Podhu: On Marriage, Markets, and Other Family Businesses

Did you miss me?

This essay, one that I have taken an inordinate amount of time to revisit, rewrite, interrogate, and occasionally argue with, is perhaps the most personal thing I have written in this series and, for that very reason, perhaps the most radical. As diplomatically optimistic, fair, and deliberately measured as I try to be in my writing, I am almost certain that what follows will ruffle feathers, strike nerves, and settle rather uncomfortably upon a few shoulders. I may even lose some readers today.

Some may feel called out. Some may feel as though these words land a little too close to home. Some may find themselves mentally compiling a list of rebuttals before they have even reached the third paragraph. Some may even feel tempted to locate me, confiscate my laptop, and prevent me from publishing another essay ever again.

The truth is that I hesitated before writing this. Not because I feared criticism, but because writing honestly about one's own people is infinitely harder than writing about strangers. Strangers do not remember your childhood. Strangers do not know your grandmother. Strangers do not sit beside you at weddings and funerals and ask your parents uncomfortable questions.

But I woke up this morning and chose honesty over comfort.

So you, dear reader, are more than welcome to leave at any point. You may disagree with me entirely. You may think I have exaggerated. You may think I have not gone far enough.

Yet I hope you stay anyway, because beneath the satire, the gossip, the economics, the anthropology, the family politics, and the occasional scandal, this essay is ultimately about us.

This essay is about the industry of marriage within the Bunt community, tracing it from the farthest reaches of my research to the present day, from a time when maternal uncles negotiated alliances over betel leaves and areca nuts to a world of biodatas, WhatsApp messages, matrimonial websites, and carefully curated photographs. It is about weddings, certainly, but it is also about economics, status, inheritance, kinship, ambition, gossip, competition, and the countless invisible negotiations that take place long before a bride ever wears a silk saree or a groom a mundu. If philosophers have long debated whether marriage is a sacred covenant, a social contract, a legal arrangement, or a romantic union, the history of marriage in Tulunadu suggests that it has often been all of those things at once, while simultaneously functioning as something else entirely: a mechanism through which families accumulated social capital, protected wealth, forged alliances, preserved reputation, and occasionally attempted to climb a rung higher on the socioeconomic ladder.

If philosophers have long argued over whether marriage is a natural institution or merely a social construct, I never spent much time thinking about either question. Marriage simply was not the thing that occupied my imagination.

I grew up with a career woman for a mother and spent much of my childhood watching her prepare for flights to whichever corner of the world her work demanded she go. That was what fascinated me. Not wedding dresses. Not engagement rings. Not seating charts or flower arrangements. I dreamt of airports, itineraries, boardrooms, and passports filled with stamps.

I wanted to be that fiercely independent woman carrying her own American Express Black Card, the sort of woman who could wake up on a random Tuesday morning and decide that the family was going to Sri Lanka by Friday.

That was my mother in a nutshell.

She worked harder than anyone I knew and yet, when a few precious days of freedom appeared in her calendar, she possessed an almost reckless spontaneity. Sometimes she would decide over breakfast that we were going to Thailand. Sometimes Sri Lanka. Occasionally the bookings had not even been made yet. She would simply locate the finest hotel available, swipe her card, and carry on as though such decisions were perfectly ordinary.

That was what I wanted for myself.

Not marriage.

Freedom.

My mother can command a room merely by entering it.

She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever met, and I do not say that simply because she is my mother. She possesses the sort of beauty that makes people instinctively look twice, the sort that remains long after youth has passed because it was never entirely dependent upon youth in the first place. It comes from certainty. From competence. From knowing exactly who she is.

She has the features of a warrior queen, and in many ways, she is one.

Long before I understood balance sheets, leadership, ambition, or sacrifice, I understood that people listened when she spoke. I understood that she occupied space differently. There are some women who enter a room hoping to be accepted by it. My mother entered rooms expecting to contribute to them, improve them, and occasionally take charge of them.

As a child, that felt far more romantic to me than marriage ever did.

So as a child, I would daydream not about wedding venues or honeymoon destinations, but about what I would do while waiting for my next flight.

Would I sit at an airport lounge with a laptop balanced on my knees, typing furiously with my brow furrowed in concentration like my mother often did? Would I carry a Blackberry Pearl and answer important calls between gates, making swift decisions that somehow affected people, projects, and places I had never even seen? Would I be travelling to London? Singapore? New York? Would someone be waiting for me at the other end with a folder full of problems that only I could solve?

These were the fantasies of my childhood.

I grew up around my mother's workplace and was fortunate enough to see competence up close. Not the glamorous version that appears on television, but the real thing: the long hours, the difficult conversations, the responsibility, the occasional exhaustion, and the quiet confidence that comes from knowing exactly what must be done next.

Before I ever understood marriage, I understood work.

The Marriage I Grew Up Watching

But I also saw my mother in a marriage.

Not merely a marriage, but the kind of marriage I would one day hope for myself.

Much has been written about what makes a successful marriage. Philosophers have argued over whether marriage exists for companionship, procreation, mutual benefit, social stability, romantic fulfilment, or some combination of all four. Yet as a child, I never encountered marriage as a theory. I encountered it as a lived reality.

I grew up surrounded by a healthy marriage.

My parents are genuinely in love with each other. They are great friends. They respect one another deeply. They enjoy each other's company. More importantly, they seem to genuinely like each other, which I have since learned is not always guaranteed simply because two people are married.

My mother was, both externally and internally, the higher earner and the more professionally successful of the two. Yet my father, a man who grew up surrounded by sisters, cousins, aunts, and formidable women, never appeared threatened by that reality. He is secure in a way that many people speak about but few truly embody. He dreams ambitiously for the women he loves. He pushes us, encourages us, and occasionally refuses to let us settle for less than we are capable of becoming.

It never occurred to me that a woman's success and a man's happiness were supposed to be competing interests.

A Unit

They were always a team.

Sometimes, unfortunately for me, they were a team against me, but a team nonetheless.

Even when my poor younger self received a proper yelling and an accompanying bettha pooje from my mother for having my elbows on the dinner table, my father remained firmly on her side. Years later, when I brought up the incident and accused him of being profoundly unjust, he listened patiently before admitting that yes, perhaps it had been slightly unfair.

Then he shrugged.

"But she's my wife," he said. "I married her. I'm on her team."

What struck me was not the answer itself but how obvious it seemed to him.

He explained that they had disagreed privately. They had argued about it amongst themselves. He understood my grievance perfectly well. Yet years earlier, they had made a promise to one another that, wherever possible, they would present a united front to the world.

That promise mattered more than whether my elbows had been on the table.

Looking back, I realise how fortunate I was.

We were not a perfect family. There was generational trauma, occasional dysfunction, and enough stubborn personalities to power a small nation. Yet when viewed from a distance, we were a remarkably well-oiled unit.

And that became my threshold for marriage.

Not romance.

Not grand gestures.

Not diamonds.

A unit.

Someone on my team.

Someone who understood that life would occasionally be difficult, occasionally unfair, and occasionally absurd, but who would still choose to stand beside me and face the problem rather than stand opposite me and become part of it.

Perhaps the greatest gift my parents gave me was not confidence, ambition, education, or even opportunity, but communication.

We were, and remain, a family that speaks.

Not always gracefully, not always gently, and certainly not always in agreement, but we speak nonetheless. There were very few silences in our home, at least not the dangerous kind that quietly calcifies into resentment. News travelled quickly. Feelings travelled quickly. Arguments travelled quickly. So did apologies.

If something unpleasant had been said, we told one another. If somebody had heard a rumour, we repeated it. If there was a difficult conversation waiting to happen, it happened. We would much rather hear an uncomfortable truth from each other than a comfortable lie from somebody else.

Looking back, I realise that what I witnessed in my parents' marriage was not merely affection but trust, and trust, unlike romance, is rarely dramatic. It is built quietly through thousands of conversations, through ordinary evenings at dining tables, through disagreements that are resolved rather than avoided, through the gradual certainty that there is very little one person could say that would make the other walk away.

