Courting, then & now

It all began with finding a ‘good boy’. According to my mother, I was the most beautiful girl in town, and there were scores of ‘good boys’ lining up to ask for my hand in marriage. But where exactly were they? These ‘good boys’ from ‘good families’ with ‘good incomes’ that my mother said were pining for me.

Because ever so often, we’d find ourselves standing in line for a plate of mutton biryani at just one of these good boys’ wedding feast. We could never figure out how he’d married someone else since he was, as we were made to believe, pining for me! My mother was not the one to go down without a fight though: she would point out how completely miserable the groom looked, mopping around on that flower-bedecked dais.

In the meantime, I was happy and single. I had started working. The newfound headiness of freedom, coupled with a handsome income and company-paid two-bedroom-hall-kitchen house was intoxicating. I could not be bothered with finding a ‘good boy’.

My mother got more and more grumpy about my dwindling value in the marriage market. I was leading a jet-setting lifestyle (travelling by airplane, my mother would add with feigned weariness) and staying in five-star hotels (the number of stars has to be mentioned compulsorily, and thankfully, there is no easy way to crosscheck if the number is correct). This was not good. I would soon be too independent, rendering myself incapable of marriage.

So, after most of the ‘good boys’ married other girls, mostly dragged to the altar, if my mother was to be believed, it was time for the matrimonial advertisement. I found out that I was fair and pleasant-natured, simple, God-fearing and homely.

I also found out a lot of things about the suitors: ‘simple and religious’ meant ‘too ugly to go anywhere else after church service.’ ‘Early marriage’ meant ‘has been waiting so long, will kill for a bride’. ‘Mature’ meant ‘bald’.

Options were limited. And in those days, asking for more options was criticised, especially since the question, “Which boy do you want to marry?” was usually posed by a harassed father with deep furrows on his forehead, worried about his PF money, while holding up three to four photographs of ‘good boys’.

Each of those boys would be in various stages of balding, wearing safari suits and posing against a futuristic vehicle that resembled a Maruti 800 or a Vespa.

The girls were expected to weigh their options coyly by twisting their dupatta around their fingers and address their concerns via an internal raging dilemma: “So what if he is bald, he has a safari suit.”

I rejected the first one based on the fact that he had posed for his photo in Prince Studios, leaning jauntily against a painted plaster of Paris tree. Alas, in my advertised simple and God-fearing avatar, I could not be so rude and discriminatory to tell all those I rejected as to why I rejected them.

Then I met my husband, handsome and intelligent. Over the months, I found out that he could calculate how much a silk top worth Rs 759 would cost after 35 per cent discount.

And he was extremely patient. Nothing made him angry; he had the stoic composure of a tombstone. Occasionally, I checked his pulse to determine signs of life during, say, an altercation with an auto driver, in which I had, by then, torn the shirt off the erring guy.

Dating, as we know it today, did not exist before. In our days, it meant planning to bump into each other ‘by chance’ at the local market. This had to be executed after a great deal of planning, with the key being generating the right ‘surprised’ expression. It also entailed sending messages through mutual friends who were power brokers in their own way. They could make or break a deal depending on how accurately and positively they conveyed the messages.

Dating was also about accompanying the loved one on an errand. I remember one of our romantic days out was to the Gomti Nagar voter ID card centre, where we stood in a queue, darting loving glances at each other amid a sea of humanity, addressed by announcements such as: “Next, Laddoo Singh. Baaki log side hatiye nahin to lathi charge hoga…”

And thus began the journey of love, togetherness and a lifetime of blaming each other for having changed after marriage. Because what happens to a ‘good boy’ from a ‘good family’ after he meets a ‘good girl’ from a ‘good family’ is that they go on to make a family that is not necessarily good.