Pre Valentine’s Day Hindu Vivah Event Rocked

By Sanchali Basu

HOUSTON:

Feb 11 already had a Valentine’s Day feel in the air. Hindu singles from Houston and the rest of the US found a platform to meet eligible partners of the opposite sex at Maharajah Restaurant’s banquet hall. The event consisted of a round robin meet-up of bachelors and bachelorettes divided into two age groups, 35 and under, and over. A brief one-on-one tete a tete was arranged only for Hindu participants, followed by a mixer.

The turnout was respectable and it was interesting and encouraging to see quite a few participants over the age of 35, confirming the popular belief that, “Love has no age limit.”

This is the 4th event that the Houston chapter of hinduvivah arranged and now there are several chapters active all over the country, including Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, New Jersey and of course Houston. The most recent success story and feather in its cap is the couple who met through hinduvivah’s Atlanta chapter, which culminated in marriage.

HinduVivah (www.hinduvivah.org) is a US based non-profit organization whose charter is to facilitate the meeting of Hindu singles for the purpose of matrimony. It is engaged mainly in the arranging of meetings where Hindu singles get a chance to mingle with like-minded suitors who are implicitly ready for marriage.

These meets help break the ice and introduce Hindu singles to each other, at which point Vivah’s work is done, and these singles are left to explore and select a life partner from amongst the singles they meet at the events. Vivah requests Hindu singles to not use these events to date for dating sake. The services are meant to be used by those that are serious and contemplating marriage.

Since Vivah is funded by the Hindu community, its events are free of charge to all its attendees. Research shows that in-person meets have a much higher chance of leading to finding a partner suitable for marriage; than do online matching/dating sites based strictly on professed personal profiles.

At some point in the future if some kind of online presence can complement these in-person meets, Vivah is open to exploring that avenue.

The event was very well organized and many participants stopped by the Volunteers’ desk to compliment the event coordinators. They were all praise for the wonderful efforts put together by a great team of volunteers. A suggestion by one of the participants was to include Sikhs of Indian origin in the mix, which will be considered by organizers of future events. This time around, there were 24 matching pairs.

Pavel Ahmed of Maharajah restaurant went all out to make everyone comfortable and provide free tea to the participants and benevolent sponsor Umang Mehta of Deep Foods provided snacks and juice. Elite Top USA founders Satish and Meenakshi Varma who have a thriving real estate and roofing tile business, were also sponsors for the event.

Please check the website www.hinduvivah.org for updates and notifications of future events.