It's All Geek to Me!

The Aunties' Network (SM) is a wide-area, distributed, reliable, multiply redundant and highly efficient peer-to-peer network of middle-aged ladies of Indian descent that stretches across India and any country with an Indian Diaspora. (Note: A middle-aged lady in India may generally be called 'aunty', in a context of respect and endearment. This term has nothing to do with other aunties of the Far East, who may be engaged in the world's oldest profession). It exists with the sole purpose of bringing together eligible bachelors and bachelorettes in arranged marriages. It is probably the world's earliest implementation of a Friendster-like system, where parents act as proxies for the actual individuals to be married. Some, who abhor the concept of arranged marriage, may even call the Network an international conspiracy, in the same league as the Illuminati, the Freemasons and The Matrix.

Young gentlemen and ladies generally get "plugged into" the Network when they finish their higher education. Whether explicitly informed of it or not, the ladies get plugged into the Network in their early 20s. The gentlemen are usually plugged in during their mid 20s, thus allowing them some time to earn some money, stature and a foothold for themselves in the grand scheme of things. A side-effect of this plug-in lag is that the groom in an arranged marriage is usually a few years older than the bride. With the recent mass exodus of young Indian gentlemen to faraway shores, their median age of entry into the Network is falling for two reasons:

• Enough money gets accumulated sooner because salaries are higher abroad and


• Care should be taken that they don't get hitched of their own volition with local women, in their loneliness as expat bachelors.

Once an eligible individual has been plugged in, search messages are trickled along a wide Network of Aunty peers until a suitable match is found. Once a suitable match is found, a thorough background check is conducted to see if there could be a match. Matches may be verified using alternate connection paths in the Network until a reliably positive opinion of the individual in question is reached. The Network is powered entirely by goodwill and a genuine desire to find the best possible member of the opposite sex (can't imagine a Network for gay marriage anytime soon) for someone whose interests are close to your heart.

While there are few general-purpose strategies that ladies can follow to put off being plugged into the Network, gentlemen may engage in time-consuming and ungainly pursuits such as graduate school to postpone the day when they have a viable source of income and an automatic ticket into the Network.

Am I plugged into the Network? If you're so curious, be so nice as to ask me in person or drop me a personal email.