Mid-Day

Ahmedabad, Jun 12: The NRI hot ticket has expired, it seems. And with it also the craze to live abroad. Marriage bureaus in Gujarat are reporting instances of Gujarati women asking to get married within the country instead. And these aren’t stray incidents either.

Example 1

Jamnagar industrialist Keshubhai Ramani’s daughter got married and moved to America. While the father believed his daughter was settled abroad, she was actually being mistreated by her in-laws. In reality the family wanted a Gujarati cook and because there were legal hassles to get one from India, the parents convinced their son to marry a girl to suit their purposes.

Example 2

Rajkot resident Jagruti married a man in London. After living like a maid for a year or so, Jagruti came back to India. Her divorce is still pending in the courts. She says, “My in-laws wanted someone who could take care of the family and sit at home all day. By getting their son married they got an unpaid servant in me.”

Because of cases like these that have been coming out for the past two years, there’s been a tremendous change in the mindset of Gujarati girls. There was a time when hey would accept an NRI proposal with their eyes closed, but that isn’t the case anymore. Now their preferences actually lie within the country.

CEO of Happy Marriage Bureau in Rajkot, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar, Himanshu Shenoy says, “This change has occurred within the past year. Until a year ago there was a mad rush for NRIs.

Most wanted appointments with these men first. But now parents specifically say that they don’t want an NRI. They are looking to marry their daughters to men from Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and Pune instead.

MBA student Grishma Modi in Ahmedabad says, “I wanted to get married abroad but my parents sat me down for two hours and explained the situation to me.

I realised what they were saying was true and agreed to get married to someone from Mumbai or Bangalore instead. Instead of going abroad and being someone’s servant, it makes more sense to live in a big city in India and spend my life”

Mita Patel agrees, “When college started I thought I’d get married and go to America or Britain. But in my three years of college I heard so many horror stories that I completely changed my mind about marrying an NRI.

I got proposals from at least four different NRIs, but we said no to them all. Even though we knew them.

Ahmedabad-based Shaadi Byah Marriage Bureau CEO, Shailesh Pandya, says, “There was a time when NRIs would get picked off our list like hotcakes.

We didn’t even have to advertise in newspapers. That hasn’t remained the case. Now we have to explain to parents and their daughters that not all NRIs are bad.