One In a Billion

One in a Billion, a comedic documentary that focuses on arranged and sub arranged marriages, revolves around a 29-year-old American-born Hindu man (Ravi Patel) who allows his parents to send him around the U.S. to meet potential Hindu wives.

The film will submerge audiences in a subculture that thrives in this country.  One in a Billion is about first-generation Americans who struggle with the idea of marrying within one’s religion and culture and the pressures that first-generation Americans put on themselves to maintain that culture.

Ravi wonders about the odds:  “So, my parents, who are exuberantly in love, had a traditional Hindu arranged marriage.  Naturally, they want me to marry an Indian girl.  Let’s say I want that, too.  India has a population of more than a billion people.  Easy, right?  But I live in America, where Indians make up one percent of the general population.  My odds of finding this person are one in a hundred.  But now let’s say I want this person to be a woman (fifty percent): make that one in two hundred.  Now let’s say, I want this woman to be unmarried, and over the age of seventeen (fifty percent): one in four hundred. Now, actually, this girl is supposed to be a Hindu and her family has to originate from a specific 50-square mile radius in the State of Gujarat, India: one in two thousand.  Okay, now let’s say I have to like her, she has to like me, and we have to actually find each other … One in a Billion.”