My tryst with Arranged Marriage

The post talks about an experience I had recently.

It’s a Sunday afternoon. The air in Bangalore is warm and stagnant. There’s more light outside than my eyes can absorb. I need to head out. I book an Uber to Malleshwaram. This is not any other cab ride to yet another place across the city. The ride could seal my fate. Not realizing the depth of the situation I am about to get into, I head out carefree.

…

I remove my chappals and place them few feet away from the front of the door. As I enter the veranda room of the marriage bureau, I see many people scattered here and there, mostly in a group of 2-3, deeply immersed in a blue colored plastic folder. Some are jotting down information from the folder into a notebook of their own. I follow my parents as they head to another smaller room to the left of the veranda. The room looks like some sort of office and houses a writing table and a chair. The man using the table and the chair, aged perhaps a little more than 50, is enjoying a good sleep. Surely he’s the only person in the place doing a Sunday afternoon right. Another man sitting in a corner of the room guides us towards a rack that contains very many blue colored folders arranged in named compartments. The compartments are named ‘SB 1-6 2016 Groom’, ‘SB 7-14 2015 Groom’, ‘MB 1-6 2015 Bride’ to name a few. I pick a folder ‘SB 7 2016 Groom’ from the SB 1-6 compartment. “Only 1 folder Madam”, the man warns me. We head out and occupy a wooden bench in a spacious room that the veranda leads to. Here, at this very moment the gravity of the situation nudges me. Have I chosen the right folder? What if the guy of my choice is sitting in the leaves of folder that’s currently in someone else’s hand? Will I ever be able to get hold of the right folder? Is the man of my choice really residing in any of the MB/SB folders present in here? Unable to crack these questions, I ask my mind to shut up.

We study the first profile in the folder for a minute. Realizing that going over details of each profile could take a lot of time, we use our common sense and devise a method of filtering based on the most favorable feature, which, in my case is, height. (Kill me already!) The guy whose profile we are now looking into is 5’8″ tall. Next! 5’7″. Next. 5’9″. Next. 5’4″. Next. 5’11” �" Stop! We scan through several sections of this guy’s profile at once in an effort to consume as much information as possible. Our fingers run through details like Name, Age, Salary, Photo, DOB, Expectations from the girl, etc. The suitor is aged 28 years, works for Yahoo in California, USA and earns $10,000 a month. The sheet of paper is a mini Facebook, LinkedIn and Glassdoor put together. If not for anything the folder is a good source to know what IT companies around the world are paying their employees… Okay, next!

…

An uncle of around 60 years sits next to me on the wooden bench. The folder in his hand says “MB 1 Groom 2016”. I smile at him. He smiles back. I head to the rack to get yet another folder. When I return, I see that the uncle and mother are having a conversation. Uncle is speaking, I listen. “There are many good guys in this folder. But my daughter wouldn’t like any of them. She wouldn’t care to look at a guy like this one for example”. I look at the sheet. The guy in the photo has suited up. His face is almost popping out of the photo. “She wants to marry someone who is fair and smart”, he says. Mother and I laugh. He continues in what looked like a monologue, “She works for TCS, earns 6 lakhs per annum. To worsen the marriage scene, she wants to pursue MS. She has applied for universities in California. Look at this guy, he lives in California. But she wouldn’t agree to marry him”. Curious I ask which universities she has applied to. “Her GRE score is low.”, He says and blurts out names of US cities in California. “I think you should send her to US without getting her married, uncle. Let her pursue her graduation without the shackles of relationship and marriage” I suggest. “Yes, I am considering that option as well. I will be happy if she finds a partner before moving to the US. That said, I will be okay if she has to move all alone. I’ve come here to analyze the marriage market and to take a cursory look at how the system works. You know, my daughter is a little short tempered. It’s just the age thing, I suppose. The kids are not really bad. All they want is some freedom to live life the way they want. I am breaking sweat each day to fulfill her dreams. Her MS costs 30 lakhs. The situation has now come to my neck. But you know, I am all for women empowerment. I want her to live her life exactly the way she wants.”

…

I read the expectations section of various profiles. “Fair girl who is working”… “Age preference 28-32″… “Should be earning more than 5 lakhs per annum”… “A homely, ambitious girl” �" But the two are mutually exclusive, I tell my parents.

…

A lady comes to us and asks if we are Iyengars. We say no and she retreats in silence, disappointed. Yet another uncle asks my parents about me. We exchange numbers. I catch an aunty scanning me. Yet another uncle is now holding the same folder that I returned to the rack few minutes earlier. A guy presumably a suitor is sitting next to his mother glancing through the folders of SB/MB women. Yet another guy passes my way as I head to the rack. An uncle is explaining his family tree to another uncle standing next to him. Two other uncles are in a conversation. One telling the other that his second son is currently pursuing MS in the US. My mind has absorbed the scene in its entirety.

…

The water in the swimming pool is still. I take a deep dive from the deepest end, almost reaching the floor of the pool. The water lifts me up. I am now lying free on the surface of the pool. I flip to face the sky. The sky is blue, rid of clouds. The sunlight isn’t piercing my eyes anymore. The evening is warm and lovely!

Author's Note

Please correct my grammar errors. My aim when I started with this story was to make it a short story. I wanted the reader to visualize the post as a set of scenes. Each scene having something for the reader to read. Please correct my mistakes in here and help me improve my writing