That, more than anything else, became my understanding of marriage.

Entering the Marriage Mart

Marriage was not a subject that occupied much space in our household while I was growing up. Education came first, work came first, ambition came first, and there always seemed to be something more pressing to discuss than husbands and weddings. There were examinations to pass, degrees to earn, flights to catch, books to read, careers to build, and worlds to discover, and so marriage remained somewhere in the distant background, existing less as an expectation and more as an eventuality that could be dealt with at some undefined point in the future.

Then I finished at Oxford.

Almost overnight, and yet so gradually that I barely noticed it happening, conversations began to emerge that had never existed before. There was no formal family meeting, no declaration, no dramatic intervention. Instead, there was simply a growing sense that perhaps it was time to start thinking about marriage, that perhaps the season of academic pursuits and professional ambitions had now reached the point where another question deserved consideration.

The difficulty was that I was entirely unequipped for the task.

I had never been on the apps and remain deeply suspicious of them to this day. Every man who approached me was met with what can only be described as a profoundly Eloise Bridgerton response, a mixture of confusion, horror, and an overwhelming desire to be left alone. Romance, at least in the way it seemed to present itself to most people, felt less like a great adventure and more like an administrative inconvenience.

Yet beneath all of that resistance sat a quiet certainty. If I ever chose marriage for myself, I knew precisely what kind I wanted, because I had already spent my entire life watching it unfold before me. I wanted what my parents had. I wanted a friendship so strong that the marriage itself seemed almost secondary to it, a partnership built upon shared adventures, long walks, spontaneous travel, private jokes, mutual respect, and the sort of laughter that becomes so uncontrollable that one person has to leave the room simply to recover. I wanted someone who felt like a companion first and a spouse second, someone who stood beside me not because life was easy but because life would inevitably become difficult.

Perhaps that is why researching this essay became unexpectedly therapeutic. I began the project believing I was studying an institution, but somewhere along the way, I realised I was also trying to understand myself, to identify the distance between what I had witnessed growing up and what I was observing in the contemporary marriage market. Over the course of my research, I followed thirty-two young women and twenty-seven young men navigating marriage within the Bunt community, and what I found shocked me.

Marriage as an Institution

Before I tell you what I discovered on the modern marriage mart, we must travel backwards.

One of the great debates surrounding marriage is whether it is born out of love, necessity, law, religion, or convenience. Philosophers have spent centuries trying to determine whether marriage exists to protect property, raise children, organise society, provide companionship, or simply give legal recognition to a relationship that would have existed regardless. Like most things involving human beings, the answer appears to be wonderfully inconvenient.

In Tulunadu, marriage was all of these things at once.

If you have read my essay on Badhi, you already know that economics sat quietly in the corner of every marriage conversation, whether people acknowledged it openly or not. Yet the deeper I dug into the subject, the more I realised that marriage amongst Bunts was never just about two people finding each other.

It was about houses.

Not houses in the architectural sense, though those mattered too, but houses in the old world sense of the word: families, lineages, inheritances, obligations, alliances, reputations, rivalries, ambitions, and futures that stretched far beyond the bride and groom themselves.

My generational-cusp brain can quite easily produce the argument that marriage is a social construct, and if you happen to live in New York, London, or San Francisco, one could make a persuasive case that marriage is little more than a government-recognised relationship wrapped in tax benefits, legal protections, healthcare rights, and a very expensive party. But in Tulunadu, marriage carried a different weight altogether.

A marriage could elevate a family.

A marriage could rescue a family.

A marriage could destroy a family.

A marriage could preserve wealth, consolidate land, settle disputes, strengthen business interests, create political alliances, repair old fractures, or alter the fortunes of generations not yet born.

The bride and groom stood at the centre of the ceremony, but they were rarely the only people getting married.

Entire networks were built.

Perhaps that is why Tulu, a language I have repeatedly accused of possessing all the romance of a balance sheet, contains an astonishing vocabulary for obligations, transactions, negotiations, kinship, and social relationships. Love certainly existed in Tulunadu. Many people were lucky enough to find it.

But history suggests that very few families were willing to leave something as important as marriage entirely in its hands.

The Maternal Uncle

Decision-making amongst Bunts was never quite as straightforward as Krishna made it appear with Abhimanyu and Uttara.

Behind every marriage stood an entire cast of characters, each carrying their own interests, obligations, ambitions, and anxieties, but towering above all of them was one figure whose influence was almost impossible to overstate: the maternal uncle.

Modern readers often imagine marriage as an agreement entered into by two individuals who freely choose one another, and indeed many contemporary philosophical discussions define marriage as a voluntary partnership between autonomous adults. Historically, however, much of the world understood marriage very differently. Marriage was not simply a relationship; it was an institution that organised inheritance, kinship, property, labour, obligation, and social order. Individuals married, certainly, but families negotiated.

Tulunadu was no exception.

In a society shaped by matriliny, where lineage, inheritance, and responsibility travelled through the maternal line, the maternal uncle occupied a position that was simultaneously political, economic, social, and deeply personal. He was not merely a relative. He was often the custodian of family interests, the guardian of lineage, the keeper of obligations, and, on occasion, the chief negotiator of a marriage alliance.

To understand historical Bunt marriages, one must first abandon the modern image of two people falling in love and choosing one another in splendid isolation. Marriage rarely existed in isolation. It existed within a web of obligations stretching backwards through generations and forwards into futures not yet born.

In the historical context, Brahmins arrived in our region much later, and therefore many of the rituals that contemporary readers now associate with Hindu weddings were either absent or far less central than they would later become. The Bunt marriage process, in its most distilled form, unfolded as follows.

Before Brahmin settlements became widespread across our region, many of the rituals that contemporary readers would immediately associate with a Hindu wedding either did not exist in their present form or occupied a far less important role. The marriage itself was surprisingly brief. The negotiations surrounding it, however, could stretch across months.

The journey towards marriage often began with the Nischaya, an engagement of sorts, though engagement perhaps does not quite capture what it truly was. The bride and groom were not even required to be present. Instead, the maternal uncles of both families, accompanied by the senior men of their respective houses, gathered together and exchanged betel leaves and areca nuts, creating a socially binding agreement that their niece and nephew would be married on an agreed-upon date. In many ways, this single exchange tells us everything we need to know about how marriage was understood. Long before the bride and groom made promises to one another, their families had already done so.

Later came Madarangee, a custom that appears to have grown in prominence after increased interaction with Arab traders and the Beary community along the coast. Altha, and later henna, would be applied to both bride and groom within their maternal homes, transforming preparation itself into a communal ritual.

Then came Pettige Kattuna, perhaps one of the most revealing customs of all. A large wooden chest was prepared for the bride, filled not only with clothing but with practical provisions for the life ahead. Food for travel was packed alongside gold, for gold was not simply an adornment but security, independence, and insurance against uncertainty. If she happened to be an elder daughter who would eventually bring an Aliya into her own maternal home, the chest was often smaller, containing only what was necessary for the immediate journey, for her departure was understood to be temporary rather than permanent.

The Muhurthasese followed, where the voddungila was placed upon the bride's finger as a symbol of her enduring bond to her maternal home, while toe rings associated with fertility were also bestowed upon her. What strikes me about this ritual is that even at the moment of transition, there remained a visible acknowledgement that a woman did not cease belonging to one family simply because she was joining another.

Then came the Maddme itself.

For all the importance modern society places upon weddings, the historical Bunt Maddme was remarkably brief, often lasting no more than ten minutes. During Dhaare Yerruna, a ginde, a spouted kalasha, was raised by the family alongside the bride and groom. Kai Patthuna followed, family members offered their blessings, and speeches were delivered recounting lineage and ancestry so that all gathered might know precisely who was joining whom.

Marriage was not only witnessed.

It was publicly situated within history.

Only afterwards came the Vanas, the feast, and finally the Maamisekke, the formal welcoming of the bride and groom into their new household.

