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Lori Gottlieb in the NYT Book Review:

Like many single women looking for love in New York, the journalist Anita Jain was fed up with the local dating scene. In 2005, Jain, who was then 32, wrote an article for New York magazine ­— ‘Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse Than Craigslist?’ — in which she wondered whether she should let her Indian relatives find her a husband.

It seemed tempting. What marriage-minded woman doesn’t dream of never having to walk into a singles bar again? Yet, while few modern Westerners would be willing to outsource their spousal selection (heck, most won’t even let their mothers set them up on a coffee date), Jain actually hopped on a plane to Delhi. It was the reverse journey her father had taken more than three decades earlier, when he left his homeland for America in search of better job opportunities. Jain, on the other hand, was going to India for what she hoped would be better dating opportunities.

And why not? As her mother would say of her own happy arranged marriage: ‘It’s not that there isn’t love. It’s just that it comes after marriage.’ Besides, while an American man might date a woman for years and still not know if he wants to marry her, Jain was eager to meet Indian men with ‘their clarity of intent.’ She would give herself one year, which she thought would be ample time in a country where ‘it would not be a stretch to say that ‘shaadi,’ the word for ‘marriage’ in many Indian languages, is the first word a child in an Indian family understands after mummy and papa.’

She lands instead in the New India, with its thriving club scene, casual hookups and men who tell you to have ‘no expectations.’ To her dismay, Jain finds herself back in ‘ego deflating’ dating territory: leaving groveling phone messages for an unresponsive boyfriend; having a date cancel at the last minute, only to run into him later on the street with another woman (‘It’s clear that, as they say, he’s just not that into me’); and trolling the Web site shaadi.com for eligible prospects (sadly, Indian men also lie about their age online). But not all tradition is lost. When Jain searches for an apartment, she struggles to find a landlord who will rent to a single woman.