A few years into the IT revolution and a few thousand professional immigrations later, there’s a new situation in the Indian community, or as we call it, the ‘desi’ community, in the USA. There are lots of successful, well established, highly paid professionals who lack one thing: a life partner. In a materialistic American society, love and marriage are often the only things that longer hours at work and more dollars cannot buy. 

This movie, shaadi.com attempts to make a true and realistic depiction of the problems Indian singles in America face in their quest for marital bliss. It is mostly based on real people and their experiences.

The lives of professionals such as those featured in this movie are so monotonous that yesterday, today and tomorrow sometimes seem to merge into one meaningless string of activities. Whether it is due to the absence of family and friends around, or because of frequent travel and relocation, or all the hours spent at work, monotony and loneliness are basic themes in their lives.

Given the mechanics of life as a single in the desi community in America, the odds of a person finding the love of their life are pretty slim. Most single guys take the easy way out and turn to their parents and relatives back home to do the job.

For the few working girls here, it is not much different, they are educated and self-reliant and they have tasted a newfound independence and a society that is much more liberal than the one back home! This makes it that much harder for them to meet guys that live up to their expectations.

In addition to looking for a life mate through the regular channels, ‘desis’ have discovered newer and more proactive ways of finding the person they want. Thanks to the Internet, meeting girls (or guys) has become much easier.  But meeting the ‘right one’ remains as hard as ever!

Maybe that’s why the arranged marriage scene works so well for these desi singles. Most people resign to the age-old Indian concept of getting married first and then trying to love the spouse. People often get married just for the short-term benefits in having a ‘significant other’ in their lives. That the marriage takes place at the right time is seemingly a higher priority than the marriage taking place for the right reasons!

Maybe it’s the desperation, the pressure from home, the pressure of living in an alien society where every single person has had a relationship at least ten years before the typical desi, just the monotony of living all alone or just the prospect of immediate matrimonial bliss – one gets married – often for all the wrong reasons…

The fundamental reason for marriage is love. One has to love a person to want to put up with their idiosyncrasies (and maybe even find them endearing!). This fundamental reason is not an obvious factor in arranged marriages (which still surprisingly have a very high success rate). The main characters in the movie deal with this very problem.