Marriage, Status, and Multiple Wives

Modern readers often assume that historical societies possessed a singular and universally accepted definition of marriage. They did not.

Amongst Bunts, second marriages were not necessarily taboo, and men belonging to large landholding houses, particularly Guthinaars and Yajamanas, sometimes had multiple wives. What is particularly interesting is not the existence of these marriages, but the hierarchy that existed within them.

The distinction was publicly acknowledged:

* The first wife received a full Maddme and the accompanying Maryada.

* Subsequent wives were often recognised through a Kai Patthuna rather than a full wedding ceremony.

This distinction tells us something important. Marriage was never simply a question of whether a relationship existed. Status existed within marriage itself. Recognition existed within marriage itself. Even amongst wives, there were gradations of prestige, legitimacy, and public honour.

History is often untidy in this way. It rarely conforms to our modern assumptions about how people ought to have lived, and perhaps that is precisely why it remains worth studying.

Astrology, Uncertainty, and the Search for Certainty

Before the influence of Madhvacharya, Shankaracharya, and the increasing presence of Brahminical traditions across the coast, horoscopes occupied a far less central position in the marriage process than they do today. Matches were assessed through a different lens altogether, one that placed greater emphasis upon lineage, Bari, family reputation, socioeconomic standing, inheritance, and the potential benefit a union could bring to both houses.

The weddings themselves were comparatively simple affairs. There were palanquins, dompas, chende, and vadya, and while these celebrations could certainly be joyous, they lacked the sprawling spectacle that many contemporary weddings have become. The marriage mattered. The performance surrounding the marriage mattered considerably less.

Yet this leaves us with an interesting question.

How did people make decisions?

How did they decide which girl should marry which boy? How did they assess risk, compatibility, prosperity, fertility, character, and future success in a world without spreadsheets, LinkedIn profiles, bank statements, medical records, dating apps, or social media?

Every society develops methods for dealing with uncertainty. Some societies trust data. Some trust markets. Some trust institutions. Some trust algorithms. Tulunadu, like much of the world, eventually came to place considerable faith in astrology.

And once astrology entered the equation, an entirely new industry emerged around marriage.

The arrival of astrology did not replace the earlier selection process so much as attach itself to it. Families still cared about lineage, Bari, reputation, inheritance, land, social standing, and the practical realities of life, but now another layer had been added to the equation. Horoscopes were examined. The Mysore Panchanga made its rounds. The Udupi Panchanga followed close behind. Auspicious dates were debated with remarkable seriousness. Before this, most months were considered acceptable for beginning something new, with Aati generally avoided because of its association with the agricultural cycle. Now the heavens themselves were invited into the negotiation.

The Jaataka gave birth to an entirely new industry, one whose influence has only expanded with time.

I should confess that I eventually studied astrology myself, though not for the reasons most people imagine. I did not study it because I desperately wanted to predict my future. I studied it because I wanted to understand what everybody else was talking about. At some point, after hearing enough conversations about doshas, yogas, dashas, transits, and planetary afflictions, intellectual curiosity got the better of me.

Do I believe in predictive astrology?

The honest answer is that I still do not know.

Nothing in my life has ever gone according to plan. The neat timelines promised by astrologers have generally taken one look at my life and wandered off in another direction. My own yellare gave me a considerable fright when I first learned about it, and yet years after surviving it I am still waiting to determine whether the promised Raja Yoga has actually arrived or simply missed its flight.

I digress.

What interests me far more than whether astrology is objectively correct is what it reveals about human beings. Marriage requires people to make one of the most consequential decisions of their lives while possessing only fragments of information about the future. Nobody knows who their future spouse will become. Nobody knows what illnesses, opportunities, triumphs, losses, disappointments, migrations, businesses, friendships, or tragedies lie ahead. Faced with such uncertainty, societies inevitably search for certainty wherever they can find it.

In Tulunadu, many found it in the stars.

And with the stars came astrologers, priests, remedies, consultations, interpretations, and an entire economy built around reducing uncertainty.

Although priests rarely occupied centre stage during the wedding itself, they became deeply influential in the decisions that led to it. In many ways, they became advisors not only on marriage, but on destiny itself.

At birth, a horoscope would be drawn up and interpreted, and with it came an entire map of possibilities. There would be favourable periods and unfavourable periods, years of prosperity and years of caution, moments where the stars appeared to smile upon the child and others where they seemed considerably less enthusiastic. Somewhere within those charts, one could often find the Maddme Yoga, the period during which marriage was expected to occur.

With prediction came anxiety.

And with anxiety came remedies.

Like every society that has ever attempted to make sense of uncertainty, Tulunadu developed its own catalogue of superstitions, explanations, rituals, and interventions. Some were benign, some were charming, some were deeply symbolic, and some appear rather extraordinary when viewed through a modern lens.

An Amavasya-born child, for example, could be considered exceptionally fortunate in one village and profoundly unlucky in another. The same birth that was celebrated in one household could be greeted with concern in the next. To remedy the perceived misfortune, some families temporarily entrusted the child to members of the Koraga community, who would name the child before returning them to their families. The belief was that whatever ill fortune had accompanied the birth would be left behind in the process.

Then there were moles.

Entire theories emerged around their placement, colour, and location on the body. A white mole in one place might signify prosperity. A mole elsewhere might indicate influence, misfortune, unusual luck, or an unpredictable temperament. A mole upon the tongue was particularly feared in some circles, for such individuals were believed to possess words that carried unusual weight, blessings that lingered and curses that refused to leave.

Horoscopes, too, came with their own collection of warnings. Manglik doshas entered popular conversation long before Aishwarya Rai made them internationally famous, and remedies were often prescribed to neutralise their effects. Some priests recommended symbolic marriages to trees. Others prescribed specific rituals, offerings, fasts, donations, or acts of service intended to restore cosmic balance.

Every dosha seemed to arrive carrying a corresponding solution.

And therein lies something fascinating.

The moment a society becomes convinced that a problem exists, an economy forms around solving it.

A dosha required a priest. A priest required rituals. Rituals required flowers, coconuts, lamps, milk, fruit, ghee, temple workers, musicians, artisans, farmers, and countless others whose livelihoods became intertwined with belief. Whether one views these practices through the lens of faith, anthropology, or economics, the result remains the same: entire networks of people found purpose and income within these systems.

My own view has always been somewhat conflicted. Living in Tulunadu, where daivas are often understood not as wish-granters but as keepers of balance, I sometimes wonder whether we spend too much time attempting to avoid misfortune altogether. Every life rises. Every life falls. Every family enjoys seasons of abundance and seasons of hardship. Perhaps the wheel simply turns at different times for different people.

Yet the remedy industry continues to flourish, the Uppaddhra Retrograde continues its relentless assault upon the peace of mind of Bunts everywhere, and florists, dairy farmers, priests, astrologers, temple workers, and ritual specialists continue to benefit from humanity's eternal desire to negotiate with uncertainty.

The Specialists of Uncertainty

Of course, once society becomes convinced that misfortune can be predicted, it does not take long before specialists emerge who claim they can explain it, interpret it, prevent it, negotiate with it, or occasionally reverse it altogether.

Thus emerged entire professions devoted not to creating certainty, but to managing uncertainty.

The horoscope identified the problem.

The specialists offered solutions.

Amongst the most fascinating of these practices was the Ashtamangala Prashne. When ordinary explanations failed, and families found themselves confronting questions that seemed impossible to answer, specialists were often brought from Kerala to conduct elaborate consultations intended to identify hidden causes, unseen influences, forgotten obligations, offended deities, ancestral issues, or enemies working quietly beyond sight.

The answers rarely arrived alone.

They arrived accompanied by remedies.

A ritual to perform.

A donation to make.

A temple to visit.

A vow to fulfil.

A wrong to correct.

Or occasionally, a warning about a hidden enemy lurking somewhere within the social fabric of one's life.

Viewed anthropologically, the process is rather fascinating. Every society develops experts whose role is to interpret uncertainty. Today we have management consultants, therapists, market analysts, risk assessors, political strategists, and data scientists. Historically, Tulunadu simply had a different set of specialists asking many of the same questions.

