A Match Made in Heaven

***Disclaimer: The characters in the post below might resemble someone but it is not based on me or anyone I know personally. Also, I am not making fun of the tradition of arranged marriage or the science of astrology. I am just writing something which might make the reader laugh***


I still remember the first day my parents saw her... she was wearing a yellow salwaar kameez and had the prettiest face they had ever seen and the photographer must have been a professional too, as that 6"x4" matte finish picture left an indelible mark on my parents' hearts after just one glance. Of course there had been many prettier envelopes before this but this one seemed to come from a family expert in the art of arranged marriage. It had all the tiny things that would surely seal the deal...the Om on the front, the sindoor on the back, a CV running into 4 pages and last but not the least, the janampatri. Having half made their minds that this was the perfect girl for me after seeing her photograph (both close-up and full length), they decided to research a little bit more. After all, it was the matter of their only son's life. They passed on her CV to me and asked me to see if I liked what was in there. I could not believe it! Did I really have a say in all this? Who says society is still not modern enough in India? But by the time I had read through her education and was about to check her hobbies (which I knew would be "cooking, reading, writing..." from the numerous CVs before this), my parents asked me to skip to the important things! Ummm... isn't the girl's hobbies and her likes/dislikes important? Apparently not as important as her family lineage. So we flipped to the next page and then on was a complete list of who's who in her family.. immediate family, joint family, extended family, exaggerated family... mama is CEO in this big MNC (impressive), chacha is a teacher, mausa's tauji is an IAS (ecstasy) and all women in the family are house-wives (strong traditional culture). Perfect, family is definitely worth marrying their son off into. Sorry? The girl wants to work in an MNC? Ohh, she surely doesn't know the joy in being a house wife and raising children and making home. It'll be alright, the family was the best we had seen. But the approval from the highest authority still remained... the stars. Our family pundit ji had come over, feasted on a rice-fish lunch (fish is cold, hence considered vegetarian... our pundit ji did not take ginger/onions in his food either). The stars had blessed us, the sun was in the perfect position when I was born according to the girl's moon position, so together we would be as complete as a whole day. That was good, I did not like incomplete days as well. So all was set, my future wife had been approved from the photograph, family accepted and blessed by the stars. So I was dying to meet my wife-to-be. But then I was told that that was not the protocol. My parents first met their parents (thankfully this time it was just her parents and not her extended family or that would have taken a decade in itself!). My dad asked her dad where he worked, when was he retiring, how had the 6th pay commission affected him, while my mom and her mom discussed Ranbir-Katrina affair, chicken recipes and grocery prices. That meeting was also declared a success. Only after that was I taken along by my parents to see the girl in person. We were also allowed to talk in private (another sign of the 'broad-minded'-ness of us Indians now). I asked her what she knew about me and she said ..."Nothing!"..."Ji mummy-papa ne aapke baare mein sab pata kar liya hai. Unhone thik hi socha hoga." Her capacity to love and trust bowled me over. I fell in love with her immediately and wanted to marry her that same day. This had nothing to do with the fact that I had grown up in a small village and had never talked to another girl before, let alone ever touch one. I thought that maybe, in all those papers and photographs, somewhere, somehow, smart people can find the perfect match for anyone. And the best part of an arranged marriage system - even if one is a total duffer and unable to find anyone who could fall in love with him, he still gets a wife.