by Farahad Zama
Mrs Ali said, ‘We really shouldn’t be doing this at our age. Let me call Rehman. He will help us. After all, what are sons for, if not to help their parents in their old age?’
‘No!’ said Mr Ali firmly. ‘I’ve already told you. I don’t want him here now. If he comes we’ll just end up having an argument. I don’t want any fights today.’
Finally all the furniture was in place. Mrs Ali looked round, breathing heavily, and said, ‘I will put up curtains to cover all the grille work, so you have privacy. Also, keep the door to the house closed as far as possible, so people sitting here cannot see inside.’
The next day, Mr Ali sat on a chair in his new office and laid out the newspaper on the desk. He opened the paper to the matrimonial section. Sunday was the most popular day for this and it ran to one whole page of closely typed ads. Mr Ali ran his finger down from the top, trying to find his ad. He could not afford a proper ‘display’ advertisement, so he had paid for a classified advertisement. He had agonised over his ad many times to pare it down to the absolute minimum because the newspaper charged per word and he didn’t want to pay more than was necessary. He skipped over a ‘Fair, slim, 22 years . . .’, a ‘Christian Mala, 28 years old . . .’, a ‘Software engineer working in Bangalore . . .’ and a ‘London-settled doctor, caste no bar’.
He was more than three-quarters of the way down the page before he found his own ad: ‘For widest choice among Hindu, Muslim, Christian Brides/Grooms, contact Ali’s Marriage Bureau for Rich People . . .’
Mr Ali knew that he was exaggerating just a bit when he promised a wide choice. The biggest problem with a marriage bureau, he thought, is that the start is the most difficult time. If he had wanted to go into the restaurant business instead, he would have done up a place, hired some waiters, a cook or two and opened with as big a dhoom-dhamaka as he could afford and people would come to try the food. The restaurant may not run in the longer term but, if the money and inclination were there, it would have been easy for Mr Ali to open one. A marriage bureau is quite different. When the first client walks in through the door and wants to see suitable matches before parting with the fees, Mr Ali will not have any matches to show the client. To get round this problem, he had decided not to put his address in the ad and run the business over the phone.
He felt proud to see his name in print. He took out a red ballpoint pen and circled his ad. He called out, ‘Wife, come and see this!’
‘What is it now? How am I supposed to get any work done if you keep calling me like this?’ Mrs Ali said, coming out onto the verandah.
Mr Ali showed his wife the paper. She read the ad and smiled.
‘Very nice,’ she said and then frowned suddenly. ‘There are so many ads in this paper. Will anybody notice ours?’
Mr Ali had been having similar doubts, but he put on a brave front. ‘Of course they will!’ he said.
Mrs Ali went back into the house and Mr Ali started reading the newspaper. He skimmed over the headlines: a terrorist incident in Kashmir, an inter-state spat about the River Krishna’s waters and a new shopping mall that was being planned in the grounds of the old central jail that had been moved out of the town. After folding the newspaper neatly, he rearranged the still empty files.
An hour later, Mrs Ali came out with two cups of tea and gave him one cup. Mr Ali came out from behind his table and they both sat on the chairs by the verandah gate sipping their tea and looking at the people and the traffic on the road.
‘Did anybody call?’ Mrs Ali asked.
‘No. But it is still early.’
‘Do you think anybody will ring?’ said Mrs Ali.
Just then the phone rang and Mr Ali jumped up, grinning smugly at Mrs Ali. He picked up the phone and said in his most professional voice, ‘Ali’s Marriage Bureau.’
‘Salaam, bhai-jaan! How are you today? Did you get any customers yet?’
It was Mrs Ali’s brother, Azhar. Mr Ali’s voice dropped in disappointment. ‘Not yet,’ he replied.
‘I am thinking of going to the Pension Line Mosque for the afternoon prayers. Why don’t you come with me?’
‘Why?’ said Mr Ali. ‘Today is not Friday.’
‘Where does it say in the Quran that you should only go to the mosque on Fridays?’ asked Azhar.
‘No, thank you,’ replied Mr Ali, ‘I’m busy.’
He passed the phone to his wife.
