Made to Order Wives

Here,I am a mid 20's guy whose all weekend conversations revolve around listening to his friends about the troubles they are having in finding their matches. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that this is nothing but a serious Operations Management (OM) challenge.

In OM lingo, there are two types of items: off the shelf items and made to order items. And, as you may be aware off the shelf items are standard, mass produced and very commonplace - one size fits all kinda things...whereas made to order are customized, personalized and very special.

Given the fast pace of today's world and chalta hai attitude, we are fast moving from special made to order items to ok types off the shelf ones. For example, I duly remember in my childhood, getting a shirt stitched was a whole week exercise from selecting and buying the fabric, giving measurements to the tailor and finally collecting your very own and special made to order shirt. Today, the world has changed - the guy enters a showroom in one shirt and comes out in another.

Given the fact that Marriage is generally only once in a lifetime affair in India, a wife should ideally be under made to order category - right? But, unfortunately, the high cycle time of 20-25 years makes made to order system an unfeasible solution (I would like to remain away from topics like men never grow old, second season etc :P). Hence, we pick our matches off the shelf - now in off the shelf system, the more shops you visit, higher is the probability of getting a better bargin, nicer fit and trendier look.

So, my friends get imbued with biodatas every night when their moms serve them dinner along with list of prospective brides. Almost every prospect is so known and familiar with credentials like - "yeh ladki apne pados ke ratan chachaji ke mama ki niece hai, dekho achchi jaani pehchani family hai, ek baar mil to lo".

And, this means your precious weekend evening (for which you had made extensive plans for hanging out with your pals) will get ruined in meeting some stranger where both of you will take first half an hour to break the ice.

On the other side, the moms of my friends are just getting tired of finding new prospectives for every weekend - just like the salesmen who has got exhausted after showing you first 20 shirts. This is what led to online marketplaces for match making like shaadi.com, bharatmatrimony.com etc.

They are so worried because their sons have made such a long laundry list of specifications for their to-be life partners that satisfying all the conditions in an off the shelf system is really challenging.

Wishing them all the best, finding suitable wives is really a tough OM challenge in some ways :).