Why is this happening?

Who caused it?

How do we fix it?

And perhaps most importantly, how much will it cost?

The Prashna Deepuna remains considerably more common across Tulunadu. Faced with a pressing question, a worried family, or a decision that refused to reveal itself through ordinary reasoning, one could seek out a priest who would cast and interpret cowrie shells, reading patterns and symbols that were believed to contain answers to questions that had already consumed countless hours of discussion within the household.

Further north, particularly towards Udupi, one also encounters Poo Prashna. Here, the unopened strands of the pingara, the areca inflorescence, are drawn and counted, their number and arrangement interpreted to reveal an answer. To the outsider, it can appear almost mystical. To the believer, it is simply another language through which uncertainty speaks.

And uncertainty, as I have discovered, has an extraordinary ability to generate economic activity.

Sometimes the answer that emerged from these consultations was surprisingly practical. A donation needed to be made. A neglected ritual required completion. A prayer had been forgotten. A vow remained unfulfilled. A temple required support. A family obligation had been ignored.

Sometimes, however, the explanation ventured into darker territory.

Hidden enemies.

The evil eye.

Maata.

Black magic.

Things spoken about quietly, often after sunset, and rarely in the presence of sceptics.

When such explanations emerged, more specialists entered the story. Historical accounts speak of Mappila Muslims from Kerala being consulted for remedies against occult practices. Certain Joiser families acquired reputations for addressing afflictions that others could not explain. Different communities developed different expertise, and over time entire networks of ritual specialists emerged to address problems that existed somewhere between faith, folklore, fear, and lived experience.

Yet fear was not the only emotion these systems attempted to influence.

Desire had its own market.

Alongside protections against misfortune existed practices intended to attract fortune. In the context of marriage, particularly when a highly desirable podhu appeared beyond reach, stories circulated of yantra and tantra being employed to improve one's chances. Attraction rituals, protection rituals, and objects known as uruku occupied a curious place within the cultural imagination, carrying reputations not entirely unlike the Horcruxes of Harry Potter, objects believed to contain power far beyond their physical form.

Whether one believes such things is almost beside the point.

The anthropologist in me is less interested in whether they worked and more interested in why people sought them out in the first place. Every generation, regardless of how educated it believes itself to be, eventually encounters something it desperately wants and cannot fully control. Some people respond with prayer. Some respond with strategy. Some respond with superstition.

Most, if we are being honest, try all three.

The Madhyanthara

Eventually, after the doshas had been diagnosed, the remedies prescribed, the stars consulted, the gods petitioned, and every aunt, uncle, neighbour, and distant relative had contributed their entirely unsolicited opinion, the Madhyanthara entered the story.

The Madhyanthara was the mediator, although even that word feels woefully inadequate for describing what they actually did. They were part diplomat, part intelligence network, part marriage consultant, part public relations manager, and occasionally part therapist. In a society where reputation carried enormous weight and dignity was carefully preserved, the Madhyanthara became the bridge between two families who wished to know more about one another without appearing too eager to know more about one another.

Long before Tinder, Facebook, WhatsApp groups, matrimonial websites, and the modern practice of forwarding biodatas with the enthusiasm of chain letters, Bunts had already perfected a remarkably sophisticated system of matchmaking. Interest was rarely expressed directly. Instead, a podhu travelled through a mediator who quietly approached the other side, gauged interest, gathered information, relayed concerns, softened rejections, and occasionally shepherded an alliance all the way to marriage.

What fascinates me most is that the Madhyanthara was never really selling people. They were managing information.

And information, much like today, was the most valuable currency in the marriage market.

Who was educated?

Who had inherited.

Who was wealthy?

Who was pretending to be wealthy.

Who possessed an excellent reputation.

Who possessed a reputation that required careful editing before presentation.

Who had prospects.

Who had problems?

Who had both.

At one point during my research, I came across a record indicating that a mediator had been paid seventy-three annas in 1901 for successfully bringing a match to fruition. The amount itself is almost irrelevant. What matters is that somebody was willing to pay for the service at all. By the turn of the twentieth century, matchmaking had already become specialised labour, and wherever specialised labour exists, an economy is never very far behind.

When mutual interest finally emerged, the Madhyanthara arranged a Paathera, during which the two families met and conversations that had until then travelled through intermediaries could finally occur face to face. Promises were exchanged, expectations were discussed, and words were given. Not legal promises, not contracts drafted by lawyers, but something that in tightly knit communities often carried far greater weight than paperwork ever could.

A family's word.

And for generations, that was often enough.

And then, once the doshas had been rectified, the stars appeased, and the family sufficiently reassured that no cosmic catastrophe was imminent, the Madhyanthara, the mediator, was called upon to carry a podhu to the other side.

In many ways, Tulunadu was respected long before Facebook, Tinder, Bumble, or whatever app currently exists to make people feel simultaneously connected and disappointed. Interest travelled through a mediator. The Madhyanthara would gauge interest, gather information, assess compatibility, and, if all went well, bring the matter to a close.

At one point during my research, I came across a record indicating that the highest amount paid to a mediator in 1901 was seventy-three annas for successfully arranging a match between two families. The amount itself is not particularly interesting. The fact that somebody was willing to pay it is. Marriage had already become valuable enough to create specialised labour around it.

When the two families finally met, a Paathera was held. Words were exchanged. Promises were made. Families gave one another their word. After which came the Nischaya.

As the landed gentry of Tulunadu began migrating to greener pastures, however, and as Bunts increasingly pursued education, business, and opportunities beyond their ancestral villages, the selection process evolved. The questions remained remarkably similar, but the variables changed.

The Boys Were Assessed By:

1. Did he own a hotel in Bombay, and was it actually his?

2. Was he set to inherit the hotel?

3. Was he a doctor, and was he Madras-bound?

4. Did he speak English?

5. What cars did the family own?

6. How much was their inheritance?

7. How many sisters came after him?

8. Were they marrying him off to obtain a Badhi that could then be used to marry off his sisters?

9. If he happened to be a maternal uncle's son, would marrying him keep property within the family?

10. Was he handsome? Tall? Did he command standing within society?

11. Were there hereditary concerns? A brother who had gone mad? A father with a condition that might be inherited?

12. Did his maternal uncle favour him?

13. Was he set to inherit something that was not technically his to inherit in the first place? Perhaps an uncle without children who intended to leave everything to him?

14. Was his socioeconomic standing superior to the other boys who had married into the family? Bunts were, and remain, astonishingly competitive.

15. Were there inter-caste or inter-faith marriages in the family's history?

16. Did he have manners?

And the list went on.

What is striking about this list is how little of it actually concerns the boy himself. Families were rarely evaluating an individual in isolation. They were evaluating an ecosystem. His prospects, his relatives, his inheritance, his obligations, his reputation, and the future that might unfold around him were often considered just as important as his own personality.

The Girls Were Assessed Too

Historically, we were a matrilineal community where daughters and nieces were often the rightful heirs, and because inheritance travelled differently, the birth order of girls carried enormous significance.

Families, therefore, asked:

1. What family did she come from on both sides?

2. Was she the eldest daughter, perhaps even the only daughter?

3. Did she have brothers, and how were they placed?

4. Who were her maternal uncles?

5. What did her father do?

6. How much gold did her mother marry with? Was the kurwe full of gold? Was the uggel full of gold?

7. How much gold had her mother been seen wearing over the years, and more importantly, was any of it repeated? Repetition signalled limits. Variety signalled wealth.

8. What cars did the family own? How much land was she expected to inherit?

9. Was she considered fertile enough? Was she young enough? Peddhotcha?

10. Did the family tend to produce more boys or more girls?

11. Was she the right height? Too tall? Too short?

12. Was she the right weight? Bharthi? Sapooora?

13. Did she have too many sisters? Birth order mattered, and so did the economics of marrying multiple daughters.

14. Even if she lacked beauty or brilliance, what was the net worth she brought with her? Was it enough to establish a clinic for the doctor, a practice for the lawyer, or an office for the chartered accountant?

