Not All Marriages are Made in Heaven

by Farahad Zama

  Farahad Zama

  India

  Not All Marriages are Made in Heaven

  (The Wedding Wallah)

  The Marriage Bureau for Rich People #3

  2011, EN

  Business at Mr Ali’s Marriage Bureau is as brisk as ever, but he and Mrs Ali are concerned about their son, Rehman. With Usha out of the picture, he’s given up his job and returned to political activism, defending local villagers from unscrupulous contract-farming companies. He and Pari are getting closer, but he still thinks of her only as a friend. Suddenly unexpected news comes in the form of a proposal to Pari from the mother of a young Mumbai-based lawyer called Dilawar. Mr and Mrs Ali think the match is a good one, and Rehman remembers Dilawar fondly from school. But Pari knows she is in love with Rehman, and soon it’s clear that other complications stand in the way of the match. And when Rehman, Aruna and Ramanujam’s paths all cross in one of the villages to the south of the city, a threat far greater than an unwanted marriage raises its head. Warm, witty and exciting, Not All Marriages Are Made In Heaven will be the third installment of the Marriage Bureau for Rich People series.

  Newlyweds kidnapped

  Usha Malladi, reporting from Vizag district

  A wedding ceremony ended in terror and chaos yesterday as Naxalites struck at Chittivalasa village, thirty miles from the city. Guests of the two wealthy landlord families were about to sit down for lunch when approximately thirty suspected activists of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) swooped down and abducted the newlyweds, Srinu Kankatala and Gita Marredu, and several of their guests at gunpoint. The guests were later freed, but Mr and Mrs Kankatala were taken away to an unknown destination. Family members said they could not think of any personal vendetta as the reason behind the kidnapping.

  “We found empty cartridges of self-loading rifles from the spot. Only Maoists have SLRs in this area, which is a definite indication of the rebels being behind the incident,” Police Inspector (Rural) Mohan Verma said. He added that raids were being undertaken in several nearby areas to apprehend the kidnappers.

  Naxalite is a loose term used to define groups waging a violent struggle on behalf of landless labourers and tribal people against landlords and other members of the country’s wealthier classes. They claim to represent the most oppressed people in India, those who are often left untouched by India’s development and are bypassed by the electoral process. While the militants have a great deal of power in parts of rural India, they have little day-to-day control outside of isolated forests and villages.

  “They are nothing but terrorists who use violence to try to achieve their objectives,” Inspector Verma said.

  One

  Mrs Ali could have sworn that the thief had a sneaky look in his eye as he crept closer to his target. She watched the crow drop on to the ground from the lower branches of the guava tree. She was in a cane chair, on the verandah, looking out on to the front yard where she had laid tamarind on an old sheet to dry in the spring sun. Mrs Ali was aware that modern women like her niece Nafisa bought their tamarind in little plastic packets, as and when they needed it, from a supermarket. They even stored it in the fridge. But Mrs Ali wasn’t like that. She still stuck to the old, proper ways and bought her entire year’s supply fresh, when it was in season, and cheap, like now. After shredding the long pods into small pieces, she removed the seeds, mixed in some sea salt and dried them out properly in the sun for a few days until the moisture was gone. The tamarind could then be kept for a whole year in an earthen pot without going mouldy or smelling stale. Mrs Ali still used the same glazed earthen jar that she had inherited from her mother-in-law. What was the point of putting everything in the fridge and fretting about power cuts?

  Mrs Ali was a fair-minded woman. She had to admit that one didn’t have to worry about crows if food went straight from the shopping bag into the fridge. She looked across the verandah to her husband. He was sitting behind the table, deeply immersed in the newspaper. The years had been kinder to him than to her. His hair was grey and he had a slight stoop to his shoulders now, but he had maintained his weight and was still sprightly. Her hair was grey too, and she had put on a bit of weight over the years. Not enough to be called fat, she was certain. Her arthritic knees were what gave her the most trouble. When she was younger, she would get up at five and squat in front of a heavy grindstone making the batter for breakfast dosas, but those days were long gone. She used a motorised wet grinder like everyone else these days. Age suited men better than it suited women, she thought. There was no point in getting upset about it, however – that was just the way of the world.

