Arora Marriage Bureau

Arora Marriage Bureau has been operating out of Jatwara Street 3550 in Darya Ganj for a long time. It's an old neighborhood with narrow lanes, and we've seen it change a lot over the last twenty years. My family runs this place together, and we spend our days looking through paper profiles and talking to parents who are worried about their children's futures. People come in all the time, sitting on the old blue sofa, telling us exactly what they want for their kids. It’s a lot of listening and taking careful notes in our big registers. We have cupboards full of files from years back, some of them gathering a bit of dust. Darya Ganj is always crowded and noisy, especially near our street, so there is always something to see out the window. We don’t use any fancy computer programs to match people up; it’s mostly just us knowing the families and remembering who might get along with who based on their backgrounds. It’s a very personal way of doing things, even if it’s a bit slow compared to the apps people use now. People trust us because we’ve been here so long and they know our faces. We often hear about weddings we helped start months or even years later, which is always a nice feeling. Sometimes a match doesn't work out at first, and that's okay, we just keep looking for them. We don’t have a big staff, just a couple of us who know the community well.