Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India

by Anita Jain

After three years of dating, Anita Jain finally got fed up with the New York singles scene. As her Indian parents continued to pressure her to find a mate, Jain couldn't help asking herself the question: is arranged marriage really any worse than Craigslist?

Full of romantic chance encounters, nosy relatives, and dozens of potential husbands, Marrying Anita is a refreshingly honest look at our own expectations and the modern search for the perfect mate.

Genres: India, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Biography, Relationships, Travel

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Elisha Condie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I heard this author interviewed on NPR, and thought her book sounded interesting. She is a 30-something woman, with Indian parents, who was born in America. After a succesful career and living all over the world, she realizes how lonely she is and wants to be married. So she moves to India in the hopes of finding a nice Indian guy. It's the story of her first year there. And I didn't love it. I wanted to. It was interesting to some degree, and she was so funny and nice on the radio, but her book was sort of bleh. It's a different culture than mine that is so casual about sex, drunkeness, and smoking pot. Her weekends are filled with this stuff, and she just never seems to find a guy. I couldn't help wonder if she tried to do NEW things when she moved to Delhi then she may have had different opportunities.
I gave this one star because I went with the reader through her journey, expecting her to come out a little changed by the end but I didn't feel she was. She didn't learn anything, she didn't progress. And I just couldn't identify with her lifestyle which seems so..empty? especially for a woman who is looking for a meaningful relationship.
It was interesting however, to learn a bit more about India's caste system and the whole arranged-marriages-culture. It's very complicated and seemed really strange to me.
Wow, this is a long review for a book I didn't like too well. I guess I felt like I had to justify why I gave it one star

[Neko · Rating 2 out of 5]

What was this book trying to accomplish? Were we meant to feel sorry for her? I can tell you I got sick of her midway through the book but I stuck with it. So, she took a change of life because she couldn't find someone to marry in NY and basically the same happens in India as well.
She seems to cry about this an awful lot in the book but nor does she want to change anything either....I just got this feeling she has some sort of high expectation and it's just going to keep setting her up for failure. Her writing style was fine, it was chatty so in that respect it was easy to read but I got bored too, not much substance except her complaints of being single.

It's not like she didn't meet guys but there was always something wrong with them..Always.

I wouldn't recommend this book for others...I got it as a bargain bin read..Glad I paid little for it..If I had of bought it when it was out at top price I would of felt jipped out of my money.

[Kathryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to determine stars to give this book; the writing style is pretty good, the beginning of the book makes some great observations--but it all seems very pointless in the end!)

I read the first quarter of the book avidly, eagerly, enjoying the experience. The next quarter was somewhat less exciting. And then, about half way through, I was so fed up with Anita that I skimmed the next few chapters and went straight to the Epilogue (it's a mark of how infuriating this book became because I generally regard it as a HUGE no-no to look ahead in books!) to find out what became of the (as I saw it) going-nowhere-ness of her quest for marriage. After reading that, I felt no need to go back and read the rest.

What did I like about the book: Jain has a good writing style; I was very interested to gain some insights into the "New India" especially from the eyes of one whose father left India in the early 70s because of the lack of opportunity--now, this Harvard-educated journalist American daughter (who grew up in Sacramento area, actually!) flees TO India to escape the highflying New York culture with it's parties, bars, casual flings and viscious dating circle to find a more marriageable man. (She makes some great observations about the changes in India--has good insights into personalities and such)

Here, though, is where I became quite peeved with Anita. Because, you see, when she went to New Delhi she did THE SAME THING SHE DID IN NEW YORK!!!!! Parties, casual flings, etc., etc. -- it was as if she sought out the same sort of people, they were just New Delhi-ians instead of New Yorkers. It was clear that SHE thought she was finding something a bit more "connecting" in them, but I didn't really see the difference...

