Arrange This, Dad

Arranged marriages are alive and well in India. Everyone will tell you, if you ask, if they had an arranged, or "love", marriage. And just like people think their way is the way it's being done all over the world, they have no idea that we don't arrange marriages.

You know all those dating internet sites endorsed by frauds like Dr. Phil? Well check out India Yahoo and instead of seeing E-date with the pulldown menus asking if you're looking for a woman or man and how old they are, they cut right through the crap and ask if you're looking for a bride/groom and what religion.

I was glancing through an English paper the other day and saw the classifieds. That bit of the classifieds for people looking for people who take walks on the beach or whatever. What's that called again? Well, their version is split into two major categories, bride or groom. Inside each are like 20 subdivisions for language and religion.

The funniest thing is that the parents- assuming the father, writes the ads, like "my daughter" so on and so forth. The ads specify whether they are looking for someone who is "veg" (vegetarian) or "non-veg". Side note: vegetarianism is a big deal out here. I think like 40-50% of the population is. Almost every restaurant's sign specifies "veg" "non-veg" "veg & non-veg" or "restaurent and bar". Other stuff I saw in the ads were either telling the caste or saying "caste/religion no bar". Took me a second to figure out they meant it didn't matter. My beer soaked head thought it meant that they preferred non-drinkers. And we laughed and laughed til we peed our pants....