  Her eyes flicked back to the front yard. The crow was now walking on its curiously ungainly legs towards the tamarind. Its claws clicked on the cemented ground, crazy-paved with broken granite stones left over from the flooring when the house was built. It made its approach cautiously. When it was still a foot away from its target, Mrs Ali waved her hand and said, “Shoo!”

  The crow flew back into the tree. Mrs Ali relaxed. She wondered where her son, Rehman, was. He had gone out in the morning, telling her that he was meeting some friends and wouldn’t be back until dinnertime. Since he had left his job as an engineer with a local building company, he had been out of work.

  The crow, back on the ground, was making its way purposefully towards the sheet again.

  “Go away, you silly bird,” said Mrs Ali, waving her arms like a windmill in a gale. “Tamarind is sour and you won’t like it.”

  It seemed to understand what Mrs Ali was saying because it flew away over the house and out of sight. Mrs Ali smiled. Not only was she a good cook and housewife, she was an excellent scarecrow too.

  It was March and winter was over. The fan above them was whirring away, its brief two-month annual holiday already history.

  She heard a caw and looked out quickly. “This is ridiculous!” she muttered.

  The crow had come back with a friend. She wondered why Allah had created crows. What was the point of their existence? Ugly raucous creatures that poked their beaks into anything that was not theirs. Parrots were beautiful and could be trained to talk; pigeons could find their way home and carry messages; sparrows were small, chirpy and not a nuisance; but crows…She shook her head.

  Her husband turned the pages of the newspaper noisily, attracting her attention. She still kept half an eye on the birds – she was too experienced to forget them entirely. Mrs Ali read the headlines and some news stories daily, but she could not understand the devotion that some people, like her husband, brought to the task of newspaper reading. It seemed to her that they were so interested in what was happening in the wider world that they sometimes did not see what was occurring right under their noses.

  “These rascals are getting bolder every day,” said Mr Ali, finally looking up.

  Mrs Ali nodded, deciding that she had been unfair to her husband.

  “It’s hard to get rid of them,” she agreed.

  “They have started moving around in broad daylight,” her husband said.

  Mrs Ali frowned. “Well, of course! They are not big-eyed owls to see in the dark.”

  “What have owls got to do with anything?”

  Mrs Ali had a suspicion that, not for the first time, she and her husband were talking at cross-purposes.

  “Aren’t you talking about crows?” she asked.

  “Why would I talk about birds and beasts?” her husband said, putting on the expression, as she knew from past experience, of a patient man in trying circumstances.

  “Don’t give me that look,” she said.

  “What – ” he began, but went no further.

  Mrs Ali had whipped her he
ad round and saw to her horror that the crows had reached the tamarind. “Shoo! Shoo!” she shouted, from her chair, making a throwing motion with her hands.

  Indian crows are intelligent birds that have learned over hundreds, if not thousands, of years just how much liberty they can take in the face of human activity. The pests in Mrs Ali’s front yard had obviously decided that the old woman did not pose a serious threat and carried on pecking at the juicy, brown, fibrous fruit.

  Mrs Ali had no choice but to rise from her chair, wincing at the twinge in her knees. As she came out of the verandah and on to the yard, the crows retreated but only up to the front wall, each carrying a piece of tamarind in its beak. There they gave a grating caw and dropped the sour fruit. Mrs Ali took out a long bamboo stick from under the stairs and waved it threateningly. The crows took wing. Mrs Ali laid the stick across the tamarind. For all their bravery, she knew that crows never came near a stick. She should have put the stick there in the first place. As her grandmother used to say, a long time ago, “Lazy people end up doing more work.”

  Mrs Ali came back into the house and said to her husband, “Look at what you did. Your silly talk made me lose my concentration on the crows and they managed to get to the tamarind.”

