In my pursuit of eligible marital candidates, I believe in leaving no stone unturned. That has meant putting a boulder on my ego and agreeing to ‘arranged marriage’ set up dates by friends and family. To be fair, they have my welfare at heart- they are increasingly concerned by my continued availability and some by my relatively happy single state while they plod through a treacherous marital route strewn by riotous children and sexual boredom. While some of my long suffering married friends are evaluating experimenting with threesomes and spouse swapping, they continue to battle guilt and moralistic social mores of such adventures. I, on the other hand, can engage in orgiastic pleasures right on my doorstep with neighbors watching and would only get a slap on the wrist and a quiet pat on my back for athletic prowess.
But in the spirit of moving onto the next stage of my life and fulfill my duties of ‘Grihasta’, I acquiesced to meeting a matchmaker to help me in my path of achieving marital bliss. My family, apparently, has exhausted all its resources to uncover single men – never mind eligible… they are happy with anyone who earns, has all his physical facilities intact… whether the said candidate is erudite, has a sense of humor, takes his body for a run once in a while, loves to travel, is liberal – is all irrelevant to them. But given that they cannot unearth even a half-baked specimen, they are not averse to some help from a 3rd party.. hence, the matchmaker.
Interestingly, matchmaking is emerging as a sunrise industry in India. Forget the growth rates of IT and software sectors; one should study this emerging opportunity. While the old paradigms of demand for such services were usually social restrictions around interactions with the opposite sex, the new drivers relate to unequal evolution of the two genders. To elaborate, the new woman is educated, independent, spirited and opinionated while the new man has yet not outgrown the old mould. Hence, the sector is facing resurgent demand where the women struggle to find the new man while the men struggle to find the women of yore but with trappings of the new.
However, realizing the rapidly depleting coffers of suitable men as my biological clock tocks away, loudly ringing its death knell, who am I to be picky as to which route such a suitable boy comes from? So all in the spirit of expanding opportunities, I readily trotted off to meet a matchmaker. The lady insisted that I meet her in person for her to evaluate my suitability. I assumed that she would approach this as a consulting assignment where she gathered requirements, evaluated functionalities available and made recommendations. Unfortunately, while the sector sees unprecedented growth, the matchmaker’s approach remained old and weary.
The matchmaker lady met me in a fancy 5-star hotel suite in Delhi. She was suitably attired in appropriate jewelry and distasteful sari. She preferred to keep her conversation targeted mainly to my older sister who represented the ‘elders’ in my family. Her only attempt to get to know me was to pointedly ask my age, profession and locational preference for a groom. She then went into a tizzy about my age and how I would need to COMPROMISE . According to her, I should be thankful if I ever got married and if the groom was an uneducated, uncouth farmer with pots of money in Latur, I should kiss the earthquake-shattered ground he walked on.
In my magnanimity of giving her another chance, I spent some time in mulling over my personality and what I was looking for in a partner but I could have been talking to someone in the bovine family. She was only interested in whether I had the appetite of pay $1000 for registration and if there were any twice divorced, kids infested guys in her groom database who would consider me a steal. Much to my chagrin, she even went ahead to point out that given the difficulty of my case, I would need to follow up with her every week to check whether someone popped up since no amount of money could bother her to get an old hag hitched.
Thus ended my matchmaker travails …apparently all my accomplishments in light of my age were only yawn worthy. But as Cosmo says, continue to keep that twinkle in your wrinkle… and carry on raging the battle against mother nature!!
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