The other day, Munni appeared distrait. "What's up?" I asked her, well aware that I was treading in dangerous territory. Munni's melodramatic replies to routine questions are legendary. Ask her how she is, and she'll show you smudged lung X-rays and ultrasound reports. After a festival, ask her if she and her family had a good time, and she'll tell you with gloomy relish how her next-door neighbour died of too much drinking and that they spent the entire day wailing and mourning with his widow. This time, however, there was a different reason for her angst.
"As you know, my daughter Meera is of marriageable age now, but finding a suitable boy is proving very difficult," she said. The evening before, they had met the family of a promising candidate. "The family is well known to us, the father is a permanent government employee," she said. "But they've told us upfront what they want in dowry - a watch, gold ring and Rs 3 lakh in cash for the groom, plus gifts for his parents and brother. My husband and I are both sweepers, how can we afford this kind of expenditure?" she said. "Was the boy in a very good job?" I asked. "Well, he's scraped through Class 12, is learning to drive and looking for a job," she said, scratching her head. "I was only looking at the family, and hadn't even realised that the boy is not doing much at all!" It would have been, I said sympathetically, a repeat of her elder daughter's situation. A routine query about her family once had yielded me the sad story of her elder daughter. They'd married her off to an unemployed man a few years ago. The duo promptly produced two children. The daughter is bitterly unhappy about still having to ask her in-laws for money since her husband doesn't earn much.
"Had she looked around for other boys?" I asked. "Last week, we met a nice boy, he's in the army and is waiting to apply when the police recruitment drive begins," said Munni. He sounded promising, until Munni told me that he said he'd marry Meera on the condition that they'd use some influence or bribery to get him the police job he coveted. Clearly, this prospective groom was going to be on the marriage market for a while.
"Now my best option is to find her a groom in our village in Aligarh," she said. "People there are still not so avaricious!" Munni said that to her, the biggest tragedy was that none of the prospective grooms or families were even interested in Meera herself. "As long as we can give them what they want, they don't care if she is literate or unlettered, fat or comely, pretty or homely..." she said.
I listened to her story and asked what she wanted in a son-in-law. Munni replied unhesitatingly. "I'm not concerned about his job, for he could get a good one later. Educational qualifications don't matter so much either. And as for looks, people like us don't have the time for such things!" All she wanted, she eventually said, was that the groom should be "cheap". "I shouldn't have to pay unreasonable dowry, that's all!" I was amused, for here she was, shopping for grooms just the way the grooms were shopping for brides. And like most other markets in today's economy, the Indian marriage market seemed to be a price-driven one too.
Having seen the girl in question grow into somewhat questionable maturity, I was interested in finding out what their idea of a "suitable boy" was.
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