Shankar Prasad wasn’t supposed to want this.

He was born in the United States, the third of four brothers from a family who immigrated to this country from India in 1975. He grew up in New Jersey. He went to Rutgers. He worked for a hedge fund in New York. In short, he had a “modern” American life.

He was supposed to meet the love of his life in a bar in the East Village of Manhattan. Instead, in 2008, he told his mother he wanted to get married — and he wanted her help.

“Everybody wants that romantic story, the boy-meets-girl that you see in every movie and TV show,” said Dr. Prasad, 35, the associate provost for global engagement and strategic initiatives at Brown University. “This is our version of a boy-meets-girl. It just happens to be somebody who looks like you and speaks the same language as you do and comes from your culture. But it’s the same idea.”

Dr. Prasad had willingly entered what most would describe as the westernized version (though it also happens in South Asia) of an arranged marriage.