The importance of an online presence
When I get woken up at 8 on a Saturday morning, I am fairly certain that there's something happening at home which requires my exclusive attention and which my highly resourceful and fiercely independent parents can't handle on their own. After having fended off two attempts made by dad to wake me up, I finally relented to his third attempt, especially when I saw from the corner of my eye that he had a mug of water in his hand. Not wanting to have my face sprinkled with water, I woke up on a discordant note only to realize that dad never intented to empty the contents of that mug onto my face, but only wanted to water a plant that my mom had moved into my room just then !
The feeling of having taken the bait, or having taken the biscuit as they say in Bangalore, is not something I particularly cherish at 8 in the morning.
Training my half-opened eyes at my dad, I said "OK, so what's the problem ?"
"We have a marriage proposal and we need to do a background check"
"What ? Why are you entertaining marriage proposals without my consent ? Who's the girl ?"
"A guy, not a girl.."
"Holy Freakin' Gay Marriage !! WHAT ?"
"The proposal is not for you. It's for that girl who lives two blocks away."
"Ah I see... "
The thought of evaluating a marriage proposal when I wasn't even thinking about marriage had jolted me out of my sleep. When I learnt that the proposal was meant for a girl in the neighbourhood, the strained muscles of my face retracted slowly to their natural positions and I regained my peaceful demeanour. As I tottered into the bathroom to grab my toothbrush, I couldn't help sympathizing with that unfortunate guy who had willfully submitted himself to life of eternal servitude.
Arranged Marriage Proposal Evaluation - The Transitive Law of Social Acquaintance
Typically, most marriage proposals reach you through somebody who knows you well. For example, when a guy is ready for marriage in family A, the family sounds several other families around them who happen to know A very well. One such family, say B, in turn sounds another family C that probably has a girl who is ready for marriage. It should be noted here that in several cases, family C would not have known A previously at all.
How then does C go about evaluating a proposal from A ?
In the arranged marriage market, decisions pertaining to marriage are to a great extent based on how well the two families know each other and to a lesser extent on whether the guy and the girl find each other compatible. Strange, but largely true. In such a situation, the "transitive law of social acquaintance" comes to play a predominant role.
In the case that I mentioned above, although family C knows nothing about family A, all that matters to C is the extent to which B knows A. If C is convinced that B knows A very well, then C concludes that it is worth considering the proposal from A because C has a general feeling of knowing A well as a consequence of C knowing B very well and B knowing A very well.
Also, C's readiness to evaluate the proposal depends on the degree of separation between C and A, or technically speaking, the number of nodes in the shortest path from C to A in their social network graph. More the number of families between C and A, greater are the perceived levels of information loss (as data flows from A to C) and therefore more detailed and crucial are the background checks that are required to verify A's credentials.
Essentially, the transitive law cannot be used to minimize distances on the social graph without the requisite "due diligence" performed.
The impact of Outsourcing and Information Technology
Doing extensive background checks could often get cumbersome especially when you don't have an extensive social network. Therefore there have been times when families have made their decisions based on factors of a completely different kind. I am told that if swift success is what you seek in the arranged marriage market of Bangalore, then you need to necessarily satisfy either of these two conditions:
However, if you are neither a software engineer nor an employee of Infosys, you have no option but to take the long arduous path of finding your soul mate and your next boss (remember the life of servitude ?)
It's no wonder then that sacrificing a job of a software engineer at an MNC for a MBA at an IIM is considered to be a huge decision with wide ranging ramifications on one's life. If you don't believe me, ask Kandarp to know what he went through when he was evaluating an admit offer from IIM-B.
But why was I woken up so early ?
Dad wanted me to help him do some background checks on a guy who was being proposed to a girl in the neighbourhood. The background check had become very crucial because the degree of separation between the two families was not particularly comforting. The guy's family had informed their son's readiness to my friend's family, who in turn had informed us about the same and we had passed on the information to the girl's family ! So, the girl's family had to not only ascertain how well my family knew my friend's family but also how well my friend's family knew their friend, the guy's family. Very very tough, I must say.
To make things worse, the guy is neither a software engineer nor an employee of Infosys ! He has a marketing job at a huge and a well-known corporation, but I guess all that doesn't count towards a "comfortable" life these days.
And so, I was called upon to use my Web 2.0 presence and see if I could dig out some useful information about this guy. I first typed his name into Orkut, but couldn't find him there. I then moved to LinkedIn, but he wasn't there either. I looked up a few matrimony websites too, but our man was not to be found there as well. I then turned to the blogs and ran checks on Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress, Yahoo and Rediff. I couldn't even find a comment left under his name. As a last ditch effort, I typed his name into Google hoping to see some interesting search results, but no love there as well!
Some people are just too allergic to the Internet.
After an hour of unsuccessful surfing, I shut my computer down and went back to sleep. As I was gradually pulling into a deep slumber, I heard the girl's dad say "If nothing else, we would at least like to know his (the guy's) native place"
Moral of the story
If you are not a software engineer and you don't work for Infosys, the least you could do is to have some sort of an online presence. If you can't manage a presence on the Internet, then know your native place for God's sake.
