Are NRI grooms still in demand ?

Frustration gleamed from their eyes. Jaws clenched, they would move on their toes from chore to chore, as if postponing  urgent needs. They would look back, only askance, in case reason instigated quandary. Dude, where's your lady ? One might argue that you are, by indian standards, an accomplished professional. You have a respectable job, a good salary and belong to a good family. The answer would usually be a query  "Bhai, kidhar hai ?. Where are the women ? Do you think anyone single-by-choice ?" Reason could argue - if not in the continental United States, can you not find them in New Delhi or Mumbai or wherever else you are from, No ?... firmly No. The girls who showed up online were not our type, usually. We had all grown up around a certain kind of women; we could not find them on the NRI matrimonial websites. When we went back to Desh, we saw them everywhere. Everywhere. And with guys just like us, except they had jobs in India. Suddenly, the NRI groom was not a thing of fantasy. I take a step back to retrospect.

Back in the silicon valley, where I had worked previous to Chicago, I knew a girl who volunteered at Maitri, an NGO dedicated to "rescuing" NRI brides from abusive husbands and families. I was aware of the famous Ambati case - Balamurali Krishna Ambati was a real life Doogie Howser; his family had managed to create waves a second time around tormenting their newly arrived daughter in-law over dowry. I had thought these cases to be rare. Even so, my own mother thought the risk would not be worth taking if she had been in the marriage market to offer brides instead. In the public imagination, such aggravating NRI stereotypes are being promulgated by movies like Mahima Chaudhary - Shah Rukh Khan starer 'Pardes'. You can ask young women and they blithely come up with fine examples of abusive NRI grooms. "Yahin ho jaaye to acchha". As if the indian bred avant garde engineering contingent did not even exist in the US. What fine husbands we might not make, helping in the kitchen, planning cross country trips and whipping out board games every night. Also, just imagine how poignantly hard it might be to make it small in a foreign country. How living next to millionaires, nobelists and olympic medalists may not already have whittled down techie egos. But this entire section of NRI society does not appear in the popular or unpopular media. Fire brand feminist Deepa Mehta, in 2008, released "Heaven on Earth", another cynical tale of an educated punjabi bahu yoked to a sickly often violent unemployed sikh-canadian groom, and here is where I feel up to my neck in feminist hype. Look, enough of this. Khoop zhaala he sagda says my friend Anil ; he is parked in my living room, periodically taking breaks from Nandan Nilekani's book.  He says in Bollywoodesque candor, Bohot ho gaya ye sab. Kuch karna padega. We need to resolve our internal differences attend to our exploding demographic problems.

All ye NGOs and filmmakers out there. Could you please make something less cynical ? Do you realize, how good the life of an NRI is in comparison to your average suburban mumbai ka chokra. Do you realize, the NRI crowd is quite diverse. What we need is a little compassion for the NRI millionaire. Could you make more Kal Ho Na Hos and American Desis, which by the way are also quite representative of NRIs, sections that do matter in this information age - we should not be cutting our own wood here.You do realize that NRIs grooms might be able to offer movie star lives, and they could also be intelligent fun people. Please also realize Desi public is easily disposed to complacency. Bad stereotypes would tip the argument a little too heavily against migration, and with that innovation could go boink. Unless, of course, we want to mitigate all the fine progress Indians have made in businessworld America.