Looking for a suitable boy

http://www.risingkashmir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=394&Itemid=51

BABA UMAR

Ayesha, a 45-year-old home maker and a mother of four bachelorette daughters, finally decided to discover the unconventional method of finding a match for her siblings. She had asked her relatives and some older women of her neighbourhood to help her search for a better match. She had also approached the conventional matchmakers (manzimyoer in Kashmiri). After years of futile search, however, she landed up in the city’s Seerat Marriage Bureau (Matrimonial agency). But she was in for a surprise.

“We are winding up this bureau,” tells the bureau owner to Ayesha.

Disappointed Ayesha says she has paid almost 20,000 to several traditional matchmakers, but all of them never turned up after making few visits to Ayesha’s house in the city outskirts. The matchmakers, she consulted, rather weakened her case and it is four years since she went in the quest of a match for her elder daughter.

“They (Manzimyoer) play pranks that is the reason why I have come here (matrimonial agency),” she says. “Now this matrimonial agency too is giving me the cold response.”

The owner of the bureau (who wished not to be named) cites many reasons as why he is pulling down the shutters of his matrimonial agency. And that activates a lengthy dialogue between the proprietor of the marriage bureau and Ayesha.

Seerat Marriage Bureau was established a year back to help people find matches without any hassles free from irritant manzimyoers that drive one mad. The owner says that his was the only marriage bureau in the city that was meant only for a ‘social cause’.

“I used to charge only ten rupees for this,” says the owner, displaying a three-page-long registration form. The owner says that he wished to get the society out of the clutches of the traditional match makers, but failed. Reasons, “lack of feeling towards their own betterment,” is how he puts up.The bureau so far, he says, registered some 200 odd bachelors. However, only three couples could tie up the nuptial knot. The rest of hopefuls got jammed in the caste, looks of the counterparts and status. They couldn’t find their partners in almost two hundred young people.

“If our religion (Islam) permits inter-caste marriages, then why this ‘sick attitude’,” he says. “I am disappointed with the thinking of the people here.”This time Ayesha nods to the words of the man whom she thought would help her.

Of the 200 bachelors, he says, most of them are highly educated but the rich versus poor, caste dissimilarity and the mind-set to have lavish marriages has ultimately resulted in no-marriages from the pile he had registered in a year. And that is the reason why he is closing his agency.“Is anybody worried about the thousands of girls who are over-aged now and close to infertility,” he poses.Unfortunately his poser has no immediate answer.

You have a new message

http://www.risingkashmir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=331&Itemid=51

Baba Umar

Next time you get an e-mail in your inbox with the title “Congrats- you have won the UK online national lottery £250,000.00”- don’t reply to it as it is simply a spam mail. However, there are those who easily get tricked on the first time and they are left with nothing but utter disappointment.

“I thought I really made it to the treasure, however, the disappointment was instant when I replied to that message and gave all of my credentials,” says Suhail Gulzar Wani, a computer wizard. “Now I know that it is a spam, but on the very first time I was excited and waited for the easy money.”

These mails are basically unsolicited, often commercial messages transmitted through the Internet as a mass mailing to a large number of recipients. These often include your lottery number which you never bought and the mailing address of the agent who is supposedly going to dispatch money in your account! And one is supposed to write back one’s name and full address immediately in the reply message.

Says Fazal Mehmood, “I remember my friend who has almost 7 years of experience in IT, received similar kind of e-mail from someone in London. The e-mail contained telephone number as well as mail ID, and after looking at it, he called on the same number and asked for the detail, not just once but many times, however, they asked him to send $100 in some account and then they will transfer money in his account.” He further adds, “My friend cursed them and was very upset.”

Some of the latest unwelcome spam includes jokes and puns, probably an attempt to lessen the irritation of recipients. However, experts suggest that one should install spam guards and other software that could protect you from becoming the victim of lottery pranks.

“I would say simply delete those message and save your time,” recommends Muheet Ahmad, a software engineer.

He also divulges the benefit and the modus operandi employed by such spam senders. “They basically use ‘Sniffer software’ which sniffs into the server and reads all the mail addresses. Later they send the mails to different users,” he says. “And after that, the users are advised to reply along with their complete addresses and credentials on a separate e-mail id.”He says (as happened with Mehmood’s friend), the users are then asked to deposit certain dollars into some bank account and hence they easily rob gullible aspirants.