Indian website offers bachelors a virtual wife

Indian bachelors can now sign up to a virtual wife scheme that allows them to pick from four different type of 'wives' to practise on. The Indian website, biwihotohaisi.com (an ideal wife), allows men to choose from a homemaker, a "control freak", a woman obsessed with shopping and soap operas and an ambitious banker.

The men subscribing to the service receive automated telephone messages from the virtual woman they have chosen, to help them make an informed choice when the time comes to land a real wife. The first candidate is the devoted Ritu Gharwali (Ritu Homemaker), 23, who tells her "husband" to "please eat your lunch, I have made your favourite dish," making her the ideal Indian housewife in conservative circles.



25-year-old Bijli Thakur (Electricity Thakur) is described as "Dominating. Bossy. Control-freak." Milli Chulbulli (Milli Naughty), 21, is an excitable secretary in a multinational firm with a life that revolves around shopping trips and neighbourhood gossip, while Shalini Sheherwali (Shalini From the City) is an ambitious 26-year-old banker.

In a country where arranged marriages are still the norm and dating is often frowned upon, matrimonial websites are big business, and the website's idea is that bachelors will rush to sign up to its parent site, Bharat Matrimony.