And the biggest disappointment of all...(spoiler warning)




**********SPOILERS*************







She never got married!!! As the book ended, two years after her arrival in New Delhi, she was still searching. Lots of her friends and former boyfriends are married, but still not Anita. She seems semi-content with this, but also still searching for love. I'm not saying we all need to be married to feel complete, but the fact that this was the basic premise of Jain's work (for HER to feel complete) and that it was called "Marrying Anita" I felt quite perturbed at the lack of "marrying" in the end. Especially since I'm not sure what Anita learned from it all...?

[Emily Wortman-Wunder · Rating 2 out of 5]

The most interesting part of this book, for me, was the close-up, semi-insider's view of new India (a world I will never, ever, ever, ever see, I realized several times as I read--I don't possess the right personality). Perched on Anita Jain's shoulder, we're inducted into parties, clubs, exclusive jaunts to the countryside, not to mention her struggles to secure a decent apartment as a single woman. I love that she gives us price tags (she spends $18.20 a month for a cook!) The ostensible subject of the book, however (moving to India to find a husband/ satisfying long-term relationship), was much harder to read about. I ended the book feeling bruised and a little sordid, and irritated with myself for partly sympathizing with the puritanical landlords who didn't appreciate the late-night parties and surfeit of male visitors. Well, obviously you're having trouble finding a husband, I clucked to myself more than once. And then felt bad for being judgmental. Nevertheless, something about this book is ultimately unsatisfying: while it purports to be a book about finding a husband and settling down--i.e., a serious and concerted change of mind and habits for the globe-trotting author--it ends up being a chronicle of changing the scenery but keeping the mind the same. And this, for me, was disappointing.

[Rushika · Rating 2 out of 5]

The byline is inaccurate for sure!!! "New India"... New, maybe from the perspective of a second-generation immigrant, but as a reader who's part of the generation that grew up through the economic boom of the nineties, the description lacked freshness to me. The changes are indeed all cosmetic... Not just the hinterland, even the "Tier-II" cities lack any ground-breaking change that may be expected of the New India in question...
The premise was doubtless interesting. And as massacred English is one of my pet peeves, the authors trysts with "Shaadi.com" were funny too... But my interest deteriorated as she traipsed around Dilli, one set-piece of a prospective husband soon merging into another. Cliches crowded the narrative.
One word i'll carry from this book: "Hendrixstan" - an original!

[Pam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book to be pretty disappointing. Like others have commented - I kept waiting for the part where something substantial happens. I also could never understand who Anita was really looking for - and I kept waiting for her to outgrow a lifestyle that seemed to be doing nothing for her - but she seemed very attached to and proud of her drinking and partying and casual liaisons. I hope everyone has had some time in their lives when they let loose and tried things simply for the hedonistic pleasure - but if it becomes a prolonged lifestyle - I think THAT is a limitation. JMHO

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This rose above the fray of standard chick lit a few times - I have found myself ruminating on a few passages. Namely, when her parents try to help and are surprised at just how baffling the search for another can be when the woman looking has so much to recommend for herself; her dad saying "we love you, whatever you've become"; and the poetry of realizing that just as certain groups have hundreds of names for snow or rain, there can also be hundreds of names for lonely.

[Rukshana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, lighthearted, quick read. Kind of like non-fiction chick-lit. I found Jain to be fairly class- and gender- conscious. Her commentary, although not earth-shattering, was smart and funny. She doesn’t really find love by the end of the book, but then I guess that would be too tight and neat of an ending. I am curious about where she is now.

I liked the fact that she stayed in New Delhi after her one-year quest – it made the relocation and story much more genuine, not just something she did so she could write a book. I thought it was pretty courageous and honest to document this journey; honestly, I would be embarrassed to divulge some of the details she recounted to readers (Indian aunties would definitely disapprove of the drinking, the numerous male friendships and dating, and the non-traditional ideas about relationships!). I also liked her parents, her dad in particular, for standing behind their daughter and supporting her.

Drawbacks: Chapters weren't thematically organized in anyway, they just
seemed to be a chronological account. I guess that makes sense since the basis of the book is on a one-year mission of sorts. Hard to tell where she was in time. Sometimes her relationships with male friends were kind of annoying, but then, who am I to judge?

