sure he’s a decent enough fellow, but I don’t think Accra is the place for me.’
‘Beti, do you want to stay unmarried for ever?’ my mother countered. ‘Just imagine, if you met someone, and you married him, and he lived in a place you don’t mind living in, such as New York or London or Singapore, and then something happened and he had to move to not such a nice place, like maybe even Accra. Are you saying that you wouldn’t go with him? That is what marriage is, sacrifice and compromise.’
‘Yes, I understand, Mummy, but I’m not married to him so the sacrifice thing doesn’t come up. I have the choice right now. You know what I’m saying?’
I looked at my mother’s slowly greying hair, elegantly swept off her smooth and unlined face, the prize feature of which was her regal, haughty nose. She was wearing a polyester kaftan, similar to one of those 1970s-style Gucci djellabas from a few seasons ago, but this one had been made by the family tailor. It was my mother’s preferred choice of stay-at-home clothing.
‘Anju, you can’t have everything in life. You can’t be too hoity-toity. Didn’t Maharaj tell you so many years ago that you have to learn to compromise? Where will you find everything you want in one boy? It’s not possible, beti. You’re already almost thirty-four. Soon, no one will ask for you any more. You must think carefully.’
I was thinking carefully. About waking up to Matt Lauer every morning, about the paraffin manicures and oxygen facials at Bliss, and Saturday afternoons shopping in Nolita. And the parties and fund-raisers. And waiting to see if Paris Hilton and Aerin Lauder would turn up, and what the fabulous ex-Miller girls would wear. And trying every different flavour of Martini, every new designer shoe, and giggling with my girlfriends as I listened to the stories of the boys in their lives. It had taken me some years, but now it was a life I had grown intimately familiar with and happily accustomed to. And, like so many women in my situation, I wanted a man to fit in neatly with it. I wanted him to live the same life, enjoy the same things, look the part. And, simultaneously, I wanted him to be chosen by my parents, sanctioned by the rest of the family. It wasn’t much to ask for, was it?
But I also knew that in the view of my society, a woman was never much of anything until the day she got married. She was always a guest in her parents’ home, they were her temporary caretakers. When the right man came, regardless of where or how he lived, this young, single woman would wrap her life around his. It was not about what she wanted, it was about what he wanted for both of them. Given that view, I remembered how my mother was baffled one time, watching an American TV movie, where a woman left her perfectly nice husband because she said she wanted to ‘find herself’.
‘Such nonsense,’ Mummy had said. ‘He’s not beating her, he’s not doing anything wrong. She wants to leave, for what? Stupid woman.’
My mother just didn’t get it, but there was no reason she should. Her life had been all about sacrifice and compromise, the same virtues she plugged to me every day. My parents met once, and were engaged within five hours, married after two weeks. Together, they created a life that they had helped ease one another into. But they were both twenty when they met, and the word ‘option’ didn’t exist for them. As my mother never failed to remind me, by the time she was my current age, she had been married thirteen years and had had all three of her children.
Yes, I deeply wanted to get married. I associated it with love and commitment and security – plus all the parties and new saris and a trousseau full of pretty dresses. But a family wedding in Bombay was one thing; a lifetime in Accra something else entirely.
‘Mummy, I decided a long time ago that it was going to be G Eight only. You know, developed nations or nothing. Plus, there is the issue of compatibility here. We don’t look compatible.’
My father interjected.
‘What? Is he too short for you?
‘No!’ I said emphatically. ‘Look, there’s got to be a vibe that happens between two people; you know, kind of a connection. You just get it – either it’s there, or it’s not.’
‘Aarey, I don’t know what you’re saying,’ my mother replied.
‘I just want to be happy, Mummy.’
‘Beti,’ she replied, ‘I don’t want you to be happy. I want you to be married.’
It is considered highly improper for a young man or woman to take the initiative for his or her marriage. With the spread of education nowadays the boy and the girl are given a chance to see each other unlike the old days when the newlyweds saw each other after the marriage.
Hinduism: an Introduction by Dharam Vir Singh
There seemed to be nothing more for it but to call Delta Airlines and change my flight. My mother had implored me to stay in Bombay just a few more days, convincing me that since the wedding had only just finished, calls would be made and somehow between all my family members we could find out if there were any interesting, suitable boys floating around. Of course, my mother then had to casually suggest it: ‘Beti, while you are still here, why don’t you meet the boy from Accra? You can’t just look at how he was dressed, a wife can always change her husband’s clothes,’ she had reasoned. ‘And so? What’s wrong with white socks?’
Maharaj Girdhar worked quickly and set up a meeting for the following evening at the Sea Lounge in the Taj Mahal Hotel. He wasn’t going to waste any time. If this thing went through, he would collect twenty-five thousand rupees as a matchmaker’s fee – about the price of a small Louis Vuitton handbag – certainly more than enough for him to live on for the next six months. He had organized Nina’s match, so he felt he was on a roll as far as my family was concerned. Unlike with dating agencies, there was no payoff for him until the deed was done; he wouldn’t collect a paisa for simply setting up a meeting. This was an interesting metaphor for the Indian-style matrimonial game. The jackpot is a wedding, and there are no consolation prizes. It’s all or nothing.
The Accra boy project had begun to acquire a momentum all its own, and it had swept me away. No matter how hard I looked, there simply was no good enough reason to say no – the whole ‘I don’t like the way he looks’ excuse just didn’t fly any more. On the instruction of my parents, I had emailed my boss, Marion, and told her I had caught a touch of dysentery, and the doctor thought I shouldn’t travel. Marion emailed back, and said fine, absolutely, we’ve got everything under control. Evidently she was aware I was fibbing too, because she added a PS: ‘Have you found a husband yet?’
At six the following evening, my parents and Anil – the older of my two brothers – walked ahead of me as we all trod up the wide, red-carpeted staircase leading from the lobby of the Taj to the Sea Lounge. This was one of my favourite haunts in Bombay: a couple of times in the past week, while the rest of the family had been busy with wedding preparations, I had escaped here with a copy of the latest Vanity Fair, and sat and sipped fresh young coconut water while occasionally looking through the open windows on to the Gateway of India and the sea beyond. Neutral ground, light and breezy: it was not surprising that the place was a popular venue for fix-ups of this nature.
Aunt Jyoti had wanted me to go ethnic, in just a simple salwar kameez. ‘It’s better, Anju, you’ll look more Indian, more domesticated.’
But I had said that I would feel much
