or vibrant. No talk was made of preferences, hobbies, interests. Just how old, how tall, how slim, how fair.
‘Is she very Umrican-type?’ the matchmaker asked, when my mother reluctantly let on that I had been ‘working in New York, temporarily, in an office’. ‘I mean to say, can she adjust?’ Rita clarified.
‘She’s a very good girl,’ my mother said. ‘Smart, but homely-type.’ By that, my mother was wanting to drive home the point that I was a stay-at-home kind of girl, the gentle and subservient sort who would subjugate her own needs for the sake of a peaceful household. My mother wasn’t far wrong, either. I was fairly sure my club-hopping, plane-changing days would stop the day I found a groom.
‘She’s living for a short while in Umrica now, but she’s Indian at heart,’ she continued, aware that my ‘living in Umrica’ thing was not just a fall from grace, it was a huge, almighty thud. Men who came to India to find wives generally didn’t want women who had carved out independent lives for themselves away from their families. Mr Accra had chosen to ignore all that because it didn’t seem too important, in the scheme of things. What he had wanted was someone who would marry him, move to his country, and above all spend the rest of her days memorizing the vacuum cleaner manual.
‘We’re looking for a good boy,’ my mother continued. ‘No bad habits.’ That was an oblique reference to cigarettes, over-indulgence in alcohol, extravagant spending and womanizing – a proviso that basically eliminated everyone in my New York circle of friends.
She started scribbling some notes down again, in a small red notebook that had ‘Boys’ marked on the front. Sitting next to her, I saw her write ‘Dubai, 36, own clothing shops, well educated’, Lalit-something-or-another. A father’s name, a mother’s name.
Rita said: ‘He’s a very good boy, I’ve checked everything thoroughly. The boy is not in Bombay now, but if there is someone interesting, he’ll fly down.’
This time, my mother didn’t even consult me. Within an hour, she was on the phone with a friend who had lived in Dubai.
‘Can you make some inquiries, find out if the boy is good? It’s for matrimonial purposes,’ she asserted.
Poor fellow, I thought. He’s probably out having a perfectly nice day, doing whatever they do for fun in the United Arab Emirates. Little did he know that before the end of the day, my family would know enough about him to do a Kitty Kelley.
As it turned out, Lalit had spent six months in jail for forging cheques. My father curtly said, ‘Drop it. We don’t want a criminal son-in-law.’ But my mother thought he was acting too rashly.
‘So? It’s not like he murdered anyone. Plus, after marriage, he’ll change.’
Another week passed. Sunday morning, and I joined my parents in leafing through The Times of India matrimonial pages. My father circled a couple of interesting prospects: ‘Overseas Indian (Sindhi) male in mid-thirties seeking overseas Indian female of same caste. Must be at least 5′3″, slim, medium complexion, good nature.’
My mother called the number on the bottom of the ad. ‘Er, yes, hello, I’m calling about the boy in today’s paper.’
A fleeting pang of guilt struck me. Going on thirty-four, I couldn’t even find a mate on my own, and my mother was spending her Sunday mornings in the twilight of her life on the phone with the families of strange men.
‘Yes, the girl is now here … We’re local people, but she’s living temporarily in New York, working in an office there … Yes, she’s the right height … How old is the boy? … Hah, thirty-five, very good. And where does the boy live?’ And so continued a barrage of questions to the woman on the other end, the sister of the boy in question.
‘Hah, OK, yes,’ she said, starting to scribble. Suddenly, she stopped writing, and quickly said: ‘Hah, OK, OK, thank you, I’ll talk to my daughter and phone you back,’ before hanging up.
‘So?’ my father asked, looking up from the paper.
‘He lives in Indonesia,’ my mother said. ‘He owns a small videotape copying shop, you know, people bring in their tapes and he has a lot of VCRs and he copies them.’ She looked over at me. ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested.’
But then came something far more promising. A prospect from Spain. Madrid actually. Mmm, I thought. Romantic and cosmopolitan. The home of Loewe, and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, and a stately King and Queen, and tapas and sangria. And at least a place where an electricity generator was not a mandatory household appliance.
He was a banker, thirty-seven, educated, good-natured, tall, according to the ad. ‘In Bombay from June 2 to 15.’
‘That’s now,’ my mother announced, enthusiastically. She got on the phone again, this time reaching a very pleasant-sounding woman, who was apparently the prospect’s mother. He went to Yale, and was head-hunted for a position starting up a new American bank in Spain. He had a sister at university in California, so apparently they were fairly liberal people. He had taken a few weeks off from work to be in Bombay, like myself, for matrimonial purposes. It was decided that, before it went any further, photographs should be exchanged. ‘Quickly, go find one, something that doesn’t make you look so old,’ my mother instructed.
I may as well have been hunched over, clasping a cane, shuffling off into the next room. For an Indian woman, I was not just spinsterly; I was positively old-maidish. Knowing this made me laugh – but only because I’d cried enough about it in the past.
Marrying me off now, at this appallingly late stage, would require a miracle.
And some savvy marketing.
And a flattering photograph.
A couple of hours later, a driver appeared to deliver an envelope containing a photograph of the banker from Spain, and to pick up mine. I tentatively pulled out the colour print. It was a picture of him taken in an outdoor café: ‘Barcelona, July 2000’ was inked across the back. He was wearing a Ralph Lauren polo shirt tucked into blue denim jeans. He was smiling, one finger resting lightly on the edge of an espresso cup, the sun shining down onto his black hair, a light shadow falling over part of his face. A good face it was, too. Open, kind, intelligent. He seemed nice, somehow, not like the sort of narrow-minded chumps who were on the prowl for another maid, another mother.
‘You like him, no?’ my mother asked when she saw a satisfied smile appear on my face.
‘Well, he looks like a nice guy, Mum.’
It had suddenly become a situation full of possibilities. The possibility that my father would finally stop moaning about how I kept ‘wasting airfare’, that my mother’s friends would stop ‘tut-tutting’ their way through their card-playing sessions about poor, perennially unmarried me. And, most importantly, the possibility that I could find someone for me, even if I wasn’t the ideal Indian woman – someone with the talents of Martha Stewart and the body of Claudia Schiffer, a vegetarian teetotaller who never stopped smiling, praying, pleasing and nodding. That despite all this, maybe, just maybe, there was someone who wanted me anyway. As my more supportive relatives would always say: ‘Beti, the boy destined for you is already born. He is somewhere in the world. We just have to find him.’
The sun set, and a light breeze came in through the open windows. My father was asleep in his armchair, my mother went off to nap in the bedroom, and the boys were out somewhere.