[DeAnna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went to Junior High with Anita and we were pretty good friends for the 2 years there. I was excited to find out what she has been up to and the book brought back memories of her and her folks. I agree with other folks that the writing style is good, but the plot doesn't really move enough.

I thought it was a good effort for a first book. I learned quite a bit about India and how marriage is changing. I have other Indian friends that have been in semi-arranged marriages, so it is neat to have the perspective on it.

As others have mentioned, Anita doesn't come off very well in the book. I think she is pretty self-reflective about her flaws. This leaves them open to criticism by other people, but I give her credit. She is brave and honesty in a journey (and struggle)of exploring where she fits into the world. She holds onto herself, even if it isn't always pretty.

[E.d. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned that India is not the tradition bound society it once was. I enjoyed learning about the new India but Jain didn't do a great job of making herself into an interesting character. I found her writing compelling enough to finish the book but it lacked a fascinating main character. Some of the editing was sloppy. My edition has a few sentences where words seem to be missing. This book was more like a long newspaper article. It does open the eyes of the western reader to realize that cosmopolitan Indians now readily date, drink, divorce and have a fixation with youth culture.

[Roopali · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't tell if I hated the writing or hated the writer. The only thing keeping Anita Jain from getting married is Anita Jain. And as an Indian single girl in her 30s, I can relate to how she's feeling and what she's going through, but Anita does some real bonehead things. And one thing is for certain, she'll never get married now after potential suitors get a wind of this book.

[The Tick · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very shallow book that frequently veered off-topic.

[Cmorice · Rating 3 out of 5]

"D’Anita Jain on peut dire qu’elle a réussi sa vie dans tous les domaines… ou presque car, à trente-deux ans, elle n’est toujours pas mariée…
Au moment où le récit commence, Anita, après avoir travaillé comme journaliste sur plusieurs continents, habite depuis trois ans à New York, et ses expéditions matrimoniales pour dénicher un “garçon convenable” – et peut-être même l’amour… ? – sont, jusque-là, restées vaines.
Indiens installés de longue date aux Etats-Unis, ses parents, inquiets de voir leur fille encore célibataire à un âge aussi “avancé”, lui conseillent avec insistance de recourir au mariage arrangé.
Malgré ses réticences, naturelles chez une jeune femme éduquée aux Etats-Unis et, par conséquent, émancipée et très occidentalisée, Anita finit par accepter et décide de partir pour l’Inde dans l’espoir d’y rencontrer le mari de ses rêves. Mais, plutôt que d’obéir à la coutume en vigueur et de laisser des tantes cacochymes prendre en main le problème, elle choisit d’“arranger” les choses à sa manière.
A New Delhi, elle découvre une ville cosmopolite et vibrante et, au-delà, un pays où plus de la moitié de la population a moins de… trente ans ! Des jeunes qui mènent une vie encore très traditionnelle, mais aussi des femmes célibataires, divorcées, ou des homosexuels qui, loin d’être marginalisés, font pleinement partie de cette nouvelle Inde prospère.
Réjouissante invitation à franchir le seuil d’une Inde actuelle, dont les moeurs ne sont souvent guère différentes de celles qui prévalent dans le monde occidental, Anita cherche mari est un livre tonique, d’une intelligence pétrie d’humour où l’autodérision le dispute à un suspense insoutenable : oui ou non, Anita va-t-elle trouver ce mari qu’elle cherche ?"

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasantly surprised by this one. Picked it up because I was in the mood for some brainless, lightweight stories of dating mishaps. It does contain a few of these, but the "quest for love" is half-hearted, and it's for the best that it doesn't consume all 300 pages. The book description is a bit misleading, as the author doesn't spend much time "looking for a husband the old-fashioned way" but rather spends most of her time replicating her NYC social life in Delhi. The book is more about the author's thoughts on life in 21st-century Delhi as a single professional woman, particularly one who has Indian heritage but was raised in the U.S. It's still a fairly lightweight book and only looks at a very small sliver of Indian culture, but it was entertaining enough and did exceed my expectations.