15. Could the future son-in-law eventually inherit the father-in-law's practice, whether medical, dental, legal, or otherwise?

16. Was she amiable with his sisters?

And the list went on.

If all of this sounds transactional, it is because it often was. Philosophers frequently describe marriage as a union between two individuals, but in Tulunadu, it was just as often a negotiation between two families attempting to assess risk, opportunity, compatibility, ambition, and future prosperity, all while pretending that they were only discussing the bride and groom.

But how were these matches actually made?

In earlier times, it was, as the old saying goes, alpa alpa ne. Communities were smaller, families knew one another, and neighbourhood marriages were common. People did not have to search very far because everyone was already within sight.

The Madhyanthara carried the podhu from one house to another, but long before a proposal formally travelled through a mediator, there were sightings.

A potential bride might be noticed at a wedding.

A promising groom might be spotted at a funeral.

A housewarming, kola, a temple festival, a family gathering, an office inauguration, or even a casual visit could suddenly become the beginning of a marriage negotiation.

News travelled quickly.

The most eligible boys and girls of a particular year acquired reputations long before social media existed. Word spread through aunties, uncles, cousins, neighbours, family friends, former classmates, business associates, temple circles, and that mysterious information network that somehow knows everything before anybody has officially announced anything.

It was, in many ways, Bridgerton.

Just significantly less glamorous.

There were no grand balls at Vauxhall. No orchestras performing contemporary music disguised as classical compositions. No dukes are emerging dramatically from the shadows. There were, however, enough strategic conversations, whispered recommendations, carefully orchestrated introductions, and social manoeuvring to make Lady Danbury feel entirely at home.

In fact, I sometimes think that is what Tulunadu is missing.

Given the opportunity, I would happily volunteer to become a slightly meddlesome Lady Danbury figure and host such events myself, though probably from a safe distance where I cannot be blamed for the consequences.

If it were the girl's family that wanted the boy, several approaches were well known:

1. Yanthra and Tantra, for those who preferred divine intervention.

2. Unpaadh Ulai Paaduna, proving yet again that the quickest route to a man's heart is through his stomach. Invitations appeared. Delicacies were served. Hospitality became diplomacy.

3. Discover what he desperately wanted. A hotel? A clinic? Assistance in establishing a business? Let us discuss possibilities.

4. Pay off debts and quietly remove obstacles from his path.

Marriage may have been spoken about in the language of destiny, but an astonishing amount of strategy often accompanied it.

If the Boy's Family Wanted the Girl

Of course, strategy was not the exclusive domain of the girl's family. The boy's side had its own playbook, refined over generations and built upon a careful balance of signalling, reputation, negotiation, and the occasional masterpiece of exaggeration.

Some of the more common approaches included:

1. Showing their cards without appearing to show their cards.

"We don't want anything, of course. But our son has always wanted to go to America."

The statement sounded innocent enough, yet everybody sitting around the table understood that information was rarely volunteered without purpose. The message was clear. Here is what he wants. Here is what his future requires. Let us see whether your daughter and your family fit into that vision.

2. The scarcity strategy.

"Masth podhu barondhulla."

The matrimonial equivalent of announcing that there is a queue around the block for a restaurant.

Human beings have always wanted what other human beings want. The moment something appears desirable, its desirability increases. Whether there were actually dozens of proposals waiting patiently in the wings was often beside the point. The possibility that there might be was usually enough.

3. The marketing department.

Long before social media managers, branding consultants, and public relations firms existed, the Bunt families had already perfected reputation management.

The mother.

The sister.

The aunt who had appointed herself Director of Communications.

Somewhere between a wedding, a funeral, a housewarming, and an entirely unrelated family gathering, one would inevitably hear that the boy was exceptionally intelligent, remarkably hardworking, deeply respectful, unusually responsible, financially secure, and destined for great things. By the time the conversation ended, one-half expected him to solve climate change between breakfast and lunch.

4. The romance strategy.

Make the girl fall in love.

The rest would often take care of itself.

Families that had spent months negotiating details occasionally discovered that affection possessed an irritating tendency to accelerate decision-making and remove obstacles that had previously seemed insurmountable.

What fascinates me is how little any of this has changed. The technology has changed. The medium has changed. The vocabulary has changed. Yet people continue to signal value, advertise strengths, conceal weaknesses, create scarcity, emphasise opportunities, and present the most flattering version of themselves to the market. Economists would recognise much of this as signalling theory. The rest of us simply call it matchmaking.

And every now and then, despite all the planning, strategising, positioning, negotiating, signalling, and interference, two people accidentally fell in love anyway.

The Paathera

When mutual interest finally emerged, and neither side had managed to sabotage the proceedings, the Madhyanthara set a date for the Paathera.

The Paathera was not merely a meeting. It was a negotiation, a due diligence exercise, a diplomatic summit, and occasionally a performance. Families arrived having already gathered a remarkable amount of information about one another, yet everyone behaved as though they were hearing it for the first time.

There were subtle rules even within Tulunadu.

The rivers acted as markers. Kundapur Bunts often preferred not to marry too far beyond their traditional boundaries, and Puttur Bunts frequently did the same. There existed an entire geography of belonging, a mental map of who was considered familiar, who was considered distant, and who was considered just different enough to make people uncomfortable.

The northerners looked down upon the southerners.

The southerners looked down upon the northerners.

Badakayi.

Thenkayi.

Moodkayi.

Paddkayi.

Human beings, regardless of where they are born, appear remarkably committed to dividing themselves into increasingly specific categories.

Geographical clustering also created another interesting phenomenon. Even while Bunts remained conscious of Bari restrictions, families frequently found ways to marry surprisingly close to one another in order to preserve wealth, maintain influence, and keep property within familiar circles. Very English of us, if I may say so. It is something of a miracle that haemophilia never became a community-wide concern.

The background checks could be astonishingly thorough. Udupi Bunts in particular developed a reputation for investigating prospective families with impressive dedication. If a groom claimed to own a successful hotel in Bombay, there was every possibility that somebody's uncle would travel to Bombay and verify the claim personally. Long before LinkedIn endorsements and credit reports, Tulunadu had already perfected its own version of due diligence.

Once everyone was satisfied, the real negotiations began.

Not whether the couple liked one another.

That was only one part of the discussion.

The larger conversation revolved around practical matters.

1. Maddme Lakkauna Karchi – Who would bear the cost of the wedding, which traditionally fell more heavily upon the girl's side?

2. Guest numbers – An apparently simple discussion that became considerably more complicated when one remembered that Bunts had a tendency to produce families large enough to field both a cricket team and several substitutes. This calculation also included podder, the in-laws of siblings, who could not be ignored without creating entirely new problems.

3. Future security – Gold, Badhi, inheritance, property, living arrangements, future plans, and the financial wellbeing of the couple all found their way into the conversation.

Marriage, after all, was rarely understood as a union between two individuals alone.

It was an alliance between families, and alliances required negotiation.

Podhu Thapdauna: The Art of Breaking Matches

If Bunts perfected the art of making matches, they also became remarkably skilled at breaking them.

Marriage markets, much like financial markets, operate upon competition, scarcity, signalling, and perceived value. Wherever there are desirable outcomes, there will inevitably be people attempting to secure them for themselves, redirect them towards those they favour, or prevent them from benefitting those they do not. Economists call some of this strategic behaviour. Sociologists might describe it as the preservation of status hierarchies. Most families simply call it being human.

One of the great observations made by social theorists is that human beings rarely evaluate their happiness in absolute terms. We measure ourselves against those around us. The neighbour's success feels different from the success of a stranger. A cousin's promotion can sting more than a billionaire's wealth. A sister's child marrying into a more affluent family can provoke emotions that would never emerge if the same marriage belonged to somebody entirely unrelated.

Behavioural economists call this relative comparison. Sociologists might speak of status competition. The Tulu language, however, already possesses its own vocabulary for it.

Nanji.

