Dating Apps on India

choi

Georgia Wells and Eric Bellman, Tinder Is Big in India -- at Least with Men; Online dating apps try to woo female users in a largely untapped market. Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2018 (front page).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ind ... n-tinder-1529869656
http://lena-chen-nude.xoxohth.co ... c=12&forum_id=2

Quote:

"Tinder’s parent company, Match Group Inc., 2½ years ago opened an office in India

"in this traditionally conservative country * * * n many parts of India, arranged marriages—as opposed to what Indians call 'love marriages'—remain the norm, and dating in any form still carries a stigma, particularly for women.  Indian women who have dabbled with dating apps complain they get overwhelmed by all the attention that comes with the surplus of men.  'The barrage of messages that hits your inbox is like a swarm of locusts,' said Anushree Majumdar, age 33, in Mumbai. She uses dating apps only occasionally, she said, and can understand why women are intimidated by them.

A local dating app called "Woo recently co-hosted a singles event in New Delhi with POPxo, a popular women's lifestyle website—and got a crowd of about 75% men.  At the event, men competed to * * * come up with the best pickup lines. The winner: 'You have nice eyes.' Another contestant tried a valiant attempt to woo a woman named Konika.  'My grandmother was right,' he exclaimed. 'She said that I would marry someone with a name starting in K.'  Konika just shook her head and said 'No.'

"One woman saw her family driver on an app which made her uncomfortable because it meant he likely saw her on it as well.

"The number of people in India using smartphones in 2018 is expected to grow by close to 16%—the highest growth rate in the world, according to research firm eMarketer.

"Tinder offers its app in four Indian languages.

"Abhimanyu Chaturvedi, 28, from New Delhi, spent an hour each day carefully picking potential partners on Tinder. He paid for a premium membership that gave him access to more profiles.  In nine months, he matched with three women. Two of them unmatched within seconds, he said, preventing him from sending them messages, and the third never responded. He tried changing his bio a dozen times and displaying different photos, before taking a break. [He is discouraged.]

Note:
(a)
(i) The apps" in the subtitle is plural because the report features both Tinder and local competitors (without ranking them by revenues or number of users).
(ii) There is no need to read the rest of this report, though it is kind of funny. At least it reflects the thinking of some Indians.

(b) In quotation 2: Indian women "get overwhelmed by all the attention that comes with the surplus of men"

One may say that from the context, the surplus of men refers to users of the dating apps, though in real life, tens of millions of females are missing at birth in India. The natural male to female ratio at birth is about 105 to 100. But the shocking truth is India releases no statistics in this category. It was so half a century ago. See KV Ramachandran and Vinayak A Deshpande, The Sex Ratio at Birth in India by Regions. he Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 42: 84-94
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3348717
, 89 ("Because it is not the custom in India for a woman to go to a hospital or health center for a delivery, it is generally believed that difficult and complicated cased predominated in hospital births"), 91 ("the age-old custom in India of a daughter's going to her mother's house for her first delivery, and even for her second and third")/

It remains so today. Googling and India's own statistics (including the last, 2011 census) show numbers of boys and girls age 0-6 , but not those for live and still-births.
(c) "a woman named Konika"

Web search shows it is not a Indian given name, but that of a Japanese company. See next.

(d)
(i) "コニカ株式会社（Konica）は、かつて存在した日本のカメラ、写真用フィルムメーカー。2003年のミノルタとの合併により、現在はコニカミノルタとなったが、同社は2006年3月をもってカメラ、フィルム関連事業より撤退している。"  ja.wikipedia.org for コニカ.

