The Allure Of Arranged Marriage

Indian weddings are beautiful. I missed my sister's by just a few days. I couldn't make up my mind whether to join her and her Canadian boyfriend in Goa, where I could complete my yoga training certificate in a country where men significantly outnumber women, or to stay home in the Brooklyn apartment I shared with four equally unemployed strangers, and where I was without a car, a boyfriend, or a shred of hope. I had to weigh my options, so I was a bit delayed. The Frisky: Would You Play Matchmaker For An Ex?

That's how I missed Leky's lavish Hindu puja ceremony, where she wed a guy she had actually met years ago at a Buddhist monastery, and who she had run into again by chance half a decade later while she was tooling around India.

Their love is a beautiful story. Mine, not so much.

At 31, I was already a world traveler and a world-class dater. I had lived at various times in two other countries, and as the proverbial "nice Jewish girl," had dated every type of unavailable man from Orthodox to Sikh to WASP. Everything ended badly and I was starting to consider myself an expert in cross-cultural heartbreak. The way some women carry pepper spray in their purse for protection, I carried a checklist of red-flag warning signs and dating requirements. By the time my sister Skyped me to see if I could join her for a yoga workshop in the hot beach town of Goa, I had decided to take a break from love.

My "break" was over practically the minute I touched down at Mumbai. I chalked it up to being in the land of arranged marriages. My girlfriends and I loved to sit around laughing over that wacky Wilbur Sargunaraj pop video in which the '80- bedecked Borat-type sings, "Mommy, Daddy, I want a love marriage," but I had gotten to the point where I was almost ready to belt out just the opposite: "Mommy, Daddy, I want an arranged marriage." The kind where no one gets divorced because the expectations aren't too high to begin with.

I was familiar with shidduch (matchmaking) from the paternal side of my family. My parents had an interfaith marriage; Dad is Bronx-bred Jewish, Mom is Ukrainian Catholic. Unlike 50 percent of American unions, they're not divorced, but they also didn't do it the Indian way—marriage, then sex, then love. 

Not only did I have a new boyfriend the minute I touched down in India, I also got very deeply spiritual. When you're at a yoga retreat, it's hard not to.

"I will tell you the secret of Indian marriage," my guru said. "Here, we have a union of two families, and there are hundreds of people on each side that make it impossible for you to walk away."