Every society has a word for jealousy. Very few possess a word that captures it quite so elegantly.

What fascinated me during my research was that Podhu Thapdauna rarely emerged from outright malice. It often emerged from something far more complicated. Love. Loyalty. Fear. Ambition. Protection. Pride. Competition. The desire to see one's own people prosper. The desire to ensure that other people did not prosper too much. These motivations frequently existed simultaneously, creating situations in which people genuinely believed they were acting in the best interests of their family while quietly altering the trajectory of somebody else's future.

Philosophers have long debated whether human beings are fundamentally self-interested or fundamentally cooperative. Marriage markets suggest that the answer is probably both. Families cooperate with astonishing generosity when pursuing collective goals and compete with extraordinary creativity when those same goals appear threatened. Kinship, therefore, is not simply a system of mutual support. It is also a system of negotiation, rivalry, alliance formation, strategic decision-making, and the perpetual management of status.

And nowhere does this become more visible than in the stories people tell about Podhu Thapdauna.

Scenario One: Enk Aal Yenna Megye'g Bodu

(I want her for my younger brother.)

Let us take the example of Seema.

Seema attends the wedding of her close friend Jaya. Weddings, as we have already established, are not merely celebrations. They are exhibitions of social capital. Families are displayed. Wealth is displayed. Reputation is displayed. Prospective brides and grooms are displayed. Everybody is observing everybody else whilst pretending not to.

At the wedding, Seema notices that Jaya's younger sister has attracted the attention of an exceptionally desirable prospective groom. He comes from a respected family, is well educated, possesses strong prospects, and represents precisely the sort of alliance capable of improving the fortunes of whichever family secures him.

The difficulty is that Seema immediately thinks of her own younger brother.

What follows is not necessarily driven by malice. In fact, that is what makes these situations so fascinating. Most people do not wake up in the morning intending to become villains in somebody else's story. Seema may genuinely convince herself that she is acting in the best interests of everyone involved. A concern is raised here. A rumour is repeated there. A small doubt is introduced into a conversation. Information that previously seemed insignificant suddenly becomes worthy of discussion.

Perhaps there was a disagreement within the boy's family years ago.

Perhaps somebody's uncle had a reputation.

Perhaps there is gossip.

Perhaps there is simply enough uncertainty introduced to make the other side hesitate.

The match slowly loses momentum.

The families become cautious.

The podhu eventually disappears.

And not long afterwards, Seema approaches the girl's family with another proposal.

For her brother.

From the perspective of behavioural economics, what makes this interesting is that Seema is not attempting to maximise happiness. She is attempting to maximise advantage for her own network. Human beings routinely behave this way. We are often generous in principle and tribal in practice. Resources, opportunities, and desirable alliances tend to be distributed differently once somebody we love stands to benefit from them.

Kinship has always had a curious way of reshaping morality.

Scenario Two: Aay Daayeg Namma Mitth Podu?

(Why should he rise higher than us?)

Now let us consider Shikha.

Shikha is married into an affluent and highly respected family and enjoys considerable standing within Bunt society. Her younger sister Neela, meanwhile, married a comparatively ordinary man. Both families are comfortable. Both families are respected. Yet one undeniably occupies a higher rung upon the social ladder than the other.

Years pass.

Neela's son enters the marriage market and unexpectedly secures a podhu with a family considerably more affluent than his own.

On the surface, everyone appears delighted.

Beneath the surface, however, something more complicated begins to unfold.

Should the marriage take place, Neela's son may eventually surpass the standing currently enjoyed by Shikha's own children. The hierarchy that the extended family has quietly understood for years begins to shift. Status, after all, is rarely experienced in absolute terms. It is experienced comparatively.

Advice begins to emerge.

Not instructions.

Not opposition.

Advice.

"Aggul malla janakkul. Namak panthina atth."

They are too big for us.

It is not our place.

Perhaps they will not understand us.

Perhaps their expectations will be too high.

Perhaps there will be problems later.

The most effective discouragements are rarely built upon lies. They are built upon selective truths. Every concern contains just enough plausibility to feel reasonable.

Neela listens.

After all, the counsel is coming from her elder sister, somebody she trusts.

The podhu gradually cools.

The enthusiasm fades.

The proposal quietly disappears.

No dramatic confrontation occurs.

No villain emerges.

No crime has been committed.

Yet a future has changed direction.

Sociologists have long observed that human beings are often less concerned with how much they possess than with how much they possess relative to those around them. A stranger's success can be admired. A cousin's success occasionally feels competitive. The billionaire does not trouble us. The nephew who suddenly becomes more successful than our own children sometimes does.

Behavioural economists call this relative comparison.

The Tulu language, however, possesses a far more elegant word for it.

Nanji.

Yet Podhu Thapdauna was only one side of the story.

For every match that was quietly discouraged, another was being enthusiastically encouraged. The same kinship networks that occasionally fuelled rivalry could also become powerful engines of cooperation. The same aunt who was capable of derailing one alliance might spend years helping bring another to fruition. Human beings are rarely consistent enough to fit neatly into categories of good or bad, selfish or selfless. More often than not, we are all of those things at once.

Marriage has always occupied a peculiar place in society because it exists simultaneously as a private relationship and a public institution. Philosophers have long debated whether marriage belongs primarily to the individuals entering it or to the society that recognises it. In practice, particularly within tightly knit communities, the answer often appears to be both. A marriage may unite two people, but its effects ripple outward through families, businesses, friendships, obligations, and social networks in ways that are impossible to ignore.

And so, alongside the art of breaking matches existed the equally important art of building them.

Scenario One: Agalna Maddme Aanda, Namak Yedde

(If they get married, it is good for us.)

Let us take the example of Subhadra.

Subhadra wants her nephew to marry into a family considerably more affluent and influential than her own. On the surface, her enthusiasm appears entirely selfless. She wants the best for her nephew. She wants him to have opportunities she perhaps never had herself. She wants him to enter a family capable of opening doors that might otherwise remain closed.

And perhaps all of that is true.

Yet marriages rarely benefit only the bride and groom.

If her nephew marries into a respected family, Subhadra's own standing rises by association. Invitations arrive more easily. Introductions become possible. Her children and grandchildren inherit relationships that previously did not exist. The alliance creates value not merely for one household but for an entire network of households connected to it.

Sociologists often describe this as social capital, the resources available to individuals through their relationships and social networks. Bunts may not have used that terminology, but they certainly understood the principle.

A good marriage elevated more than two people.

Scenario Two: Agalna Maddme Aanda, Business'g Yedde

(If they get married, it is good for business.)

Now, let us consider Madhu.

Madhu wants his son to marry the daughter of a politician.

The girl may be intelligent, accomplished, kind, and perfectly suitable in her own right. The families may genuinely like one another. Yet it would be naïve to pretend that nobody notices the additional advantages such an alliance might create.

Access.

Influence.

Introductions.

Protection.

Opportunity.

Business families throughout history have understood something that political families, aristocratic families, and merchant families also understood. Marriage is one of the most efficient alliance-forming mechanisms ever invented.

European aristocracies expanded their kingdoms through marriage.

Merchant dynasties consolidated wealth through marriage.

Political houses strengthened their influence through marriage.

Tulunadu, despite imagining itself as uniquely different, often followed remarkably similar patterns.

The language may have been that of compatibility, destiny, and family values, but beneath the silk sarees, gold jewellery, and wedding feasts, there frequently existed a sophisticated understanding of incentives, resources, and future opportunity.

Marriage, after all, was never only about love.

It was also about an alliance.

Scenario Three: Agalna Maddme Aanda, Aayeg Yedde

(If they get married, it is good for her.)

Let us, for a moment, abandon the assumption that strategic thinking belonged exclusively to fathers, maternal uncles, and ambitious businessmen.

Consider Meera.

Meera has spent years watching her friend navigate a marriage that has limited her education, restricted her mobility, and left her financially dependent upon decisions made by others. She has also watched another cousin marry into a family that encouraged her ambitions, supported her career, and treated her as a partner rather than an accessory.

