Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match

Anita writes about Marrygold, a new-age matchmaking service. When I got this email, I was tempted to laugh it off. But then I read it once again and it made more sense the second time round. Isn’t it true that many young people today are looking for the man/woman of their dreams but don’t have the time/energy/means to find someone suitable?

This made me think about the time-honoured tradition of matchmaking… A distant aunt realises that you are ready for marriage and so is her sister-in-law’s brother’s nephew… A mother-of-eligible-“boy” spots a “girl” at a family wedding… Families meet, background notes exchanged, financial details discussed, agreements transacted and the wedding is arranged to everyone’s satisfaction…

I remember how disdainful my friends and I used to be about arranged marriages and traditional matchmaking methods (and still are?). And I am not even talking about matrimonial ads in newspapers – don’t even get me started on that one.

And then suddenly, the internet took matchmaking and marriage-arranging to a new dimension. Young people who would refuse to agree to go with traditional means of matchmaking found this acceptable. And even welcome.

So has matchmaking come full circle? This time in a new avtaar? Why are online meeting places like shaadi.com and new-age services like marrygold doing so well?

To begin with, they have clearly sensed a need for such services. There is a market – there are, as Anita says, people with the interest and inclination, but no time…

And more importantly, these services allow the two people concerned to meet first, online and then in person. Before the families barge in with questions about each other’s caste and community. Perhaps, this gives the two time to get to know each other and make a decision – even the decision to not go ahead. Which I am guessing (and from I have seen) is tough to make in a conventional boy-meet-girl situation. meet each other twice, and try squirming out after that (especially if you have met alone, i.e. discounting the girl’s brother who was lurking on the next table at the coffee shop pretending not to listen).

Look at this – Marrygold is concerned about the mind and emotional compatibility of people who want to get married. This is where match 2.0 services win – their concern for compatibilty, not only of demographics (traditional arranged matches take care of this too – age, community, education, money, job) but psychographic factors too… persoanlity, values, attitudes, interests…

And this from Dilbert…