  Mr Ali shrugged. “And how is that my fault?” he said, not unreasonably. “I was talking about the Naxalites. They have kidnapped a young couple from their marriage altar in broad daylight.”

  Mrs Ali’s anger fizzled away. She shook her head. “Poor things…”

  Before her husband could get back to the paper, the phone rang. “Mr Ali’s Marriage Bureau,” he announced, picking it up.

  He listened for a little while and then said, “Yes, sir. We have lots of matches in your caste. In fact, we have Hindu, Muslim and Christian brides and grooms on our books. Widest variety, sir. I am sure there’ll be somebody who is perfect for your son.”

  The conversation continued. Mrs Ali had heard her husband’s patter many times before. She picked up the newspaper and sat back in the chair. Mr Ali finally put the phone down and there were a few minutes of silence, broken only by the honking of cars and scooters on the road outside.

  “Isn’t Chittivalasa close to Kottavalasa?” she asked.

  “Yes, the two villages are just a couple of miles from each other,” Mr Ali replied, even though Kottavalasa had long outgrown its humble village origins and was now a market town that sat at the junction of two major roads.

  “Rehman is going there soon,” she said.

  Mr Ali raised his white eyebrows quizzically.

  “What’s the point of reading the news and missing the important bits? I am sure that it was a man like you who read the whole Bible and then asked, what was Mary to Jesus?”

  “What is it?” said Mr Ali, looking irritated.

  “The couple were kidnapped by the insurgents in Chittivalasa. I hope Rehman doesn’t get into any trouble when he goes to Mr Naidu’s village near by.”

  “He should be all right. He’s already been there several times before and he gets along well with the villagers.”

  “I hope so,” said Mrs Ali. “But I am still worried.”

  “You should be more concerned about why your laadla, your dear son, has thrown away a perfectly fine job and gone back to his crazy campaigning ways. How long can he act like a student? He needs to grow up.”

  Mrs Ali sighed. Rehman had indeed grown up, though her husband didn’t know it. He had fallen in love with that TV journalist, Usha. Something made her look at the byline on the news article about the kidnapped couple. Usha Malladi – yes, it must be the same woman. So, she had now started writing for newspapers…

  Their son, Rehman, had an engineering degree from a prestigious university, but no interest in following a career. It was on Usha’s family’s insistence, after they had found out about Rehman and Usha’s engagement, that Rehman had not only taken up a job but also started thinking about money to buy a flat and a car and all the other ‘normal’ things that Mr Ali liked. In the end, it had not been enough and Usha had broken off the engagement. Rehman had gone into a deep depression for weeks and recovered very slowly, once again taking an interest in the affairs of a poor villager who had committed suicide. The villager, a farmer, had been the grandfather and guardian of a little boy called Vasu, whom Rehman had been trying to protect for some time. Unlike her husband, Mrs Ali was not unhappy that Rehman had thrown away his job. She was just glad that their son had found something to interest him again.

  Mrs Ali looked into the front yard again. The stick had definitely scared the crows off and they hadn’t returned. If only all problems could be solved so easily! She glanced at her husband. Neither of them had been privy to Rehman’s engagement and it was only by luck and some clever questioning that she had managed to find out that it had been broken off. How was she going to tell her husband about the reason for their son’s depression? How would she reply if her husband asked her why she had not told him earlier? She had only wanted to keep the peace between her husband and son.

  Should she tell her husband? It was like meeting somebody vaguely familiar at a wedding, she thought. If you don’t ask their name within the first few minutes of starting the conversation, it becomes too late and you just have to smile brightly and keep up your side of the chat even though you know that each word you speak is sucking you deeper and deeper into a lie. No, she couldn’t tell her husband now.

  ♦

  Across town, the same spring sun that was drying Mrs Ali’s tamarind shone down on an old bungalow on the Daspalla Hills. Once upon a time, the house had stood in solitary splendour, with the steel-blue of the distant Bay of Bengal visible from its front door. The house was now hemmed in by tall buildings, put up in haphazard fashion with complete disregard to aesthetics or even urban planning rules. The house and its surrounding garden seemed today like a relic from a different age.

