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Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Colourful courtship: The strutting peacock with his shimmering tail feathers impresses the peahen. —

More and more of them live away from their parents, are financially independent, socialise among themselves and thus loosen up on several traditional practices. While in some, parental influence and directives have weakened, it has not (yet) become the general rule. Compromise and adjustment seem more prevalent, sometimes uncomfortably.

The Indian genius in such adjustment comes from seamlessly using technology to resurrect and liven up some traditional practices. Pooja on the net, and bharatmatrimony.com are but two examples. It is the latter that is of particular interest here.

The modern youngster is to marry soon but wants to choose his/her own life partner. The parents want to choose the bride or the groom based on their own ‘time-tested’ parameters.

There is a not-so-hidden tension hovering around the issue here. The parents say that they know what is good for the youngster. The latter does not want to be saddled with an “old fashioned” one. Here is where the matrimony dotcoms come in handy.

They come in region-based, language-based, and community-based sites and some of them go one step further, and arrange what they call ‘megaswayamvarams’ for their clients. In these events, they arrange to bring the client parties face to face for mutual appraisal, so as to take it on further.

The name is a tease, and not quite a total self-choice. The filtering has already occurred, when the two parties (parents and youngsters on each side) made their broad choice on the website. Now that the parental parameters are met, the boys and girls are assembled at a hall so that they can meet and talk to each other.

The Indian genius at compromise and adjustment is in action here; the event is at once ‘arranged’ as well as ‘free choice’. At such an organised ‘megaswayamvaram’ at Hyderabad, over 5,000 Telugus of the Kamma, Reddy, Brahmin, Kapu, Balija, Naidu and Arya Vysya communities met for this purpose.

In an event like this, we know what the parents are looking for, but what about today’s youth? Do they go the ‘western way’ in their choice, or do they still ‘accommodate’ the family’s wishes in such decisions? An analysis of the mate choices they make would provide insights into their minds on this important issue concerning their future lives.

The thought processes that underlie mate preferences and mate choices among animals have been studied by biologists for quite some time.

Starkly put, from the evolutionary point of view, a mate is needed to blend and propagate the genes, family, community and species. The male needs to ‘advertise’ his genetic robustness and strength while the female show off her potential prowess in bearing and rearing healthy children. ‘Machismo’ or an exaggerated pride in one’s masculinity, and bravado are part of the male show-off tactics.

The strutting peacock with his shimmering tail feathers (the peahen lacks them) carries a burdensome load when he wants to escape predators.

The fact that he carries them and lives on, risking danger, impresses the peahen as proof of his virility.

The huge antlers on the head of the male deer are another such come-on. Moving down the evolutionary line, we humans too are lured by sex appeal — the bulging muscles of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the voluptuousness of Sophia Loren. But in general, ‘marianismo’ or the female equivalent of machismo, is less flamboyant but subtler. Pheromones and perfumes fit the task.

So, what does the modern middle class Indian youth look for in a mate? Several of them would like to go the western way, find suitable partners by themselves, get married and want their families to accept this. Is the western way biologically, evolutionarily, apt or does the cultural component override the biological?

Two recent papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. (PNAS) have looked into this matter. In the first one by PM Buston and ST Emlen (PNAS 100, 8805, 2003), the researchers asked about 1000 residents of Ith aca, NY, aged 18-24, of both sexes, to fill two questionnaires.

In the first, the volunteers had to rate the importance they placed on 10 attributes in a long-term partner. The attributes were financial resources, social status, health, physical attractiveness, faithfulness, desire for children, parenting qualities, devotion, ambition, and strength of family ties (closeness to parents and siblings). In the second questionnaire, they were asked to rate themselves on these same 10 attributes.

The results were revealing. Men and women who rated themselves highly also turned out to desire the same high level rating in their partners, preferring mates similar to themselves across a number of these 10 attributes.

In other words, it was a ‘like attracts like’ rule rather than ‘opposites attract’ or ‘reproductive potentials attract.’ Evolutionary attributes such as wealth and status, family closeness, physical attractiveness, or sexual fidelity were not thought so important.

The choice was not on complemantarity but on copy; the ‘varam’ was of ‘swayam.’ Narcissus would have approved.

A rebuttal of sorts came last fortnight from a German-UK-US group led by PM Todd (PNAS 104, 15011, 2007). They found that the answers to questionnaires, and choice of mates become different if the men and women volunteers were also to be given a chance to meet after the questionnaire.

Questionnaires run before the face-to-face meetings reproduced the ‘likes attract’ result. But, after the meeting, arranged through a ‘speed dating’ event, the results changed and obeyed the evolutionary predictions.

They conclude that unlike the cognitive processes inferred from self-reports, results from actual mate choices (based on face-to-face meetings) are well in line with predictions of parental investment theory. Darwin would have approved.

Speed dating is a popular social event where men and women interact with each other for some time before deciding whether or not they would like to take the relationship further.

In effect, the Hyderabad ‘mahaswayamvaram’ was one such, done the Indian way. It would be interesting to know how many marriages were finalised based on that day.

That would give us a clue about the cognitive processes that operate in the youth of today’s middle class India. Here then is an excellent research project for sociology students.

DBALA@LVPEI.ORG

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