If visa status remains a concern in the first half of the immigrants’ lives in the US, it is the marriage of their children that fills the second half. One is not allowed to be an involved parent in the match-making process; but being a typical Indian, one cannot stay detached either. Caught in this contradiction, the immigrants face an inexplicable phase in their lives abroad when it comes to their children’s marriage.

The general norm is to get hooked with a date in teens or early twenties; if one misses the bus here, the eligible pool often dwindles even when one is not particular about ethnicity. But Indians by nature focus on education in their teens. The educational aspirations and career ambitions keep most of them away from a dating mode in the prime of their youth. When they are settled in their expectations and scout for partners, the situation is often not so conducive. Many are forced to stay single for long.

Luckily in the last few years, a visible and healthy community initiative is taking shape

to break this trend. What does it do? Roll out innovative models to keep the modern ‘swayamvara’ on track abroad.

One such is Vivah, a non-profit organisation started in 2016 to connect the Hindu singles for the purpose of matrimony. “We do a lot of cultural celebrations, and provide a venue

for meeting and networking in the names of festivals. But we do not have an avenue to facilitate networking among people for the purpose of matrimony. Often, we see people stating with a heavy heart that my daughter or son is a well-settled doctor or a lawyer and is 35-plus but yet not married. Vivah opens a platform for these people to get connected,” said Dharminder Dargan from Houston, a key person to initiate the launch of the initiative.

Organised in the style of speed dating, Vivah sessions run for a couple of hours on specified dates where each pre-registered participant chooses to interact with others and get introduced to a prospective marriage partner. “The response has been so good, we always end up with huge wait list for every event,” claimed Dharminder.

In just a short time, Vivah has opened nine chapters across the US and has over 1,000 people registered for the service which is offered free. Hindu participants, usually 25 years and above, with no other restriction on language, ethnicity, culture or visa status, are encouraged to show up. Vivah has done over 30 programmes across the cities and 4 more are planned in the coming months at New York, Michigan, Bay Area and Dallas. Many such programmes are being replicated in the temple halls and other social networks. “It is indeed amazing to see boys and girls come and participate in such programmes. As elders, we think having brought up in the West, these children have their own way of networking for dating purposes and may not be impressed with these organised meets. But much to our disbelief, we realise that they too look for some help and initiation from elders in a detached way, and community efforts like Vivah help immensely,” said a volunteer.

Indians migrating abroad take extra efforts to bring up their children with Indian values.

Mushrooming of temples and cultural associations and stress on music, dance and vedic education are a proof for this. To carry this further down the line for the coming generations, we need well-entrenched institution of marriages that can nurture and preserve the culture, feel many. 

As a society, we have come a long way to accept marriage as being beyond caste, culture or ethnicity barriers. Still, marriage remains to be the prime carrier of social and cultural values. In an intermingling marriage environment, preservation of cultural identity is not the focus.

As much as the immigrants embrace the values of individual freedom and American lifestyles, down the line, the nostalgia of their cultural past takes one to design the institution of marriage to ones own liking. With the number of immigrants swelling in the last decade, experiments like Vivah also takea fine shape. Earlier, for the settlers in the Seventies and Eighties, inter- ethnic marriages were just the choice. Today, the situation is not the same. The children are exposed to the Indian way of life and there is rising demand from them for life partners of Indian origin. 

“I know of girls who marry boys born and raised in India, which was unheard of in the past, and also lead a successful life,” said Jayaraman from New Jersey. Another emerging and welcome trend is that elaborate marriages are being held in the traditional way in the US itself. Earlier, the families used to conduct the weddings in India, mainly for want of facilities to perform the ceremony traditionally. Today, we have established temples with elaborate arrangements in the form of halls, priests, flower garlands, betel leaves, banana plants and Nadhaswaram and whatnot, at least in geographies with Indian diaspora. More so when grandparents and other relatives are ready for a trip to the US for the marriage, where the gala wedding is the right occasion to bring out the grand silk sarees and traditional jewellery!

Recreating the Indian life in a foreign land is made much easier especially when the new and exciting match-making experiment are a success.

-The writer is a journalist based in New York