When a desirable podhu emerges for her younger sister, Meera becomes one of its strongest advocates.

Not because of land.

Not because of gold.

Not because of politics.

Not because of business.

But because she genuinely believes the match will create a better life.

The family she is encouraging her sister to marry into values education. The prospective groom respects ambitious women. The household possesses enough financial stability that her sister would not be forced to abandon her own aspirations.

And so Meera does what generations of Bunts before her have done.

She lobbies.

She persuades.

She gathers allies.

She champions the match.

What fascinates me is that the mechanics are identical to the earlier examples. Information is gathered. Advantages are evaluated. Futures are imagined. The difference lies not in the process but in the objective.

The alliance is being pursued not because it benefits the family collectively, but because it benefits a woman individually.

Historically, anthropologists have often described marriage as an exchange between families, but modern marriages increasingly reveal something else. They have become vehicles for personal fulfilment, self-development, geographic mobility, professional opportunity, and individual happiness. In many ways, contemporary Bunt women are attempting to optimise for variables their grandmothers never had the luxury of considering.

And perhaps that, more than anything else, explains why the marriage market has become so complicated.

The Modern Marriage Mart

If all of this sounds like the distant past, I regret to inform you that very little has actually changed.

The geography has changed.

The technology has changed.

The hotels in Bombay have become startups in Bangalore, software engineering jobs in Seattle, consulting roles in London, and medical residencies in New York. The Madhyanthara occasionally appears as a matrimonial website. The podhu arrives through WhatsApp instead of through a respected elder. Biodatas have replaced whispered recommendations and LinkedIn profiles have replaced discreet enquiries conducted by somebody's uncle on a train journey.

But the game itself remains remarkably familiar.

The philosopher Michel Foucault once argued that power rarely disappears; it simply changes form. Marriage markets appear to operate in much the same way. The old negotiations have not vanished. They have merely adopted new vocabulary.

Over the course of my research, whilst following thirty-two women and twenty-seven men navigating the contemporary Bunt marriage market, I became increasingly fascinated by the difference between what people said and what they actually meant.

Anthropologists call this signalling.

Economists call it information asymmetry.

Families call it conversation.

I call it the Obama Translator from Key & Peele.

For those unfamiliar, the sketch involved President Obama delivering a measured, diplomatic statement before another individual translated what everybody secretly knew he meant.

The contemporary marriage market often feels exactly like that.

What follows are some of my field notes.

From Parents, Maternal Uncles, and Aunts of Potential Grooms

One of the most entertaining discoveries during my research was that the modern marriage market has developed its own language, a dialect of diplomacy in which people say one thing while meaning something entirely different.

To be fair, this is hardly unique to Bunts. Diplomats do it. Politicians do it. Corporations do it. Families simply happen to do it with greater enthusiasm and considerably less training.

The following translations are offered in good humour and with the full understanding that somebody, somewhere, is already preparing a strongly worded response.

1. "Ponn jaasthi kaldhand."

(The girl has studied too much.)

Translation:

The girl appears to be more educated than my son and there is a possibility that she may also be more intelligent than him. We are therefore attempting to determine whether his ego possesses sufficient structural integrity to survive this reality.

2. "Ponn aanaad'dh jaasthi benpolu. Aayeg bejaar aanda?"

(We heard the girl earns more than the boy. What if he feels bad?)

Translation:

The problem is not that she earns more.

The problem is that we have spent decades teaching men that their value is attached to being providers and are now surprised when some of them struggle to adapt to changing realities.

3. "Yenna aanag wanje bodu. Ponn masth porlu uppodu."

(My son wants only one thing. The girl must be beautiful.)

Translation:

My son has developed expectations that bear no relationship whatsoever to his own market valuation.

4. "Yaan sathya panode? Namma aanag yedde kaas daal bodu."

(The truth is, my son needs a wealthy wife.)

Translation:

My son would like access to a lifestyle that he has not yet demonstrated the ability to create for himself.

5. "Yera pander eerna magal aath porlu ijjolu."

(People say she is not very beautiful.)

Translation:

I have outsourced my thinking to the community gossip network.

6. "Namak badi bodchi. Maddme da karchi nigalna."

(We do not want dowry. You may simply spend lavishly on the wedding.)

Translation:

We have successfully rebranded the same financial expectation under a different heading.

7. "Yenna aanag baari boldhu dagul khushi."

(My son likes fair girls.)

Translation:

The Fair & Lovely marketing department deserves a lifetime achievement award.

8. "Yenna aan yeth porlu ulle. Dinno't wanji saavira podhu barpundu."

(My son is very desirable. Thousands of proposals arrive every day.)

Translation:

Scarcity increases perceived value, and we have all read at least one economics textbook.

9. "Eerna papa volthaar? Hotel dagul ey? Aalna papa? Business?"

(What does her father do? What about her grandfather? What business do they have?)

Translation:

I am gathering information that I absolutely require for decision-making and definitely not for future gossip.

10. "Yaan yer gothunde? Yenna..."

(Do you know who I am? Do you know my family?)

Translation:

Allow me to introduce my pedigree, my lineage, my family tree, and three generations of accomplishments that I personally had nothing to do with.

11. "Agul masth kaas dagul. Agul baari malla family dagulu..."

(They are a very wealthy family.)

Translation:

How dare they become wealthier than us?

What follows is usually less an observation and more a complaint disguised as one.

If there is one thing the modern marriage market has taught me, it is that Bunts possess an extraordinary ability to discuss economics without ever admitting that they are discussing economics.

But The Men Did Not Have It Easy Either

To be fair, the modern marriage market has not been particularly kind to men either.

Whilst my female brain was considerably more successful at translating the language spoken by parents, aunts, uncles, and family friends on behalf of potential grooms, spending time with the men navigating this system revealed that they too, were carrying burdens that were often invisible to everyone except themselves.

If the girls were being evaluated, the boys were being priced.

The expectations placed upon them were relentless.

They needed to be educated but not overly intellectual.

Ambitious but not absent.

Financially successful but humble.

Modern but traditional.

Independent but family-oriented.

Affectionate but masculine.

Progressive but not too progressive.

Wealthy, preferably before the age of thirty.

And if possible, tall.

The market, it seemed, demanded contradictions.

Some of the translations from the male side sounded something like this:

1. "Aayeg  apartment ijja?."

(He does not own an apartment yet.)

Translation:

The man has somehow failed to acquire Bangalore real estate despite being born into an economy where property prices have risen faster than common sense.

2. "Aayena package enchina?"

(What is his package?)

Translation:

We have reduced a human being to an annual income figure and are now attempting to determine whether the number is sufficiently impressive.

3. "Aaye software'da?"

(Is he in software?)

Translation:

The community has collectively decided that certain professions are safer bets than others and we are behaving accordingly.

4. "Aayeg America podu."

(He wants to go to America.)

Translation:

The local version of a medieval prince setting off in search of a kingdom.

5. "Aaye settle aathijje."

(He is not yet settled.)

Translation:

Nobody can adequately define what settled means, but everybody knows when somebody else is not.

6. "Aaye masth kelasa malpwe, baari busy."

(He works all the time.)

Translation:

The very thing that made him desirable may also be the thing that makes him unavailable.

7. "Wo family?"

(What is his family like?)

Translation:

We are not marrying the boy.

We are marrying the entire ecosystem.

The more men I spoke to, the more I realised that many of them felt trapped between generations. Their fathers had grown up with one set of expectations. Their daughters would likely grow up with another. They found themselves standing awkwardly in the middle, expected to embody traditional masculinity whilst simultaneously adapting to a world that no longer operates according to the same rules.

And perhaps that is why so many people leave the marriage market exhausted.

Everybody is evaluating.

Everybody is being evaluated.

Everybody is attempting to maximise happiness, compatibility, status, security, attraction, family approval, financial stability, and future opportunity simultaneously.

Behavioural economists would probably call this an optimisation problem.

The rest of us simply call it looking for a spouse.

