by 2027.
Besides growing their user bases immensely, these platforms have also grossed impressive revenue.
According to other info sent by Psychic Ventures, online dating platforms grossed a whopping $13.2 billion(US) in five years.
The desi wedding season is in full swing. And at most weddings, one can find people talking about how the couple met – was love written in the stars, or did a matchmaking aunty help?
For more, log on to dua.com.
HAVE YOU MET YOUR MATCH?
In 2021, more than three-quarters (77 per cent) of Canadian couples were married, with the remaining 23 per cent living common law. Image credit: KASHYAP PICTURES on Pexels.
According to Statistics Canada, the yearning to form a union or partnership remains undimmed compared with a century earlier. In 2021, 57 per cent of Canadian adult respondents were living with a spouse or partner compared with 58 per cent way back in 1921.
In 2021, more than three-quarters (77 per cent) of couples were married, with the remaining 23 per cent living common law.
Canada has the highest share of couples living common law among the G7. The prevalence of common-law unions in Nunavut (52 per cent), Quebec (43 per cent) and the Northwest Territories (36 per cent) is higher than in Sweden, one of the countries with the highest rate of common-law unions at the national level (with one-third of couples living common law).
Most of Canada’s 8.6 million couples were different-gender couples (98.5 per cent) in 2021, meaning they included one woman and one man who were both cisgender. Same-gender couples, that is, a couple in which there were either two women or two men and both members were cisgender, represented 1.1 per cent of all couples. Transgender or non-binary couples, in which at least one person was transgender or non-binary, represented about 1 in every 250 couples (0.4 per cent).
The number of divorces has been declining for over three decades, despite the growth in the population at risk of divorce, that is, married people – it decreased from 12.7 per 1,000 in 1991 to 7.5 per 1,000 in 2019, just prior to the pandemic