For those readers in pursuit of Vikram Seth’s novel, I kindly
advise you to take a U-turn and drive out, as the information written here is not even remotely related to the novel. The information held here is an
interesting memory that I will like to come back and read when I am grey and
dying.
Before I begin my story, I think few paragraphs of
background blurbs are in order.
My sister’s background: My sister has recently attained what
people would call of marriageable age. She is a cute, bubbly, short, chubby, a PhD
pursuing career woman. She is innocent, naive, stubborn, obstinate and
intelligent. Until the last year, she puked at the idea of marriage and became
extremely violent at the mention of the topic. My parents clueless of how to
tackle the issue approached my sisters most trusted ally, ME, to help deal with
the problem. With a few tricks up my sleeve, now she agrees to marriage with a
list of set conditions. The future prospects need to be rich, smart,
intelligent, work as a doctor, have personality, be humorous, have Lady Luck as his mistress and last but not
the least be handsome. By
my experience of living with my sister, I would say she will make a good wife.
She is an excellent cook and her bad qualities such as her moods, quick-temper,
bullying nature, laziness (which can be overcome by bribes) and her awkwardness
to hugs can be overlooked.
A background of my community: The community is a small
orthodox business community that belongs to the central heartlands of Tamil
Nadu. It was once a prosperous community with business ventures spreading far
and wide from India to countries of the East. With the lack of young enterprises, now the
country produces young intellectuals who had rather work and earn large pockets
of wages from multinational firm rather than enter into a risky business world.
It is famous for its hospitality, cuisine and old classical bungalows that are
now rotten in their unkempt hometowns. The huge villas of heritage are now
mostly let-out of for Kollywood shooting or have been turned to resorts for foreign
visitors who want a luxurious feel for India. As I said, being a small orthodox
bunch inter-caste marriage has been in practice from time immemorable. And being a genetist, I cannot avoid talking
about the limited gene pool. The gene pool is very small and due to the
selection of the more unfavourable traits over the years, the community has
repeated produced offsprings resembling mutant SRKs (Ofcourse, with a few
exceptions). So, a worry that looms over my sisters is that there is a 100%
chance that her child could look like a hybrid between a monkey, donkey and a
buffalo if she fails to choose wisely in a setting without much choice. ( Note
for those among the readers with a bit of a wild imagination: When I say small,
do not even imagine that we all go around marrying our 1st cousins
but just that everyone’s related to everyone in a strange way. For example, a prospectus
groom could be my cousin’s uncle’s sister-in-law’s father’s brother’s grandson.
Now do you see the relationship?) And I again stress, it is an orthodox community
and so do not go into shaddi.com and try typing Maya’s sister out of sheer
curiosity as this may not result in anything. Alliances are normally passed on
by word of mouth and the news normally spread through the wind by gossiping
elders to reach within ear shots of families with brides and grooms.
Now to the main topic of discussion: As I was saying, my
sister is now of marriageable age and my parents have excitedly taken the first
steps into the groom hunt market. For my entertainment, I would like to keep a
list of all the candidates that have been introduced to my sister and will keep
editing the list till Mr. Right has appeared.
Starting with, Mr. No: 0, other than information on his financial
status, I was not updated on anything else. My grandmother had shown a picture
of my sister to the groom’s mother and she seemed very interested. The
chemistry been my grandmother and the groom’s mother clicked liked magic on the
first day of their meeting and the second day there was talk of flying my
sister to Malaysia to meet the groom. The proposal to marriage seemed extremely
speedy that made me go write my letter to my brother-in-law at once (maybe I will
post that up another day). The third day there was a new discovery, there was a
case of mistaken identity and the proposal was dropped as speedily as it
appeared. He is Mr. No: 0 as he would not have made the list if I had not
written my letter then. I was amazed at how fast things were proceeding.
Mr. No: 1, he and his mother were coming home for tea and my
sister on that day was not at home. Before the appearance of the guests, my
mother had warned me that I could be meeting my possible brother-in-law. So excited, my mother and I stood by the door
to welcome our guests and our jaws dropped when we set eyes on the groom. What
stood before us was a scrawny, thin, dark, not too tall figure with white teeth
(if you are wondering if the groom’s side had a clue as to what my mother and I
were doing, I would say no. They genuinely had just come for an evening’s
visit). So, we welcomed them into our warm home and were talking. He had
studied engineering and had found employment in the same field. He seemed nice,
easy to talk to and overall had a pleasant personality (though I wouldn’t say
the same about his mother). He earned a couple of Brownie point from my mother
and me, despite his looks. Next, was to test how my sister reacted to him. My
mother planned a date where the clueless groom would drive us (Mum, sister and
I) to a temple 3 hours away and my sister would have the opportunity to see him
for herself. The date went as planned and the verdict from my sister was a no.
He was rejected without knowing that he was being rejected (I should add, my
sister did feel bad for doing so because he really did seem to be a nice
person...only if he had the looks).
Mr. No: 2, was my dad’s friends neighbour. He had completed
dentistry and had set up his own clinic. His photo was emailed to my sister and
the mail was opened to set eyes on a young man covered in chest hair up to his
neck. He was wearing a formal shirt with all buttons done up except for the
collar. So believe me when I say he was covered with hair up to his neck. It
was hard for my sister and me to look past the hair and when we did, we were
certain that lighting in the photo studio had enhanced his colour by a couple
of shades. I think you would all know have guessed the verdict that followed
for Mr. No: 2 but this experience had made my sister add a new condition to her
list and that was NO chest hair.
Mr. No: 3, chanced upon us in strange way. My sister had
sent her CV to my father’s friend couple of years back in hope that he could
help her find a job but the CV found her a prospectus groom instead. The friend
had seen my sister’s grades and was truly impressed, so he set to match-make his
brother’s son for my sister. The boy had completed medicine and was practising
medicine in Malaysia. My father gave my sister the name of the groom and asked
her to search it in Facebook (Facebook comes in handy in many ways). The search
returned and my sister immediately reacted with a strong NO. After seeing her
potential partners, so far, my sister has returned to square one. She is now
again refusing to marry.
For now, the story ends here. I will try to update as events
progress. I personally feel that my parents have more closely matched my sister’s
requirements with each coming groom. I see a pattern and I think it will only
get better, with Mr. No: 0 – unknown profession, Mr. No: 1 – an engineer, Mr.
No: 2 – a dentist, Mr. No: 3 – a doctor, I hope that Mr. No: 4 – will be a
doctor with good looks and the deal will be done. Now wish my sister Good Luck
on her groom hunt.
