Posts Tagged ‘Relationships’

South Asian Culture and Dating: 30, Single, and Looking – or are we?

Monday, July 19th, 2010

As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. And todays post is about the actions of many of us single folks out there.
Let’s take our girl Rita (fake name of course :-) ) as an example. Rita is 30. Rita lives in the city. Rita is a social butterfly and has tons of friends – both guys and girls. Rita enjoys going out on weeknights and weekends to the local bar or parties or concerts, what have you. Rita is single. Rita claims she wants to be in a relationship and says she is ‘actively looking’ but what is she really doing to try and meet that special someone?

At work she is surrounded by people who are either in relationships already or they just aren’t her type (not to mention all the issues associated with dating someone at the workplace). Evenings and weekends when she goes out, she tends to spend time with her close friends and may occasionally meet someone new but that’s purely by happenstance and not usually planned in anyway. That leaves family gatherings, personal time (including tv, surfing the web (), etc) and nights to sleep. So how exactly is finding someone a ‘focus’ in Ritas life? As we can see, its really not!

Yet when asked, Rita will valiantly claim that she is looking and she wants to be dating someone. Perhaps someone who’s Indian, perhaps not. She will spend countless Saturday nights wondering when she’ll be part of a ‘table for 2′. Either way, unless we are hoping for Mr Right to literally drop out of the sky and into our laps, not sure how Rita is planning to find someone to date, or even ‘the one’.

So yes, actions DO speak louder than words. And this is where the internet is so great! The beauty of the online world is that it fits within our busy lifestyles and allows us to do all those other things we enjoy and not have to sacrifice, but at the same time allowing us to focus some time towards ‘the search’. So all those out there (and even you late 20-somethings) take control of your destiny (or ‘Kismet‘ as we Indians refer to it) and put your cursor where your mouth is – click onto TwoMangoes!

South Asian Culture and Dating – The Parental Factor!

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

This is one of our first posts under the category of South Asian Culture and Dating.. You can expect to see more stuff like this on our blog every Monday moving forward – Enjoy!

South Asian parents never cease to amaze me! For the better part of our lives we are told things like: dating is forbidden, don’t talk to boys under any uncertain terms (a girl in Turkey was actually KILLED for doing this!), relationships are a mere distraction and can only lead to bad things. At a younger age, all we hear is ‘focus on your education and nothing else’. A little later in life, it becomes ‘focus on building your career‘ and making money. Then one fine day, when you least expect it, they turn to you confused and say, ‘how come you aren’t married yet? How come you don’t have someone in mind?’.

Am I the only one that sees something very wrong here?? HELLO?? Are these the same people or is there some jekyll and hyde thing happening (or in the world of bollywood, the ever popular use of a ‘double role‘)? How can you expect me to a) be in a relationship, b) have any potential prospects amongst my circle of friends and c) know anything about dating when all I have ever heard for the better part of my life is quite the opposite?! Don’t talk to boys, don’t look at boys, don’t even think about boys. So where is this magical ‘boy’ supposed to come from??

Its even more frustrating as I feel like they don’t get it at all. Indian parents keep saying ‘what about anyone you went to school with?’ Again, am I the only sane person here? What – we’re supposed to spend the better part of our college education ignoring guys even exist and then turn around at the ripe old age of 28 and just start talking to them now? Am I the only person who sees the problem here?

Let’s face it – school is the best time to meet people. After that its all downhill. You meet lesser and lesser new people each day as opposed to school where I found I was even meeting new people in my last couple of months. Once you start working, it gets really tough. Life gets busy, you spend a large majority of your day at work with the same set of co-workers (neither if which you could ever imagine dating) and your evenings are mostly spent socializing with friends and family – all of whom you already know. So where exactly are you supposed to find this special someone?

Enter the world of online dating. It makes sense that this concept of finding ‘the one’ or even finding ‘anyone’ has really taken off. But I don’t mean shaadi.com or bharatmatrimony.com or any of those other fob-ish sites out there as that’s the same as going to find someone back home in the motherland in my opinion. There has to be a better solution out there in regards to Indian dating. Something that unites like-minded people like us and where we can meet people at that magical point in our lives when our parents do a complete 180 and decide its now ok, no, REQUIRED, to get out there and meet someone. Otherwise the dreaded fear of ‘let us arrange a match for you’ remains a very valid and scary option.

And so we have TwoMangoes. The perfect place to find other people like YOU. That is, once your parents decide it’s ok to start doing so :-)