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| Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India | 
 enlarge | Author: Anita Jain
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $12.48
You Save: $12.51 (50%)
New (31) Used (11) from $10.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 279117
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 1596911859
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.56035
EAN: 9781596911857
ASIN: 1596911859
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Is arranged marriage any worse than Craigslist? One smart and feisty woman’s year in India looking for a husband the old-fashioned way reveals a rapidly changing culture and a whole host of ideas about the best way to find a mate.
Anita Jain was fed up with the New York singles scene. After three years of frustration and awkward dates, and under constant pressure from her Indian parents to find someone, she started to wonder: was looking for a husband in a bar any less barbaric than traditional arranged marriage? After all this effort, there had to be something easier.
After announcing in a much-discussed New York magazine article her intention to try arranged marriage, Jain moves back to India—the impoverished, backward land her parents fled—to find a husband. At age thirty-two, and well past the cultural deadline for starting a family, Jain subjects herself to a whole new onslaught of expectations. Marrying Anita is an account of romantic chance encounters, nosy relatives, and dozens of potential husbands. Will she find a suitable man? Will he please her parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins? Is the new urban Indian culture in which she’s searching really all that different from America?
With disarming candor, Jain tells her own romantic story even as it unfolds before her, and in the process sheds new light on a country modernizing at breakneck speed. Marrying Anita is a refreshingly honest look at our own desires and the modern search for the perfect mate.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Disappointingly superficial January 3, 2009
I opened this book hoping for some insights into how Indian youth see their world; what I got was a shallow account of the nightclub-and-party scene in Delhi. I had hoped for more.
On the nit-picky end of things, it's ironic that the author, who mocks the fractured syntax of some of her suitors, makes plenty of grammatical errors of her own (e.g., who/whom). So much for noblesse oblige.
Boring... no wonder no one will marry her January 2, 2009
Anita Jain's dry prose may be perfect for an article in the Financial Times, but it makes for a long, slow book. I was expecting an intelligent, Indian version of Sex and the City. I found the women in Sex and the City rather sad, yet funny. Ms. Jain's experience of dating in NYC rang true. However, she could have made the book a little more fun, and make the prose flow. Instead if was stiff and dry.
Ms. Jain offered little insight into why she might not be able to find someone. Maybe hanging out with 20-year-olds in a bar or looking online aren't the only options for an intelligent, well-traveled journalist to find a husband? There other places to meet men.
This book was a disappointment. I don't recommend it. There are plenty of other good, funny books out there about single women finding love. Read one of those instead.
Fun, superficial, and ultimately disappointing December 28, 2008
I plunged into this book with enthusiasm, both to see a side of India I didn't know and to follow the author in her quest to find a marriage partner. Anita Jain drew me in immediately with her tale of why her father left India. Some of the best writing in the book is about her family. Her writing is smooth and easy to read. For the first half of the book I was intrigued with all the ways she managed to connect with men that weren't right for her, thinking back to my own single days and how many frogs there really are out there that will never be princes, no matter what you do. But as the book went on, I became frustrated with her. She seemed over-critical. She seemed to lack introspection. She seemed to lack the compassion and openness which allows others to feel safe enough to unfold themselves to us. Then, too, there was self-destructive behavior on her part. How could anyone serious about finding a mate, allow herself to get drunk and sloppy on first dates with men she was attracted to? So while it was an easy read, I was ultimately disappointed with the book. The author was on a journey, yes, which always makes for a good story. But she lacked the ability to embrace the journey, to see herself and to let herself change as part of that journey. In describing one of her affairs as a young woman she wrote, "Was he the powerful older man taking advantage of a vulnerable girl lost in an unfamiliar country, or was she the predator, sucking from him exotic experience until she had gleaned all she could and then left?" In this book, she comes across very much as the latter. Is it really a surprise that she never finds a mate?
 I expected more from a Harvard educated writer December 11, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I would urge readers to compare Anita Jain's book to Sarah McDonald's 'Holy Cow'. Both are written by writers who are journalists. Yet, Sarah Macdonald strikes you as the far deeper of the two - sans the Harvard education of Anita. Anita lived a few blocks away from Hazrat Nizamuddin;s tomb but has very little time to talk about the famous Sufi saint or Sufi-ism. Anita lived in Delhi which has layers and layers of History but practically none of it registers her notice. In life most of what you end up seeing is what you wish to see. All her time has been spent in Delhi are extensions of her New York dating scene. It is preoccupation with dating, sex, consumption of alcohol and tobacco. India has a deep spiritual component far removed from all this and if she cared to look for these - probably in the confines of a Jain temple - as suggested by another reviewer - she would have found a world full of people of depth, maturity and wisdom and possibly a suitable boy. May be she still could - but she needs to get out of her Western mindset.
Sarah McDonald, on the other hand, makes room to see all of India - not the paper thin dating scene of juvenile India centered around night clubs and bars in Delhi. She makes time for temples, she makes time for forts, she makes time for Indian trains and to discover all of India rather than the tiny sliver that Anita touches upon. She shows a vibrant intellectual curiosity so vital to being an effective journalist and she does all this with great humor.
Looking for a mate is best done when it is incidental to a more fuller life. If that becomes a preoccupation, it is obvious to all prospective mates and drives them away. The people who are best prospects for long term companionship are people who have full life and interests. They are able to open the eyes of their prospective mates and draw them in to their wonderful findings. This is what constitutes a durable 'catch'.
There must have been a dozen occasion when I muttered to myself - Anita - why are doing this to yourself?
Personally, may be she should get her mind off marriage and spend a couple of years discovering the real India.
 The classic American tale: Anita attempts to bridge the chasm between the old world and new December 10, 2008
I found this to be an entertaining and surprisingly deep confessional about one woman's quest for long-term partnership. Our protoganist is Anita Jain, a Harvard-educated journalist who has traveled the world. And like many women, she is looking for a man she can look up to. This proves to be a tall order, no doubt partly because of her enlightened upbringing under the roof of a father who prepares tea for his wife and even does the dishes. Her partner must not only be smart, handsome, and well-read to qualify. He'll also need to be a good cook.
Anita examines her own foibles and feelings with the precision of a beat reporter. And she clearly likes to converse and talk a lot. We learn about her many friends and their ups and downs as well. She exposes us to a wide cast of characters in modern India and we learn that caste continues to matter even in the 21st century. We meet Rahul, Vikram, Vincent, Sanjeev, Arjun, Farhad and a host of others. Some of them represent the new India, others the old, and some like her friend Nandini, are haplessly caught in-between: one moment dancing in the hippest night club and another moment tending to a friend's acid-burned face.
As we watch her various suitors begin the courtship ritual, Anita gives us the birds-eye view. One-by-one they make a fatal misstep that ends the dance. Anita is a tough one to please. But shouldn't she be? She asks for what every modern woman wants: respect. The challenge she faces is that so many of her male peers are looking for something more like a live-in domestic helper to breed with. And her parents aren't helping much by introducing round after round of engineers and doctors who have succumbed to the faithful son dogma of their own parents.
There is little attempt at analysis or presumption which is refreshing. Anita simply tells us how she feels and what she wants. If only more women would learn to do that! And she gives us the facts in a surprisingly humble way. If there is any arrogance here it is Anita's belief that other people will want to read about her love-life. I think they will.
If there is a lesson to be learned it is that getting married is not an achievement akin to a degree from Harvard or publishing a book. Millions of people do it every year! The real achievement regarding marraige is building a strong enough relationship to stay married. And Anita needs to look no further than her own parents to see how that is done.
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