Girls on the Road

How the three women whom Manisha Singh met during her gap year in South America transformed her outlook on life.

- Manisha Singh

‘Papa calling’, my phone read. It was late afternoon in Brazil, which meant it must have been fairly late in India.

“I have to take this”, I told my host, Dai.

The call began with me scrambling for a paper to take down the alphanumeric ID that my father was already reading out. As I noted the ID down, I realized what it was and my heart sank. It was the profile ID of a potential match from one of the gazillion matrimonial websites my profile existed on.

I was 15000 km away from India but the phone call took me right back to Mumbai. To a time when I would avoid calls from home because I had no answer to - ‘have you been seeing the profiles?’

“All okay? You look upset”, Dai asked as soon as I hung up.

“Yeah, it was my father sharing another guy’s profile with me from a matrimonial website.”

“Matrimonial website? What does that mean?”

“Oh, these are websites created for the purpose of finding a partner. Like the modern version of arranged marriage. In many liberal families, it functions much like a dating app. If you match, you talk, and you take it from there. The difference is, there’s an intent of marriage right from the beginning”.

“I had heard of arranged marriages, I didn’t know if it still existed.”

‘Yes, very much so. Do your parents ask you about your dating life or marriage plans?’

“Oh no, that would be rude. They ask me occasionally about my guy friends and if I like any of them.”