Kavita Ramdya’s debut book, 'Bollywood Weddings: Dating, Engagement and Marriage in Hindu America' is an anthropological study of Indian-American Hindus in the tri-state New York area. It attempts to answer the age-old questions, “Why do we fall in love with the people we fall in love with?” and “Why do we marry the people we choose to marry?” To answer these questions – the ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural, and financial qualities – and what our choice means in terms of expressing our national identity, Kavita Ramdya interviewed twenty couples addressing the various methods of meeting a potential future spouse including using family & friends, personal ads, and internet dating services as well as family tensions that arise with inter-marriage (Hindus marrying Christians, Jews, Muslims, African Americans and Atheists).

Attending their weddings and watching wedding videos, she successfully describes how this community negotiates between antiquated, Old World values such arranged marriage and modern, individualistic values such as love marriage. She finds that in this day and age, a discussion about who and how we choose to marry cannot be had without recognising the significant influence popular culture has on our ideas about how to best express love.

In Kavita Ramdya’s book, the Bombay-based Indian film industry “Bollywood” emerges as a significant force in formulating conceptions of love and identity. Bollywood culture – it’s fashionable aesthetic and symbolic representation of a modernised India – becomes the method by which American-raised Indian Hindus negotiate two diametrically-opposed value sets: that of pre-modern India and mainstream America.

About the Author

Kavita Ramdya was born in New York City and raised in Long Island where she attended Smithtown High School. She received her B.A. from New York University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Boston University where she was a Presidential University Graduate Fellow. She currently works at an American bank in London and is a regular Arts Opinion-Editorial columnist for “News India Times".

She also writes about popular culture and current events for a variety of publications, both mainstream and academic, including "India Abroad" and "The Indian American". Kavita Ramdya co-chairs the Junior Leadership Circle for Women for Women International, a charity which provides financial and emotional assistance to women survivors of war. University teaching credits includes “Modern British Drama”, “Contemporary British Literature”, “Literature of the American Dream”, and “Literature of the American Frontier.”

Click here to buy this book