One in a Billion

The Film

Ravi Patel is almost 30 and still single — a cataclysm in his culture. After breaking up with Audrey, his secret white girlfriend of two years, Ravi goes to India for his annual family trip. As usual, the pressure to get married is heavy, only this time Ravi succumbs; he agrees to try things their way: the semi-arranged marriage system. He comes back to America having no idea what he just agreed to.

He works out the odds: India has a population of more than a billion people. Easy, right? But he lives in America, where Indians only make up one percent of the general population. His odds of finding an Indian person here are roughly one in 100. But, clearly, he wants this person to be a woman; that reduces the odds to one in 200. Further conditions (she should be unmarried and over the age of 17) reduce his odds to one in 400. Now, taking into consideration the traditions that dictate that this woman be Hindu and that her family has to originate from a specific 50-square mile radius in the State of Gujarat, India, as Ravi's family does, brings the odds down to one in 2,000. All he has to do is find an Indian woman meeting all these criteria, whom he also likes and who likes him. What are the chances? He puts them at one in a billion.

Blind dates with Indian girls introduced to him via biodatas — matrimonial resumes passed among the parents. Indian dating websites. Indian weddings. Meanwhile, Ravi can't stop thinking about Audrey. Ravi Patel has one year to find a girl, or next year he will go about matrimony the way his parents did, and agree to an arranged marriage.