E-Paper
Here’s how much dowry you’re worth
Chill all you feminists and starry-eyed bachelors, this is nothing serious. Dowrycalculator.com, a website ‘dedicated to all the match making aunties of India’ in jest, has become a hot favourite on the web — 50,000 Facebook users shared it within just five days of its launch.
Chill all you feminists and starry-eyed bachelors, this is nothing serious. Dowrycalculator.com, a website ‘dedicated to all the match making aunties of India’ in jest, has become a hot favourite on the web — 50,000 Facebook users shared it within just five days of its launch.
On the website, a guy can calculate how much dowry he commands, based his skin colour (options include ‘fairy white’ and ‘pitch black — not visible on a moonless night’), education (all universities other than an IIT, Harvard and Stanford are clubbed under ‘none of the above’), salary, country etc.
The site’s founder, Tanul Thakur, 23, a US-based engineer of Indian origin, says, “I wanted to poke fun at the parochial mentality of the Indian society and its unhealthy obsession with certain things. Even now a days, a big deal is made about someone’s skin colour!”
A sample Dowry diary
Groom’s age: 28
Cast: Vaishya
Salary: Rs 50K-70K
Alma mater IIT
Working in USA
Skin Colour Wheatish
(Would need Fair-n-lovely)
Profession: doctor
Dowry amount: Rs 65,00,000
