In 1978, while he was junior national champion, the 16-year-old Modi was selected for participating in an international tournament to be held in Beijing, China. A girl badminton player of his own age named Ameeta Kulkarni was in the women's team, and, as the Supreme Court would later record, "there arose intimacy between the two." While Modi was a Muslim from north India, Ameeta was a Hindu from Maharashtra, had grown up in cosmopolitan Mumbai and came from an affluent, upper-class English-educated family, very different from Modi's own background. Both families were stridently opposed to marriage between Modi and Ameeta, not just because of the vast chasm in their backgrounds, but also because they anticipated that professional issues, jealousies and oneupmanship would also become major factors in a marriage between two ambitious, target-oriented, over-achieving individuals. Indeed, the families remained opposed to the marriage even to the bitter end. However, Modi and Ameeta were adamant and got married in a registry office in a hastily arranged ceremony.