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.
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