[Divya Talreja · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s one of the worst books I have read in a really long time. Towards the end I honestly didn’t care if she found someone to marry. The main character is annoying, whining all the time, is ready to have sex on the first date and at the same time wants it to be romantic. In between she will keep adding bits of information about Indian history and culture which are absolutely unnecessary. Overall a terrible book please don’t waste your time

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing style is eminently readable, but the story is redundant and ultimately circular. Anita’s tales of her live life are relatable her breakdowns of society, dating and archetypes are subjective at best. Overall, I would rate this work a decent, quick read.

[Anne Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's funny, we learn a lot about India where the vision of marriage is very different from ours.
The heroine is endearing and I enjoyed following her adventures. However, I find that she falls in love a little too easily and it tends to get boring towards the end of the book.

[Lalitha Priyadharshini · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author seems to be chasing after a fantasy!

[Gayathri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a disappointment!

[Neha Gupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read more:

https://storywala.blogspot.com/2021/0...

[Shobee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I quit less than 20 pages in because I could already tell it was not right for me from a personal point of view.

[Tony Sherington · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book really interesting. A view into different cultures and how they interact in a rapidly changing world. I wish Arpita well and good luck in her quest whatever happens!

[Mansi B · Rating 5 out of 5]

No happy ending :( Not a story per se, but how life is.

[Elevate Difference · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the interest of full disclosure, I am half South Asian on my father’s side. That being said, I was a more than just a little intrigued when I read a New York Times review of Anita Jain’s memoir in which she describes her experiences seeking a love match via the ancient tradition of the arranged marriage.

As the reader learns in the first few chapters of the novel, Jain, who was raised by parents who emigrated from India to California in the '60s, is all too familiar with American style dating. Early on she describes a series of missed opportunities and disappointments that have sorely challenged her belief that true love truly exists for every person. We learn that Jain’s traditional - but indulgent - parents have given her the opportunity to get a Harvard education and the freedom to explore the options that such an education affords her - including living and working abroad - but are starting to fret about her marital prospects.

Upon returning to the U.S. to live in New York City after a prolonged stint abroad as a journalist, Jain finds herself under more pressure than before to change her single status and starts to question the unchallenged merits of the way Americans chose their mates. She describes the New York dating scene in alternately humorous and despairing terms and, ultimately, decides to travel to India in order to live and work and look for a romantic partner.

I found Jain’s writing style honest and engaging, but also somewhat disconcerting in her sometimes blow-by-blow description of unfulfilling encounters with members of the opposite sex. Maybe it says something about generational differences, or speaks to my own innate prudishness, but sometimes after reading about a particularly unfruitful dating excursion, I wondered whether Jain was casting her net too wide in the interest of making this a more entertaining read. While I found it interesting to read about the burgeoning club scene in India, and I appreciated Jain’s attempts to draw a connection between the increased economic growth and cultural change in the country, particularly for the younger generation, I also couldn’t help questioning her disappointment when a short-lived romance with a clubbing pal quickly fizzled out.

Some of the most likeable characters in Jain’s novel are her parents, who she enviously describes as “among the happiest couples I’ve ever known, bringing to mind Tolstoy’s first line of Anna Karenina. Substituting the word ‘couples’ for ‘families,’ it would read, ‘Happy couples are all alike; every unhappy couple is unhappy in its own way.’” I especially liked her humorous description of how her father starts managing her online dating profiles: “My father took to these websites like a freshly divorced forty-two-year old on match.com,” Jain writes. She adds, “My father also wrote my profile. This may be why some of my dates were surprised to discover I enjoy a glass of wine or two with dinner, and another couple afterward…”

I applaud Jain’s willingness to take on this subject in all of its complexity, which she does with aplomb and a certain amount of daring. Marrying Anita raised a number of thought-provoking issues for me: the concept of “choice” that is one of the cornerstones of the feminist movement and how that plays out for modern women, as well as the importance of challenging established notions that we may have about love, marriage, and happiness.