The business took off slowly, as expected. A few people became members and Mr Ali advertised on their behalf. He forwarded the replies to his members but also kept these details and, as the weeks passed, his files steadily grew.
CHAPTER TWO
The smell of frying pomfret - his favourite fish - wafted from the kitchen as Mr Ali sat down at the dining table. A month had gone by since he had opened the marriage bureau and the business was steady but slow. The fees Mr Ali collected barely covered the cost of advertising and his other expenses. However, the work occupied his time and kept him out of his wife’s hair, and that was the main thing. Today had been exceptionally quiet. He had not received a single call all morning.
The phone rang once, twice, three times.
He was tempted to let it keep ringing, but got up because business had been so slow. The chair made a noise on the granite floor as he pushed it back.
‘Where are you going? I’m just bringing out the fish,’ said Mrs Ali from the kitchen.
‘I’ll take just one moment. Go ahead and serve the food,’ said Mr Ali going to the living room and picking up the phone on the extension there.
‘Hello, Ali’s Marriage Bureau,’ said Mr Ali.
‘I’ve seen your advertisement in the paper. Do you have any Baliga Kapu brides?’ asked a male voice.
‘Please give me some details, sir. I am sure we can find someone for you,’ he said, picking up a pen and pulling a blank piece of paper towards him to write down the details.
‘My name is Venkat. I am looking for a bride for my son. He is a software engineer, currently working in Singapore.’
‘How old is he, sir?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
‘What did he study?’
‘Bachelor of Engineering.’
‘What is he earning?’
‘One and a half lakhs, one hundred and fifty thousand rupees, a month. We also have lands in the Krishna district which give a good income.’
Mr Ali was impressed. Mr Venkat and his son would make good clients.
‘How many other children do you have, sir?’ asked Mr Ali.
‘None. Bharat is my only son.’
‘How tall is he?’
‘Five feet, ten inches.’
‘Is he fair or dark?’
‘He is fair; takes after his mother,’ replied Mr Venkat.
Mr Ali decided that honesty was a better policy in this case than trying to bluff it out. ‘I don’t have any matches right now for you, sir,’ he said, ‘but for somebody like your son, I am sure we can find a bride very easily. If you become a member, we will advertise on your behalf and get you a wide choice.’
Mr Venkat was hesitant. ‘I am not sure . . .’
‘Don’t worry, sir! We will take care of everything. Your name will not even appear anywhere. We will get the letters and forward them on to you. The fee is five hundred rupees and I will spend most of it on the advertisement itself.’
‘OK, what’s your address? I will come there in the evening,’ Mr Venkat said.
Mr Ali had still not advertised his address. He said, ‘No need to come personally. You can send me a cheque by post.’
‘No, no. I want to see you before I decide,’ Mr Venkat said.
Mr Ali gave in and told him the address. ‘On the main road to the highway, two houses up from the Ram temple. There is a sign-board in front of our house.’
At five in the evening that day, Mrs Ali was in the front yard. She drew water from the well with a pail attached to a nylon rope to water the potted plants. Once she had slaked all the plants’ thirst,
she opened the gate and stood there, watching the world go by. A few minutes later she saw a thin, dark woman in her sixties walking past. She was wearing a sumptuous ruby-coloured sari with the red vermilion bindi of a Hindu married woman on her forehead.
‘Hello, Anjali, how are you?’ said Mrs Ali.
‘Saibamma, Muslim lady, it’s so good to see you. Is everything all right?’ Anjali said.
The Ali and Anjali families were neighbours many years ago when they had both been much poorer and lived in a rougher part of town. Anjali was from a lower caste - a washerwoman - and she never addressed Mrs Ali by name, even after all these years.
‘How are your boys?’ asked Mrs Ali.
Anjali and her husband had not studied past primary school but they had made a great effort to give their two sons a good education. Their efforts had taken fruit - both the sons were now office workers and comfortably off. Anjali’s elder son worked as a lecturer in a government college and her younger son was the superintendent of orderlies in a local hospital.
