If marriages are made in heaven, then why bother about an ‘ideal’ age to enter into wedlock? In Kerala, the number of lonely elders considering to tie the knot at the old age is increasing, according to studies.
And now a days it is not a shocker when they show the courage to post their profiles on the matrimonial sites or put an advertisements in the matrimonial classifieds of newspapers scouting for greyed brides and grooms.
As the trend is slowly catching up with those trying to become the eligible spouses joining the bandwagon, in many cases it is the close relatives or the grown up and settled children of the lonely elders are taking up the initiative to marry off their parents, though seems unbelievable to the Malayalee psyche.
For 70-year-old widower Gopala Panicker (name changed) from Kollam, his three daughters together had given an advertisement seeking a partner for their father in a newspaper.
The daughters took the joint decision after finding it tough to take care of their father.
“Our mother passed away eight years back.
He do not prefer to stay with any of the daughters and that is what made us to think in this way.
We were hopeless initially that whether somebody would respond or not.
Astonishingly, we had received around 200 queries within two weeks after the advertisement had appeared on the newspaper,” his eldest daughter Sumathy (name changed) said.
She concluded that the dad had not made any specific demand.
Sixty-year-old Rajan from Thiruvananthapuram has decided to try his luck in marriage to break away from the loneliness of his life.
“As per his demand, we gave the advertisement on the newspaper.
We are not interfering with his choice,” a friend of Rajan told ‘Express’.
Rajan, an ex-service man, is a widower and prefers a woman without any liabilities.
“The reasons vary from case to case.
In our observation, many of the old people, who register on the site, are loners and they are seeking a partner who can take care of them,” says Pramod T, retail head of Bharat Matrimony.
“Many in the old age, who register in our site are widowers.
Most of them are voluntarily registering on the site and generally they do not put forward any demand with regard to their partners,” says Dileep Kaitheri, marketing manager of Malayogam, Kochi.