  The mistress of the house, Mrs Bilqis, waited until the maid had poured the milk from the silver pot into china cups and left the elegant drawing room. She then turned to her dearest friend and said, “Nadira, you won’t believe the news I have to tell you.”

  “I heard,” said Nadira, infuriatingly. “What a clever thing you’ve turned out to be, darling, but I hope you haven’t found a dragon. It is better that Dilawar doesn’t marry rather than get hitched to some unsuitable creature.”

  Mrs Bilqis frowned. “How did you know? Anyway, there’s no need to dismiss my son’s prospects so easily, Nadira,” she said.

  Nadira looked at her with a smile. “Darling, don’t get so serious. We’ve known each other since we were teenagers. If I don’t tell you the truth, who will?”

  Mrs Bilqis fell silent for a moment. It was true that they had known each other for years and years. Nadira had always been blunt to the point of rudeness.

  “I have found an absolutely delightful girl for my son,” Mrs Bilqis said finally. She opened the top drawer of an antique teak side table, took out a photograph and passed it to the other lady. “This is Pari.”

  Her friend gazed at the young woman in the picture, dressed in a dark-maroon sari and smiling unselfconsciously. A long, oxidised-silver earring could be seen dangling from the one ear in view. “Lovely,” Nadira said. “She is beautiful. Such an elegant neck and what a nose!”

  Mrs Bilqis smiled. She decided not to tell her friend that the fair-skinned, dark-haired Pari was actually the child of a poor couple who had given her up for adoption because they had too many mouths to feed already. After all, she was sure that there was noble blood in Pari’s lineage, somewhere.

  “If you’ve got such a suitable match, why did you cancel the wedding?” asked Nadira.

  A few months ago, in a rush of blood, Mrs Bilqis had fixed a date for her son’s wedding, organised the venue and told a few friends about it before she had even found a bride for her son. As the time ticked away closer to the deadline, she had joined Mr Ali’s marriage bureau in desperation. No member had been suitable
, but she had seen Mr Ali’s niece, Pari, at their house and known that she was the perfect bride for her son. Everything she had found out since then had only confirmed her initial view.

  “It’s not a done deal yet,” she said. “Pari has only agreed to think about the match. She hasn’t fully consented to the wedding.”

  “How dare the slip of a girl refuse? Doesn’t she know how lucky she is to get a proposal from a family like yours?” Nadira said loyally.

  Mrs Bilqis sighed and looked across the room to where a framed gold medal and a certificate hung on the wall. They had been personally presented by King George V himself to her husband’s grandfather at the Delhi Durbar in 1911.

  “What does family status mean nowadays?” she said. “My son sells soap to common people.”

  “Nonsense,” said Nadira. “Aristocratic blood is aristocratic blood. Give me her address. I’ll talk to her parents.”

  Mrs Bilqis shook her head. “Her parents are dead. She lives with her aunt and uncle.”

  She was reluctant to explain that Pari actually lived by herself opposite Mr and Mrs Ali’s house and was bringing up a boy that she had adopted.

  Nadira said, “Tell the girl’s uncle and aunt to convince her. They are her guardians, aren’t they?”

  “She is a widow,” said Mrs Bilqis. It was well established in Muslim law that while parents and guardians decided a maiden’s match, a second wedding was within a woman’s own control.

  “Oh,” said Nadira. Both women were silent for a while. Then Nadira continued, “Even so, I am sure they can persuade her. Did you tell them how much your son earns?”

  “I think that’s part of the problem,” said Mrs Bilqis. “Pari doesn’t care about money. She works in the call centre and earns a good salary herself.”

  “Which one? The call centre near the university?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs Bilqis.

  “You are in luck,” said Nadira. “Anees works there.”

  “Who? Your older sister’s son-in-law?”