All the long hours that I have spent maintaining this blog suddenly seem so well spent to me.
The feeling of having taken the bait, or having taken the biscuit as they say in Bangalore, is not something I particularly cherish at 8 in the morning.
Training my half-opened eyes at my dad, I said "OK, so what's the problem ?"
"We have a marriage proposal and we need to do a background check"
"What ? Why are you entertaining marriage proposals without my consent ? Who's the girl ?"
"A guy, not a girl.."
"Holy Freakin' Gay Marriage !! WHAT ?"
"The proposal is not for you. It's for that girl who lives two blocks away."
"Ah I see... "
The thought of evaluating a marriage proposal when I wasn't even thinking about marriage had jolted me out of my sleep. When I learnt that the proposal was meant for a girl in the neighbourhood, the strained muscles of my face retracted slowly to their natural positions and I regained my peaceful demeanour. As I tottered into the bathroom to grab my toothbrush, I couldn't help sympathizing with that unfortunate guy who had willfully submitted himself to life of eternal servitude.
Arranged Marriage Proposal Evaluation - The Transitive Law of Social Acquaintance
Typically, most marriage proposals reach you through somebody who knows you well. For example, when a guy is ready for marriage in family A, the family sounds several other families around them who happen to know A very well. One such family, say B, in turn sounds another family C that probably has a girl who is ready for marriage. It should be noted here that in several cases, family C would not have known A previously at all.
How then does C go about evaluating a proposal from A ?
In the arranged marriage market, decisions pertaining to marriage are to a great extent based on how well the two families know each other and to a lesser extent on whether the guy and the girl find each other compatible. Strange, but largely true. In such a situation, the "transitive law of social acquaintance" comes to play a predominant role.
In the case that I mentioned above, although family C knows nothing about family A, all that matters to C is the extent to which B knows A. If C is convinced that B knows A very well, then C concludes that it is worth considering the proposal from A because C has a general feeling of knowing A well as a consequence of C knowing B very well and B knowing A very well.
Also, C's readiness to evaluate the proposal depends on the degree of separation between C and A, or technically speaking, the number of nodes in the shortest path from C to A in their social network graph. More the number of families between C and A, greater are the perceived levels of information loss (as data flows from A to C) and therefore more detailed and crucial are the background checks that are required to verify A's credentials.
Essentially, the transitive law cannot be used to minimize distances on the social graph without the requisite "due diligence" performed.
The impact of Outsourcing and Information Technology
Doing extensive background checks could often get cumbersome especially when you don't have an extensive social network. Therefore there have been times when families have made their decisions based on factors of a completely different kind. I am told that if swift success is what you seek in the arranged marriage market of Bangalore, then you need to necessarily satisfy either of these two conditions:
- You must be a software engineer.
- You must be working for Infosys.
However, if you are neither a software engineer nor an employee of Infosys, you have no option but to take the long arduous path of finding your soul mate and your next boss (remember the life of servitude ?)
It's no wonder then that sacrificing a job of a software engineer at an MNC for a MBA at an IIM is considered to be a huge decision with wide ranging ramifications on one's life. If you don't believe me, ask Kandarp to know what he went through when he was evaluating an admit offer from IIM-B.
But why was I woken up so early ?
Dad wanted me to help him do some background checks on a guy who was being proposed to a girl in the neighbourhood. The background check had become very crucial because the degree of separation between the two families was not particularly comforting. The guy's family had informed their son's readiness to my friend's family, who in turn had informed us about the same and we had passed on the information to the girl's family ! So, the girl's family had to not only ascertain how well my family knew my friend's family but also how well my friend's family knew their friend, the guy's family. Very very tough, I must say.
To make things worse, the guy is neither a software engineer nor an employee of Infosys ! He has a marketing job at a huge and a well-known corporation, but I guess all that doesn't count towards a "comfortable" life these days.
And so, I was called upon to use my Web 2.0 presence and see if I could dig out some useful information about this guy. I first typed his name into Orkut, but couldn't find him there. I then moved to LinkedIn, but he wasn't there either. I looked up a few matrimony websites too, but our man was not to be found there as well. I then turned to the blogs and ran checks on Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress, Yahoo and Rediff. I couldn't even find a comment left under his name. As a last ditch effort, I typed his name into Google hoping to see some interesting search results, but no love there as well!
Some people are just too allergic to the Internet.
After an hour of unsuccessful surfing, I shut my computer down and went back to sleep. As I was gradually pulling into a deep slumber, I heard the girl's dad say "If nothing else, we would at least like to know his (the guy's) native place"
Moral of the story
If you are not a software engineer and you don't work for Infosys, the least you could do is to have some sort of an online presence. If you can't manage a presence on the Internet, then know your native place for God's sake.
All the long hours that I have spent maintaining this blog suddenly seem so well spent to me.