{"id":5189,"date":"2016-07-04T02:31:21","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T21:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5189"},"modified":"2016-07-04T02:31:21","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T21:01:21","slug":"okcupid-taught-me-true-love-findmykind-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5189","title":{"rendered":"Parents Know Best? How OKCupid Taught Me that True Love is to #FindMyKind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

W<\/span>hen most people face a quarter-life crisis, they start to ask <\/p>existential<\/span><\/a> questions about the trajectory of their lives: Will their career ever truly be fulfilling? Are they as happy as all their friends? Is their day-to-day grind going to be more of the same until they die? These are the anxieties that keep my fellow millennials up at night, obsessing over an uncertain future. But me? I stay awake scrolling through the millions of terrible matrimonial profiles that my mother has emailed to me.<\/span>\n\nYou see, my quarter-life crisis began some months ago, when my parents started to drop what they thought were very subtle hints about getting married. \u201cDegree or naukri dono mili\u2026 time for settled zindagi! \ud83d\ude09 \ud83d\ude09 \u201d my dad\u2019s coy WhatsApp forwards would read. Meanwhile, my mother\u2019s strategy was to give me a weekly update on how many members of her <\/span>kitty group<\/span><\/a> were in the throes of wedding planning for their own offspring. When I studiously stopped myself from responding to these nudges and guilt trips, my parents abandoned these tactics in favour of the direct approach.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThat\u2019s why I\u2019m stuck skimming through a bunch of <\/span>boring matrimonials<\/span><\/a> chosen by my well-meaning but clueless mother. In fact, all that this exercise in matchmaking has taught me is that my parents and I have totally different priorities when it comes to finding a partner for me. On these sites, I comb through their profiles, looking for shared interests, hobbies, passions \u2014 the things that make for time worth spending together. Is he an animal lover like me, or too scared of dogs to volunteer at the shelter with me? Would he be bored out of his mind if I took him to a classical music concert, and will he do his fair share of the housework without making a fuss?<\/span>\n\nMy parents, on the other hand, couldn\u2019t care less about these petty concerns. They are too busy focussing on the vital stats, like where did their prospective son-in law do his <\/span>MBA<\/span><\/a>, and whether his kundali is compatible with mine \u2014 you know, the things that according to our parents, make a solid foundation for any good relationship. When I told my mother that none of her matrimonial picks had anything in common with me, she pointed out two who apparently like watching movies. When she saw that I was unimpressed, she quickly followed up with, “Beta, opposites attract!”\u00a0<\/span>\n

In fact, all that this exercise in matchmaking has taught me is that my parents and I have totally different priorities when it comes to finding a partner for me.<\/blockquote>\nSurely this advice is a bit rich coming from someone whose main goal is to find a match of the exact same community, religion, tax bracket, and mother tongue as me. At this point, I\u2019m starting to think that they\u2019re just making up the rules for marriage as they go. Does anyone really believe that polar opposites will magically work out their differences to form a happy union? What are we supposed to do if, upon getting married with a pair of perfectly matched biodatas, we have nothing to talk about or bond over? As usual, my mother has an answer for everything: That\u2019s what <\/span>babies<\/span><\/a> are for.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nOf course, this was always my parents\u2019 endgame, from the time they first started pushing the idea of marriage gently towards me. Unfortunately for them, I am still envisioning a future where my <\/span>partner<\/span><\/a> and I aren\u2019t made sick by the sight of each other, regardless of whether there is a baby in the picture or not.\u00a0<\/span>\n\n