‘They are both doing well, by God’s grace. How is Mr Ali? Is he keeping well?’ said Anjali. She came a bit closer and said, slightly less loudly, ‘Did you know that Lakshmi’s son has thrown her out of the house?’
Lakshmi had been a common neighbour from the old district, a widow who lived with her married son.
‘Really!’ said Mrs Ali, her hand to her mouth. ‘What happened? ’
‘His wife did not want her around, so he told his mother to leave, the poor woman.’
‘All that effort she put into raising her son and this woman comes in and turfs her out. What a wicked woman. She is forgetting that she will also be old one day and a mother-in-law,’ said Mrs Ali.
‘You are right, Saibamma. What goes round comes round. But the son should also have some sense. How can he throw his widowed mother out of the house just because his wife said so?’
Mrs Ali shook her head and asked, ‘Where is Lakshmi staying now?’
‘She has gone to her sister’s house. But how long can she be there?’
They both went silent for a while, contemplating the way the world was changing.
‘Kali kaalam,’ said Anjali, referring to the tenth age of the world according to Hindus. ‘In this age, people cheat and tell lies, they shirk their duty and morality slowly seeps out of the world until God comes down to earth and destroys it.’
Mrs Ali nodded in agreement. The Prophet Mohammed had said the same thing - that the world would turn very wicked before the day of judgement.
Anjali took her leave and left.
Mrs Ali watched the traffic whizzing past in both directions for a while and was about to go in to start preparing dinner when she saw a white Ambassador car approaching slowly. It stopped at the shop by the temple and the driver came out and asked the shopkeeper a question. She couldn’t see inside the shop, but the driver got his answer and went back into the car. The car came forward slowly and stopped in front of Mrs Ali.
The rear window wound down and a dark plump man asked her, ‘Madam, is this the marriage bureau?’
‘This is the place. Please come in,’ she said.
Mr Venkat wore white trousers, a crisp white cotton kurta and a slash of white sacred ash across his forehead. Two gold rings, one of them with a moonstone, adorned his fingers and a thick gold chain hung round his neck. He was a big man, tall, fat and dark skinned with a big belly and the unconscious confidence, almost a swagger, of a man born rich who has become even richer in his own lifetime. He told Mr Ali that his ancestors were farmers (caste: Kapu, sub caste: Baliga) and he owned large fields in the fertile Krishna delta and other properties in town.
‘As I’ve already told you on the phone, I have just one son,’ he said. ‘He is a software engineer working for a big American bank in Singapore and earns a good salary. You might think it is easy to get a bride for somebody like my son, so you must be wondering why I had to come to a marriage bureau.’
Mr Ali, who had been thinking exactly that, was glad that Mr Venkat was so choosy. It meant more business for him. He just nodded and kept silent.
‘For one reason or another, every girl we’ve found is unsuitable. I’ve asked my brother-in-law to find a match but he is useless. He keeps bringing details of totally unsuitable candidates. Either they are too dark or too old or too short. Or they are not educated. I’ve told my wife to stop her brother from bringing any more details.’
‘Yes, finding the proper bride for a son is a very important duty for the parents,’ said Mr Ali in a soothing voice.
‘That’s right,’ Mr Venkat said. ‘And now the matter has become urgent. My son is coming home for a holiday in two weeks. He will be here for one week and I want him engaged before he’s gone.’
‘Not much time then,’ said Mr Ali.
‘That’s correct. Once he leaves, he won’t be back until Deepavali, the festival of lights, in the autumn. When a young son is far away from home, it is better to get him married off sooner rather than later. Who knows what temptations he might fall prey to, otherwise? As it is, we can’t get him married off this time, but at least if he is engaged, that will be something.’
Mr Ali nodded in agreement. He took out a form and said, ‘I’ve already filled this in with the information you gave me on the phone. Let’s complete it and we can get started.’
Mr Venkat’s demands for his son’s bride were not many, thought Mr Ali ruefully. She had to be fair, slim, tall, educated but not a career-minded girl. Her family had to be wealthy, ideally landowners, and from the same caste as Mr Venkat. If they were from the same city, that was even better. They had to be willing to pay a large dowry, commensurate with his own family’s wealth and his son’s earning capacity. Mr Ali wrote it all down.