Review by Gita Tewari

[Amanda Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jain's writing was like a coherent, analytical treatise straight from the inner workings of my mind. I so enjoyed reading her heartfelt thoughts on dating, marriage, and the failures of Western courtship, her vivid descriptions of the new India, and the sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying but always touching encounters with American and Indian paramours. My only gripes were that she threw too many $20 words into the mix and that she failed to examine why she fell into the same old dating patterns in India--because, really, a change of location cannot totally remedy a lackluster love life. Overall I really loved this book and empathized so much with the author, mainly because of insightful little nuggets like this:


They, as well as their peers in the West, think that if they tell a girl to have "no expectations," they are doing the young lady a valuable service. I find this the most scurrilous phrase a man can utter. Most women are not looking to marry every man they date, but to tell her to have "no expectations" is, of course, to say to a woman she is good for one thing and one thing only--sex...In line with young men's attitudes, Indian women--like I fear they do all over the world--adopt the same breezy attitude toward sex and pretend not to care when a man disappears.


In New York, I had felt irremediably stuck in my workaday, drink-a-day job in journalism and felt that the city's dating ethos encouraged a type of desperation among its single...women, including me. I didn't like who I'd become in New York. Nearly every night I would join a gaggle of my female friends to perform forensic science on the email exchanges of various prospects, who would soon disappear, to be replaced by new ones...It was different in Delhi. My ideas kept flowing from a pipeline that could not be stanched. I wanted to buy a vineyard in the new wine region in India; I wanted to open a tapas bar with Jose, my Spanish chef ex-boyfriend; I wanted to produce my friend Vincent's film. I saw opportunity in this New India everywhere I looked. Whether or not these ideas came to fruition, I was happy to be having them. The old and new worlds had inverted themselves. India had that full-of-possibilities, anything -can-happen feel, while New York felt set in its ways, traditional.

[Meneesha Govender · Rating 5 out of 5]

She's a successful journalist whose work has taken her to many countries. She was educated at Harvard University. She is a woman who has the world at her feet - or so it seems.

At 33, Anita, an Indian-American woman living in New York, is at that stage in her life where she really wants to meet the man of her dreams, sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after.

But her search for a suitable boyfriend, never mind suitable husband, is more difficult than she expects.

Having grown up in America, she has trusted the Western way of finding a husband. She believes in falling in love, pre-marital sex and choosing her partner herself.

But her parents are of the old Indian school whose marriage was arranged. Although they have lived in America for more than 30 years now, they still believe strongly in certain Indian cultural practices and are beginning to fret that soon Anita will be an old maid. So her father logs her details on an internet dating site in the hope of finding her a good husband, "caste no bar".

Feeling more and more isolated in New York, Anita begins to question her Western beliefs on love and marriage - after all her parents and several other relatives living in the US are testimony to the fact that arranged marriages and Indian values do have their place.

So in her quest for the perfect husband, she moves back to India and vows to find him in the "traditional way".

But how different is life in the new India - a country that is growing and modernising at breakneck pace? Will she find a suitable partner?

In telling her tale of a quest for a husband, Jain explores lives, trends and the changing values of this new India.

Marrying Anita is a deeply honest, gripping and sometimes uncomfortable story. Without attempting to romanticise or criticise one value system over the other, it lays bare the facts - good and bad. From choice and lack of it, to casual, unfulfilling sex, to drugs and alcohol, to date rape and acid attacks - this narrative pulls a host of issues together superbly into a finely woven story. It is one novel I will not forget in a hurry.

[Ranjani Rao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anita's journalist background is displayed both in her writing skills and her analysis of the India of the new millennium in the chapters that describe her on-off relationship with India in the years of growing up in USA. Her self-proclaimed " A quest for love in the New India", as the byline reads on the cover page of book that shows a pair of hands covered with mehendi leads Anita towards several young people. While she finds many kindred souls, particularly when it comes to consuming copious amounts of alcohol and cigarettes, even hashish, in the racy bars of Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida, they all seem to fall short of her requirements for a spouse.


