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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/world/asia/14remarry.html?ref=world

 

New Delhi Journal

 

India - As Mores Evolve, India’s Divorced Seek Second Chance

 

Tomas Munita for The New York Times

At the Aastha Center for Re-Marriage in New Delhi, employees work on matching couples for potential remarriage. The shop has 5,000 prospective brides and grooms on file.

By SAHER MAHMOOD and SOMINI SENGUPTA

February 14, 2008

NEW DELHI — Above a working man’s diner in the middle of a hurly-burly city market, Yuvraj Raina abets what until recently would have been seen as a radical challenge to the social order.

Inderbir Singh, 35, eating at a McDonald’s in New Delhi, calls himself an “outcast from my society” because of his divorce.

He picks up a folder on his desk and reads aloud. “Divorcée, ’68 born, she is a financier, 40,000 income per month. She has a daughter, 8 years old.”

Another folder: “Brahmin, ’59 born, 5’3”, she is an accountant, no issue. She is a divorcée. Reason for divorce she has written boy was mentally disturbed.”

And a third, an unusual candidate who had never before been married but was considered too old to find a husband the conventional way: “She has opted for a divorcé. She is ’68 born. Hardly get any unmarried boy.”

Mr. Raina, divorced himself, is an entrepreneur courting a small but promising market: He runs a matrimonial agency for men and women seeking to marry again. Once, such a notion would have been anathema in middle-class India. Marriage was socially compulsory, divorce was frowned upon and widows, at least in some Hindu communities, were subject to a life of austerity and in some cases, exile.

Marriage is still, by and large, socially compulsory. But in a measure of the slow churning of Indian social mores, divorce and remarriage are slowly gaining acceptability. “In general, it’s no taboo these days,” Mr. Raina said gamely, and went on to praise the anonymity that big cities in particular offered to those who wanted a fresh start. To get away from clucking tongues and wagging fingers, a divorced man, as Mr. Raina put it, “just has to change his house. >From East Delhi to South Delhi, he is a new person.”

The work of Mr. Raina’s agency, called the Aastha Center for Remarriage, is not all that countercultural anymore. The matrimonial sections of Sunday papers carry advertisements from other marriage bureaus specializing in second-timers. An Internet portal was created six months ago, called secondshaadi.com — shaadi being the Hindi word for marriage — and already has a database of 25,000 clients.

Even conventional marriage portals, like shaadi.com, are beginning to see listings from people who want to tie the knot a second time. Sunil Gangwani, who runs a shaadi.com branch in Nagpur, a small provincial city in central India, said about 5 percent of his clients were divorced.

Divorce rates are difficult to quantify because cases are filed in local courts across the country, but there is anecdotal evidence of a rise. The Delhi Commission for Women, which runs a telephone help line, estimated that the number of calls from women asking about divorce proceedings had grown at least 20 percent since 2000.

Mr. Raina’s agency alone has 5,000 prospective brides and grooms on file. For the most part, relatives come to sign up their kin, as older brothers and fathers and aunts would in the case of a traditional first marriage. Their files contain old-fashioned details: caste, income, whether vegetarian — and the exact time of birth, for astrological purposes. But they also identify whether the clients are divorced or widowed, and describe briefly why, if divorced, the marriage collapsed. Mr. Raina says he is not interested in details. “If I hear their stories it will take two days,” he said. “I write ‘incompatibility.’ ”

He sifts through them carefully and sends clients the files of prospective matches. He found a match for himself this way — a woman whose first husband had died, leaving her a business to run. They have been married a little more than a year.

The Aastha office is a narrow room on top of a two-story walk-up. Its walls are plastered with larger than life posters of smiling couples in wedding garb. A variety of desires brings people here.

Manju Singh, 56, came looking not so much for a husband but for a companion her age. “I need someone to talk to,” she said. “The evenings are lonely.”

Anubha Suri, 29, was encouraged by her parents to start anew, even as she waited for her divorce to be finalized. “People might be saying, ‘See how fast this girl is,’ ” she said. “I don’t care. I’ll show the world a woman can live without marriage or with marriage.”

Savi Nagpal, 39, came because she grew weary of having to organize her daughter’s birthday parties by herself. “As you know, in India everybody asks the father’s name — the first thing,” she said. To have a father figure, she said, would be good for her daughter, who is 8 years old.

And yet, Ms. Nagpal remains wary of remarrying. It took her more than three years even to approach Mr. Raina’s agency. She is still a bit frightened of a new relationship. “Looking for a second husband for me now is not a matter of love but a purely practical consideration,” Ms. Nagpal said.

This is a society in transition, gingerly embracing new habits, but still deeply traditional in matters of marriage. No one knows this better than someone who is divorced and looking for a fresh start.

Inderbir Singh, 35, stopped being invited to outings with friends after his divorce 15 months ago. If a business associate asks about his family and he confesses to being divorced, the conversation enters an awkward silence. His friends have urged him to find a new partner, but no one has set him up on a date. “Suddenly I’m an outcast from my society,” he said, only half joking.

He sees his society in conflict with itself. “People are O.K. with divorce. Nobody forces you to stay in a marriage and torture yourself for the rest of your life,” he said. “But the attitude towards a divorcé is still the same. They’re outcasts. They think divorce won’t happen if the person is a good person.”

Mr. Singh has not been shy about going out on the marriage market again. He listed himself on conventional marriage portals but scored what he called “a 100 percent failure rate.” He put out a newspaper ad, soliciting proposals without luck. Then, he tried secondshaadi.com.

So far, he has met seven women, and liked one of them enough to ask her out on two dates. He described her as “a very promising contact.”

“Let’s see how it goes,” he said.





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