Whenever a Belizean writes a book – seems to us that it's reason for celebration – because in a post literate society anyone with the grit and the guts to put pen to paper in anything longer than a newspaper column has to be tributed as either fearless or care-less. And Ajay Hotchandani fits somewhere in there. He's a Belizean who's written a book. But it explores territory far from the beaten path.
Hotchandani – who is a doctor by training - has written about online dating sites for Indians. Now this isn't "E Harmony"; at the Indian sites, the men and women are looking for husbands and wives. It's an electronic updating to the Indian tradition of arranged marriages but in a clever prank – Ajay put up two pictures of himself and got radically different results – which produced a wry commentary on the state of play between men and women in Indian society. In fact the responses were so far ranging that it gave him enough material for a book called the even stranger case of Dr. Ajay and Mr. Hotchandani.
Dr. Ajay Hotchandani,
"Basically we went on to see if women are as superficial as men in the sense that they only judge off of looks because a lot of times guys get accused of, if the girl is not good looking you're not even going to entertain her. So it kind of shifts from that aspect and so I posted two profiles with two different pictures and contacted the same 50 girls to see what the response would have been and it proves my theory that yes, women will only look at the picture first and after wards if they decide that they like the picture, they will go and read the rest of the profile and then the data suggested off the first profile, out of 50 girls, zero said yes. But on the second profile, out of 50, 34 had said yes. So it doesn't take any crazy scientific calculation or statistical data analysis to let you realize that you know what, it did prove the theory that they will look at the picture before they move on.
With the first picture only one girl contacted and with the second picture an unforeseen thing happened – in the four month period, 450 girls had contacted me with the intention of wanting to get to know me better hoping it leads to something more and the website specifically catered to marriage so these girls were looking for a husband."
Jules Vasquez,
And you were that guy.
Dr. Ajay Hotchandani,
"I would probably be that guy. Especially after this I think. Some of them I told them about it and some of them were like oh that is nice and if I was still interested in getting to know them. They saw right past that, thought it was funny, and I don't know if it was desperation or if some of them actually enjoyed the humour and went along with it.
While I was writing the book, I started realizing there was a trend where the younger girls, a lot of them were posted by their parents and then there was an age range where the girls were posting themselves and then later on in the 30s again the parents were posting it and you realize a lot of pressure are being put on these girls to find a suitable husband and the age, the greater the age the greater the pressure. When they are 22, 23, the parents are they have time, they are still young, and when they are 31, 35, God forbid, it is just like take anything; if the guy says yes just take him – sign the contract, get married before he changes his mind.
Yes I brought it to light in a funny aspect but in itself it has a deep social undertone as to why we are doing it, where is this pressure coming from, and why is there still this pressure. These girls are smart, educated, good looking and so why are they given the same treatment as guys. It is a stigma I wanted to address but in humorous way because humor in Indian writing is almost no existent. So I wanted to address it that way."
The book will be launched tomorrow and you can find it at local book outlets. It is also available online at Amazon.com.