What Marriage Reveals About Us

When I began researching this essay, I thought I was studying marriage, but somewhere between the astrologers and the maternal uncles, the mediators and the gossip networks, the wedding negotiations and the inheritance discussions, the strategic alliances and the spectacular acts of interference, I realised that marriage was simply the lens through which I was examining something much larger. What I was really studying was how human beings organise themselves, how they distribute opportunity, how they define belonging, how they preserve status, how they pursue security, and perhaps most importantly, how they imagine the future.

One of the enduring philosophical debates surrounding marriage concerns whether it exists primarily for the benefit of individuals or for the benefit of society. The longer I spent examining marriage within Tulunadu, the less convinced I became that those two things can ever be neatly separated. Marriage may begin with two people, but it rarely remains confined to them. Families dream through it, parents negotiate through it, communities observe it, economies emerge around it, and entire industries survive because of it. The wedding itself may last a day, but the network of relationships, obligations, expectations, alliances, and consequences it creates can shape decades.

Perhaps this is why marriage has proven so resilient across cultures and centuries. It is simultaneously intimate and public, emotional and economic, deeply personal and profoundly social. It asks questions that every generation must answer for itself. Who belongs to whom? What do we owe one another? How should property, responsibility, labour, inheritance, and care be organised? What kind of future are we trying to build, and with whom are we trying to build it?

Reading through the history of marriage amongst Bunts, one begins to understand why sociologists became so fascinated by institutions. What appears on the surface to be a story about weddings quickly becomes a story about power, mobility, status, kinship, reciprocity, and social capital. A marriage could elevate a family, preserve wealth, create opportunity, repair relationships, strengthen alliances, or alter the trajectory of generations not yet born. The bride and groom may have stood at the centre of the ceremony, but they were rarely the only people whose futures were being negotiated.

Yet reducing marriage entirely to sociology feels just as incomplete as reducing it entirely to romance. Behavioural economists have repeatedly demonstrated that human beings compare themselves constantly, measuring their progress not against objective standards but against the fortunes of neighbours, cousins, classmates, and friends. We are influenced by status, by scarcity, by reputation, by social proof, by fear of loss, by aspiration, and by a thousand other forces operating quietly beneath the surface of conscious thought. The marriage market simply brings those forces into view. It reveals how frequently we pursue advantage whilst calling it prudence, how often we disguise ambition as concern, and how regularly our decisions are shaped by comparisons we barely realise we are making. The stranger's success is easy to celebrate. The cousin's success can feel competitive. The billionaire rarely troubles us. The nephew who suddenly surpasses our own children occasionally does.

What also became impossible to ignore during my research was that whilst much attention is paid to the pressures experienced by women within the marriage market, modern Bunt men are carrying burdens of their own, many of which remain largely unspoken. For generations, we have invested heavily in our daughters, encouraging them to become educated, independent, ambitious, and financially secure, and rightly so. Yet somewhere along the way, we forgot that our sons, too, require investment, guidance, emotional support, and the freedom to become fully realised human beings rather than merely providers. If we expect them to become good husbands, fathers, partners, and members of society, then we must invest in them with the same seriousness with which we invest in our girls.

The contemporary marriage market can be remarkably unkind to men. Biodata circulate endlessly through WhatsApp groups, forwarded from phone to phone with little regard for privacy, transforming complex human beings into bullet-point summaries of height, salary, age, profession, and family background. Men rarely speak openly about it, but many describe the experience as deeply dehumanising. There is something unsettling about feeling as though one is being displayed in a marketplace, assessed, compared, rejected, ranked, and circulated amongst strangers who know nothing of your character beyond a few carefully curated lines on a document. If women have often been reduced to photographs and expectations, men have increasingly been reduced to income statements and career trajectories. Neither serves us particularly well.

Perhaps this is why I find initiatives such as BuntsMatch so interesting. Not because they have solved the problem, but because they are attempting to modernise the role of the Madhyanthara whilst preserving something that older systems understood remarkably well: dignity. Privacy. Respect. The recognition that people are not products and that marriage is not a procurement exercise. The technology may be new, but the underlying principle is centuries old. A good mediator does not merely create introductions. A good mediator protects the humanity of the people involved.

More importantly, however, I think we have reached a point where happiness must finally occupy a higher position in the hierarchy of decision-making than it once did. Historically, marriage often served as a mechanism for economic security because economic security itself was scarce. Women required protection from financial precarity. Families depended upon alliances. Property needs to be preserved. Labour needed organising. The institution evolved to solve practical problems, and for much of human history, it solved those problems remarkably well.

Many of those realities still exist, but the world has changed. Women can earn. Men can nurture. Women can remain unmarried. Men can remain unmarried. People can choose careers over marriage, marriage over careers, children without marriage, marriage without children, or entirely different lives altogether. The range of possibilities available to modern men and women would have been unimaginable to many of our ancestors, and because of that, the question itself has changed. For centuries, families asked, Will this marriage make life secure? Today, perhaps we must also ask, Will this marriage make life meaningful? The two are not always the same thing.

And yet, despite spending months immersed in all of this, despite encountering enough evidence to describe marriage as a transaction, a negotiation, an alliance, a marketplace, a status mechanism, or a system for preserving social order, I find myself unable to end on a cynical note. Every explanation offered by sociology, economics, anthropology, or philosophy eventually encounters the same limitation. They can explain institutions. They can explain incentives. They can explain behaviour. They can explain structures. They can even explain probabilities. What they struggle to explain is affection. What they struggle to explain is why one person becomes home to another.

Perhaps that is why, despite writing an essay about marriage as an industry, I kept finding my thoughts returning to my parents. Not because their marriage is perfect, nor because they somehow escaped the social realities that shaped everyone else, but because, after all these years, what remains most memorable is not the wedding they had, the negotiations that preceded it, or the expectations that surrounded it. What remains memorable is the friendship, the laughter, the long walks, the shared jokes repeated so often that nobody else finds them amusing anymore, and the quiet certainty that they are, even now, moving through the world as part of the same team.

Many years ago, after my mother had given me what I considered a thoroughly unjust telling-off and my father had very inconveniently taken her side, I remember complaining to him about it long afterwards. He listened patiently before shrugging and saying, almost as though it should have been obvious all along, "But she's my wife. I'm on her team." At the time, I thought it was a deeply unsatisfactory answer. Today, I think it may be one of the most profound explanations of marriage I have ever heard.

For all the ways in which marriage has changed, and for all the ways in which it will continue to change, I suspect that is what people are searching for beneath the horoscopes, beneath the biodatas, beneath the negotiations, beneath the social signalling, beneath the family politics, beneath the wealth calculations, and beneath the endless noise of the marriage market itself. They are searching for somebody with whom the future feels a little less uncertain, somebody who will remain seated beside them when life inevitably becomes difficult, somebody who transforms what would otherwise be an individual journey into a shared one.

The gold will eventually be melted and remade. The wedding photographs will fade at the edges. The gossip will move on to somebody else, because it always does. The negotiations that once felt so important will be forgotten. The status symbols will change. The markets will evolve. The astrologers will find new doshas. The WhatsApp groups will discover new rumours. Even the institutions themselves will continue to adapt to a world very different from the one that produced them.

Yet after all my research, after all the stories I collected, after all the marriages that succeeded, failed, endured, transformed, surprised, disappointed, and exceeded expectations, I keep returning to a conversation with my father.

Years after my mother had delivered what I still maintain was a thoroughly disproportionate telling-off, I asked him why he had taken her side. He listened patiently, conceded that I may have had a point, and then shrugged as though the answer should have been obvious all along.

"But she's my wife," he said. "I'm on her team."

At the time, I thought it was an unsatisfactory answer.

Today, having spent years studying marriage from the perspectives of anthropology, sociology, behavioural economics, history, and philosophy, I suspect it may be the most complete answer I have ever heard.

Disclaimer: I have no experience with marriage

P.S. I genuinely don't like going to weddings

P.S.S. Read work by Vidya Shankar Shetty if you'd like the cultural and traditional rituals around a Bunt wedding.