Anita candidly shares considerable details of the lives and motivations of her parents' immigrant experience as well as her own life as a single woman who gets tired of her dating fiascos in New York city. There are way too many details of her interactions with men of many nationalities and the complicated rituals of the dating scene which only fosters greater emptiness in Anita. While we feel sorry for her unfortunate dalliances, Anita comes across as a bold woman not afraid to share her growing desperation at her loneliness.

The book reminded me of a work of fiction "Sharmila's Book" by Bharti Kirchner where a woman comes to Delhi to marry a suitable boy but ends up marrying someone else instead. I did not much like the novel for its superficial treatment and point of view which was written for a Western audience. At times, I thought of "Eat Pray Love" one of my favorite books in the memoir genre about a woman's year of soul-searching with the specific intent of not being with a guy. Though not of the same caliber as Eat Pray Love, this book certainly is an honest investigation and analysis of the reality of finding a mate in these days of internet matrimonial portals and global range of choices.

At the end, Anita is not looking for a bigger pool to choose from, but like everyone else, she is looking for one soul mate. And I wish her well as her quest continues.

[mantareads · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had to read this book for Literature class on postcolonial theory. The book is an astonishing waste of time, and i cannot believe i spent time reading such tripe.

Jain's autobiographical account of her search for a husband is uninspired, banal and trite writing that continues or tries to continue in the genre of the dime-a-dozen chick lit books that are mushrooming everywhere. There is nothing particularly interesting or striking about her writing, unless you count 'whiny' as a redeeming feature - or unless you want to acknowledge how disturbingly Jain is trying to market her difference as an Indian-born Anglophone author (author being a very generous way to describe what she does in this book) conducting a "migration in reverse" - journeying "back" from America to India in search of a husband.

What do the henna-ed hands wearing a wedding ring - shorn off all possible context - on the cover tell you about how cynically this book has been marketed and written? How much more exotically does Jain want to market herself? Sad storytelling that moves from one man to another: but potential target is somehow always gay, taken, too late, too early, too young, or any combination of the above.

In the end, Jain does not find her husband, and she tries to close on an optimistic note of hope about starting again - some bland, unsatisfyingly vague comment about reincarnation and being happy alone. It rings tinny and brittle given that the whole book - yes, the WHOLE NARRATIVE is more or less about Jain seeking unsuccessfully for a husband.

Thank you Ms. Jain. You are a sterling example of what NOT to read, even when you're bored out of your brains.

[DMD · Rating 1 out of 5]

I decided to read this book based on somewhat positive media reviews. I overlooked the cover and picked it up from the library. This book begins as a bad version of Sex and the City where after some dating antics that don't work out, Anita just starts bawling during a picnic with friends in couples and decides to move to India to find a man. Her commentary about India is rather generalized and you aren't sure if she fact checked anything or is just making sweeping statements to awe her readers who aren't familiar with India. Although it's obvious she idolizes her father, she made her parents into caricatures of Indian parents and does the same with her Aunts and Uncles. In fact, I feel like I got a better sense of all the pot she smoked than her mother. Rather than using most of the book to detail her sexual exploits with unsuitable men, I wish she had spent more time talking about what it was like setting up a new life in India. The parts about her trying to find an apartment or going with a friend to interview a terrorist were of particular interest. Unfortunately, they just had brief mentions and more pages were spent describing the clubs scene.

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You just seem to pick the wrong guy" is the story of Jain's life..and she continues to do so throughout this novel. I kept wishing that she had someone there to help guide her from making the same mistakes over and over again. There were parts that I was cringing because I knew what was going to occur before I read it on the page. I know I made the same mistakes in my 20s spending time with men who were not worth my time but I can not claim that I see marriage in modern times beneficial to women. I have many friends in beautiful marriages but I would be content merely marrying my best friend. At the very least, they would not have the expectation that I would cook (an impossible feat unless they are a vegetarian or like seafood, which has only happened once in all my dating) or clean for them. The book was well-written and provided a lot of history on how the culture of India has changed in terms of customs and dating. I found the historical aspect of the book fascinating and while I was cheering for Jain the entire time I was reading her journey, I was silently pitying her for all the foolish things she did even in her late 30s.