Hipster Muslim desperately seeks marriage

My sister has this theory: She refuses to settle for anyone in the limited cess-pool of Indian Muslim men from small communities that sort of Indian Muslim women are limited to when they come from families where one of the parents is rather overly traditional when it comes to stuff like that.

Mostly because she does not want to participate in the degradation of evolution. She does not want to participate in the manifestation of more stupid marriages, which lead to more stupid people, which leads to worse options for the future of other women in communities like this. Also, she’s not into that whole “check my rims out” and “my worth is measured by how big my arms are and how thin my legs are” vibe to the whole, “if you marry me you can stay in this big mansion with me and my family and their family and their extended family” thing. Mostly, she hates the whole “Education? what’s that? My father is wealthy enough for me to choose against learning anything ever, or reading any books and updating my status update with several grammatical errors. Like saying DAT instead of that” thing. Who wouldn’t right?

Also, she’s a dentist. She’s intelligent and she’s smart enough to know that on a scientific level, breeding this way is just all a big no, no. She has a name for this: Skeletal Growth Abnormality Syndrome. It’s not just a reference to the bad bone structure, it’s also a sort of a universal term for bad choices and all of the above, if that makes any sense. So she remains single. And she loves it and she’s hilarious about it. Sometimes she has a Bridget Jones moment, but then messages from stalkers who tell her she looks “dam” good in the gym (yes, that is how a 27-year-old spells in that world) often prove to be enlightening moments dressed in liberating clothing called “I love my life, I have made such a good choice”.

And it’s because of a sense of humour like this that I can toy around and send her things like links to websites called shaadi.com. The perfect online pairing place for good Indian virgins who are looking to meet and marry … then mingle (in that order). So when a friend of mine tweeted a link to a “newer” version of this: hipstershaadi.com (yes, this does exist), I knew I had to forward it to her.

Hipstershaadi.com is the same as shaadi.com. Which is basically the same as the small community cesspool situation. But it doesn’t want to be. It wants to be cooler because it’s online. It’s a place where younger people can post their profiles and marriage proposals without cringing about the fact that it’s actually just shaadi.com. Because now it has the word hipster in it, so it MUST be cool to go about life this way. But when you read it, it’s not. It’s not cool. It is seriously funny though. For starters, the site describes itself as this: “Salaamz! What is a Hipster? Why would you want to marry one? (Please refer to Google.) (Am I supposed to asked Google why I would want to marry a hipster.) But in short, we’re third culture kids, proud Muslim Americans who love the latest music (Is that what a hipster is? *Shrugs) fashion, art, critical thought, food, imagination, creativity and all forms of obscure everything. So when it comes to finding our soulmate in life, where do we turn? (To Google, we’ve been through this, no?) To Hipster Shaadi, of course! (Oh.)

Naturally I assumed that my sister would have a similar reaction. She didn’t. Well, first she said this after I posted the link to her Facebook wall: “Stop doing research that may or may not change the way skeletal growth abnormalities are treated … ” Then she added this “*begins to set up hipster shaadi profile” — at this point I still think she’s being sarcastic. Then she finishes with a typo that looks something like “Thanks Haji for the tip” … now I am seriously confused.

I mean this is a site that you cannot possible take seriously right? Am I? Right? No? In the section “Things You’d Like In Your Significant Other”, people have written stuff like this:

“Good practicing muslim, no short pants.” (From a woman’s profile.)
or
“I prefer someone not as well off as me so I can share my wealth rather than combine it.” (From a man’s profile.)
or
“She must know how to surf or want to learn to surf. Must love rock music. Wearing hijab is a bonus, desi is a bonus.” (From a man’s profile — also, HOW? How do you want someone who surfs in hijab?!)

So I asked her whether she had read any of the profiles.

And obviously, somehow, she managed to find this and I quote, from another one of her Facebook comments: “Practicing physician in NYC … FTW. Green card, doctor, hipster … checking all sorts of boxes here!”

You can almost hear my brain squeeze at the thought of her saying this sentence. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings if she was serious, and I didn’t want to not laugh in case I blew her cover. I mean what if all of these comments were disguised as jokes to cover up the fact that she really was being serious?

So I just asked if she was and she said no. I pushed a little harder just to make sure I wasn’t right about my whole cover theory (you don’t have to Google this, just see the paragraph above). And then she went off in one last post: “Are you serious???? Haven’t been married before and would want the same in any potential wife?!! NO!!! JZKS”.

“What is JZKS?” I said.

“It’s hipster for Jazaakallah”, she replied — that one, you can Google.