For Indian families in the United States

Families in the States rarely come to us first. By the time they do, the search has already run for a year or two through relatives, community networks and one or two websites, and it has stalled in a familiar way: plenty of names, no one who fits. We start by going back over what was actually wrong with them, because that tells us more about the brief than the brief does.

Two things then decide the shortlist. The first is visa position and timing, whether a spouse arriving from India would be able to work on landing or would wait years for it, which changes who is a realistic match far more than most families expect. The second is whether the candidate was raised in India or in the States, since the two rarely mean the same thing by an arranged introduction, and a family that is honest about this at registration is spared a great deal later.