By: Shri Ram

I should say that, nothing changed over a period of time. But, the way I looked at things, certainly have changed and that made all the difference.

I was to take up a new profile. It was of a girl. Miss. Pranitha. She was aged 26, working in IT sector. 10 lacks per annum under the annual income column caught my attention quickly. I met her at her home. She carefully verified my association with the matrimonial organization. She served me a cup of coffee. I tasted a drop of it and concluded that, she definitely need a guy who cooks tongue licking food.

These days, at least one among the couple should be capable of making tasty food otherwise, in the name of Chettinad Restaurants, capitalists are waiting in a row to serve you food that would trouble your gall bladder.

I would say you must be careful when you talk to beautiful girls because; they translate every move of yours to that of any Romeo to any Juliet. At the end of a 45 minutes long conversation, I had jotted down her requirements in plain English.

• Her man should not be more than 12 months elder to her
• Her man should possess a master degree because she was an undergraduate.
• Her man should earn more than her by at least a rupee.
• Her man should be taller than her.

I felt thirsty but I reminded myself of the tea that she served and preferred to not ask her for water. She had given me 4 profiles that she took from the matrimonial site and gave me her final word to pursue them for her.

While I was wearing my shoes at the gate, a lady in her late 40’s came running to me. She was wearing a glass and she appeared to look through and above the glass at the same time. I could relate her to Pranitha, by her face.

‘Did she speak anything about horoscope?’ she asked in a low voice.

I understood that, when it comes to marriage, you can expect to get requirements from not only the client but also from their servant maid.

‘No Aunty’ was all I replied.

‘Look for grooms with at least 4 years of age difference’ she said.

‘But, Pranitha has given only 12 months difference at a max aunty’ I said helplessly.

She didn’t ask anything after that. I saw marks of confusion and lack of clarity on her face. I realized, she was no longer in her elements.

I came out of the house, took my bike and came back to office.

I could only go through her profile at my office.

Those 4 profiles were within 1 year of age gap. All of them were employed in top IT companies in India. 2 of them even had L1 Visa. Her star was Poosam. Among the 4 profiles that she gave, two were of Pooram star and one was Pooradam and one was Bharani.

I felt like laughing at it.

Even if I approach those 4 profiles, they would not show back any interest on Pranitha’s profile, because according to Kundli matching, none of the 4 profiles were matching with that of hers. There was no Rajju Porutham.

On one side, despite her engineering degree, a job in top notch IT company, 10 lacks salary and her exceptional beauty, her profile would be turned down just because, she was not born facing the right celestial constellations sounded height of stupidity.

Most would think beauty in women and intelligence in men would sell anywhere especially in marriage, but that is not true. The truth is, if there is one place where beauty does not sell, it is marriage. There are reasons and that’s where I was then.

Despite the knowledge and awareness that has been acquired from top educational institutions and experience from various government and industrial organizations, the parents of the boy and the girl would approach somebody who would not have even crossed his 8^th standard schooling and ask him to predict the future of their children.

On the other hand, I was computing the kind of business that we are going to make out of Pranitha’s profile. Normally in Indian families, the general process is, once they receive a profile, they first see the horoscope matching. To do this, they take the Date, time and place of birth of the bride and the groom and approach an astrologer who computes and derives the Kundli from the data provided.

This will take time, say, 2 weeks to one month, not because of the computation but because the astrologers would not see more than a certain number of profiles per day. Parents would move from one profile to another, one by one. So, 4 profiles would take approximately 4 months. Our matrimonial site membership is Rs. 4200 under classic which is the basic one but that lasts only for 3 months. So technically, this girl Pranitha was going to spend Rs.4200 for obviously nothing while the matrimonial site was going to make money for keeping thousands of profiles like hers for a sum of just Rs.10000 per month to host the site in a distant server.

I badly wanted to help this richly poor girl Pranitha but how? I didn’t know. As far as I know, there are many like Pranitha in this second largest populated country in the world. All or most of them are stuck, simply because of the disease called Kundli. It is very difficult to find, both the boy and the girl’s family, not having belief in horoscope matching.

If the boy’s family would not believe in horoscope matching, then the girl’s family would or vice versa.

I literally saw a long standing career in the field of match making.