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Assisted Marriage
Sadaf Siddique
IndiaGALLERYCONVERSATION
While arranging marriages is an obsession as old as the Kamasutra, it has taken on a few modern avatars: matrimonial newspaper ads...
One lazy Sunday as my friends and I were lounging over chai and cigarettes, we decided that we needed to find a suitable girl for the eligible bachelor in our midst. As I was combing through the matrimonial section full of ‘fair, slim, professionally qualified, homely girls and innocent-divorcees’ I spied an ad for Muslim brides and found one that sounded eerily like me. When I read it to my father over the phone amid fits of laughter, there was silence at his end.
This was not the first time that my parents had brought up the issue of marriage. The pressure to get married started when I was very young. Twelve months old to be exact. When my father, who was away at the time of my birth, learnt that he had a daughter he wasted no time in promising my tiny hand in marriage to his friends’ son.
When I grew older, my parents would haul me off to dinner parties and weddings where I would be introduced to a different assortment of eligible bachelors. Later they began preparing my resume and passing it on to anyone and everyone who was connected to a potential partner.
After graduation, while my parents began looking for a suitor in earnest, I went on to pursue a masters in Bombay and began to work there as well. My decision to leave home was fraught with tension and guilt. There was a lot emotional blackmail, tears and threats, but in the end we struck a bargain; I could do as I pleased as long as I met the men they lined up.
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