Dating in the Desi World

Growing up, let’s just say I was discouraged from dating girls in high school. I think the fear my mother had was that I would end up with a white lady. I was socially awkward, insecure, shy, nerdy, and overweight, meaning there would be no way that I would pursue anything romantic. If anyone asked why don’t I go out with her, I have the convenient excuse: “It’s against my religion.”

The convenient truth became a little inconvenient when I decided to look for a wife. Turns out the years of not awkwardly asking out girls, has left me even more awkward around them. Because of my age, my naivety isn’t cute anymore. So what am I supposed to do? Just my luck there is always arranged marriages. Yeah it is still a thing.

I didn't know what I was expecting. Arranged marriages was an ancient tradition that goes back generations. It worked perfectly fine for my family for years. Plus, if it works for over seven billion people, surely it could for me. I knew of the concept of arranged marriages, but I never knew the exact details or the nuts and bolts behind arranged marriages. For all I know, it was based on your horoscope (you know following your destiny crap).

This isn’t the days where two strangers meet on their wedding day. Arranged marriages nowadays are more like dating service that people’s parents find viable candidates for their child. To find viable candidates parents search far and wide and Facebook groups to find people who are educated, working, and are descendant from South Asia. This information is collected in a easy to read profile called bio-data.

This bio-data proved to be the end of me and a relationship potential wife. The first people thing notices on your “bio-data” is your picture. I never thought that my picture or my looks would matter. It never dawned on me that females would want someone attractive. The thought of going to the gym to slim down never crossed my mind. Buying trendy clothes or getting a decent haircut was never my priority. It goes beyond physical looks for me, I’m not even presentable. I don’t own clothes made this decade. Hey if it fits its alright, who cares if I look like walk out of a 90s hip hop video. I spent years not trying to impress anyone. All of a sudden, I'm suppose to give a damn about what I look like? This is when I realized I'm in way over my head, and utterly unprepared, and I'm likely to fail at epic proportions.

Okay, maybe the women that I run across weren't shallow. They probably are looking for other things in potential mate. So what else is on your bio-data? It includes not only your education and your current job, but it also includes things like where your family is from, what caste you belong too, how many siblings you have, what your siblings do and their marital status. Basically, the bio-data reduces your entire life to a text that your mom forwards to other moms. What gets me, is that people are looking for super specific things. If their daughter is a doctor, they want her to marry another doctor (or someone with a 'professional degree'). They want suitors who are from the same city. They want suitors who are Sayeds or Pashtos, I'm dumbfounded. These are way too specific categories to find anyone in North America. It's hard enough to find another Pakistani in North America, but to find a Pakistani Doctor who is a Sayed, who loves to travel and is family oriented, wants an independent woman, who cooks into fitness and over 5'10? That is impossible to find.

Obviously, the arranged marriage route didn’t exactly pan out.