My translation: Konica was a Japanese maker of camera and its films. Ot merged with Minolta in 2003 to form Konica-Minolta, which discontinued those lines in 2006.
(ii) "The company traces its history back to 1873 (pre-dating Kodak in the photography business) when pharmacist Rokusaburō SUGIURA 杉浦 六三郎 began selling [did not make until 1902, see (iii)] photographic materials at his store in Konishiya Rokubē 小西屋 六兵衛 , the biggest pharmacy trader in Tokyo at that time.  In 1878, Rokusaburō succeeded to his family and renamed Rokuemon VI (Rokudaime 6代目 Rokuemon 六右衞門). He gave the original shop to his younger brother and launched a new shop, Konishi Honten (Konishi Main Shop) in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo." en.wikipedia.org for Komoca, whose reference for the quotation is
(A) Probably everything in the preceding quotation is correct (see next). However, my (and maybe yours, too) impression  from the quotation is Mr Sugiura set up a counter in the pharmacy. But why does it say "Rokusaburō succeeded to his family"?  It turns out that he was a scion (together with his brother) of the family-owned pharmacy.
(B) The quotation in (ii) cited

写真史に刻まれたカメラ大衆化への足跡 コニカ株式会社創始者 杉浦六三郎. 先駆者たちの大地 (a magazine), November/December 2000.
www.net-ir.ne.jp/ir_magazine/pioneer/vol046_4902.html
, which stated
• "世界初のストロボ内蔵35mmカメラ、コニカC35EF、通称「ピッカリコニカ」。"  (my translation: (Konica is famous for) World's first camera with concealed strobe light, commonly known as Pikkari Konica. My research shows it was debuted in 1976.)
• and that photography came to Japan in October 1872;
• and that at age 25, he set up his camera business in the family business, pharmacy 小西屋 六兵衛 ("「小西屋」は、東京でも有数の大商店") that started out selling rice generations ago;
• and that in 1879 he inherited, from his father, the title/mantle 6代目杉浦六右衞門 (the sixth generation of 杉浦六右衞門).  (One use in Japan of 目 (only in its Japanese pronunciation "me" which rhymes with 咩 in Chinese), not found in Chinese, is to mean the order, equivalent to 第 in Chinese and th in English. So 6代目 is the sixth generation whereas 6代, six generations.)

(iii) 六右衛門 ろくうえもん is pronounced roku-u-e-mon, all of which is Chinese pronunciations of respective kanji. So the English Wiki was mistaken to spell it Rokuemon with the second u missing (which will be pronounced in Japanese).
(iv) No source says that, but my guess is that Konica came from store name Konishi 小西 (both ko and nishi are Japanese pronunciations of corresponding kanji; 小西 is a Japanese surname) and camera -- a portmanteau of KONIshi and the first two letters of camera.
(v) Sandergroen (writer name), The Sun Never Sets With A Konica C35 EF. Jan 22, 2013.
https://www.lomography.com/magaz ... flits-konica-c35-ef
("The Konica C35 EF was the world's first compact camera with built-in flash. In the 1970s it was one of Andy Warhol’s favourite cameras and now, 35 years later, it's mine.  The Konica C35 EF, nicknamed Pikkari in Japan, was the world's first 35mm compact camera with built-in flash. The C in the name stands for 'compact,' the 35 for '35mm film' and the EF for 'electronic flash' ")
(vi) What is Pikkari in Japanese?

Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki (eds), The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2016, page number hidden
https://books.google.com/books?i ... apanese&f=false
(in Japanese comic theater called kyōgen 狂言: "Thunder becomes a god, played by an actor. He flashes lightning by leaping, arms and legs akimbo, and shouting, 'pikkari!' ('flash'); and the rumbles by stamping his feet and shpouting 'garari, garari, garari!' ('rumble, rumble, rumble!') ")

akimbo (adj or adv; Did You Know?)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/akimbo

akimbo (etymology: ME [Middle English] in kenebowe, lit[erally], in keen bow, ie, in a sharp curve")
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/akimbo

There is a Japanese "phrase 'pikkari hikaru,' which means 'to shine brightly/ dazzlingly.' " (quoting the Web; Japanese-English dictionary: * hikaru 光る 【ひかる】 (v): "to shine")