The reluctant investigator

The matrimonial season is in the air. The shady.com and other such websites are doing great business. And for those who take the word a little forward, both sides want to know more about the candidates. On the online profile, everyone is jolly, happy, caring, intelligent, sensitive, blah blah blah. But the real deal lies in what you are in person. And that, unfortunately, nothing can guarantee except observing someone doing the smallest day-to-day tasks for some time. People usually choose to outsource this work to the grapevine: does someone have a contact in the locality where he lives?

Enter the reluctant detective. The first time someone asked me to find out about another prospective groom was when I was working. I suppose a secure employment lends credibility to the opinion and report of a twenty-something guy. I was not even in the same building complex, but I had to do it. I called up someone I knew in the same building, and told him what and why in full detail. He in turn brought up the topic with a person who worked with the target guy in the same team, and came back with a pretty positive feedback. I duly conveyed the information back. I suppose the groom had also heard of this enquiry: I didn't really care. After all, I think the person has a right to know that someone asked after him.

This case was certainly a wonderful streak of serendipity. I just happened to know X who knew Y who was the groom's team-mate. What do you do when you don't really know anyone to connect you there? Matters such as these are so delicate that you can't ask everyone in your immediate contact list if they know anything about the person in question. It is you who has to take the first step long enough so that the next one should be a reliable and discreet source of information. And you also cannot go about making new friends just so that you may fish for such information.

The dilemma becomes even more intense when you have vague information via some gossip circle and have learnt something negative. More so, if the person in question is a female. "She is rumoured to have slept with this guy", "I heard that she was caught stealing money from her room-mate". These is no way you can verify such personal and private information, but again you cannot fake a good or neutral report to the family who are probably depending on your feedback to finalize their decision. If you report what you've just heard, you might be lending belief to the baseless gossip. On the other hand, if you just give a neutral feedback and your friend's or cousin's life is ruined because they were married off to a guy of loose moral standards, you will feel extremely guilty morally for having suppressed what you had known all along. Half truths are always worse than lies.

I have found that giving a politically correct opinion or feedback is the best option. Good news is always great to report. Bad news must be given out selectively: in fact I believe one should never do that unless one is sure. But sometimes where there is a smoke, there is actually a fire. "Oh I've heard he makes strong friends and strong enemies" perhaps can cover a fact that the person has problems getting on with people (or so you've heard). End of the day, that qualifies for a good as well as a bad character trait that the girl has to judge for herself before she ties the knot.

Of course, there is our favourite tool: Google! But it also depends on what kind of an online footprint you have. In my case, for example, besides the occasional "bengali armpit" and "handsome Indian blogger" (I swear that one came here once!), there is a regular stream of visits from google or yahoo searches for my name or this blog's name. Sometimes it is such an ego trip, at other times it is scary. Anyway, to my future in-laws who might be reading this blog, I love y'all so much! :D