‘Who will select the bride?’ asked Mr Ali.
‘What do you mean?’ Mr Venkat said, waving his hand in front of him.
‘Will it be your choice or your son’s? Or, maybe your wife’s or your parents’?’
‘My parents are not alive, so it will be my choice. Obviously, my wife will have a say. And nowadays, boys want to see the girl and have a word too, don’t they? It wasn’t like that in our time. My father just told me one day that he had fixed my marriage with his business partner’s daughter and that was that. Things have changed. I blame it on movies, myself. They teach these youngsters all the wrong things,’ said Mr Venkat.
‘You are probably right,’ said Mr Ali. ‘But your son has gone abroad and probably seen how things are done there.’
‘Yes, I’m sure that doesn’t help.’
Finally Mr Venkat handed over the fees and left.
The next Sunday, Mr Venkat’s ad appeared in Today. Mr Ali had outdone himself - the ad was small and to the point: ‘Baliga Kapu, six-figure salary, eight-figure wealth wishes beautiful same-caste bride . . .’
Mr Ali’s phone did not stop ringing from the morning till the evening. Several people complained that his phone was constantly engaged. They all wanted to find out about this wealthy man looking for a bride. They all had a daughter or a niece or a sister who was just the right match. Over the next few days, he also received almost a hundred letters. He forwarded them all to Mr Venkat, who was very happy to see such a wide choice of brides for his son. All these people’s details also went into Mr Ali’s files. He started writing to them that he had received many responses for this particular ad, but that he also had details of other suitable people in his files which he would share with them if they became members of the marriage bureau. He had to write to so many people that he typed out the letter and went to the shop by the temple. The corner shop not only sold loose cigarettes, bananas, candy for children, magazines, newspapers and flowers and coconuts for the deity in the temple, it also had a photostat machine. Mr Ali asked for a hundred copies of the letter.
‘Sir, why did you trouble yourself? Here is my cell number. Just give me a call at any time and I will send my good-for-nothing son to come and pick up the wo
rk,’ said the shopkeeper, promising to deliver the copies in a couple of hours.
Mr Ali left the shop, shaking his head in wonder. Corner shop-keepers with mobile phones! The world was truly advancing.
The next Sunday Mr Ali truthfully advertised: ‘Wide choice of Baliga Kapu brides. Grooms contact . . .’
Early in the morning, three weeks later, Mrs Ali and her husband were in the front yard. Mrs Ali was pointing out guavas and Mr Ali was knocking them down with a long bamboo stick. Their servant maid, Leela, walked in. Two young boys were hiding behind the folds of Leela’s sari.
Mrs Ali said, ‘Come out, boys. Don’t hide behind your grandmother. We are not going to eat you.’
They slowly came out on either side of Leela. Mrs Ali smiled at the two identical three year olds and asked, ‘When did you come to the city?’
‘Last night,’ they piped in one voice. ‘We’ve come to celebrate the big festival at granny’s house.’
Mr Ali stepped back and put the bamboo stick in the alley next to the house. Leela started moving the pots forward so she could sweep behind them. The twins moved with her like two planets round a star, not letting go of her sari.
Mr Ali pointed to the boy on the left and said, ‘You are Luv, aren’t you?’
The boys giggled and shook their heads. ‘No,’ said the boy, ‘I am Kush.’
‘Our granny gets confused too. Our mother is the only one who can tell us apart correctly,’ said Luv proudly.
‘Even our dad gets our names mixed up,’ said Kush.
Mrs Ali laughed and said to Leela, ‘The boys are lovely. Have you distracted the evil eye by giving it a sacrifice?’
‘I have, amma. But whatever sacrifices we give, ultimately it all depends on God,’ she replied.
Mrs Ali nodded and turned to go back inside. Mr Ali followed his wife towards the house. At the verandah, he looked back and said to the boys, ‘If you come inside, I have two identical twin guavas for you.’
Half an hour later, the bell rang and Mr Ali went to answer it. Mr Venkat was at the front door with a huge smile on his face. Mr Ali showed him to the sofa and sat down opposite him.
