A Suitable Boy

My parents' life long mission to give me away to some man has been a source of comedy material for years...

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

My interest in dating has waned over the last 4 years. Maybe it was moving to Berlin, maybe it was COVID, maybe it was the man in the leather doggie mask who DMed with “Ruff! Want to take me for a walk?”

Whatever it was, I got tired of trying.

A friend suggested asking my couple friends to introduce me to someone. In theory, it sounded amazing. In practice, couples tend to associate with 3 friends groups: other couples, gay men, and men who have been weeded out of the dating pool by natural selection.

It made me wonder if I’d been too quick to reject my parents offers to arrange my marriage. Then I remembered who my parents are.

I grew up with relationship introductions and a legitimate fear that my Dad would give me away to the highest bidder. This is because my Dad showed me a picture of my future husband when I was eleven. E L E V E N.

The image of a fat boy ramming an ice-cream into his mouth, as if it was the cure for ugly, brought me to tears. It took a while to realise my Dad was also crying. With laughter. It turned out, “Bhaskar” wasn’t my betrothed, just some random child who had wandered into my Dad’s holiday shot. Thus the arranged marriage ‘gag’ was born, and would plague me all the way to adulthood.

This is not the image he showed me. I may have reacted differently if it had been.

When I was at uni, my Dad signed me up to Shaadibride.com, an Indian dating website. “Let’s laugh at this tradition together!” he said. It was fun to start out. We laughed as I was asked to state my skin tone (wheatish brown), my level of vegetarianism (non-existent), and my political preferences (liberal, very, very liberal). My Dad laughed looking at potential matches, their desperation, and the idea that any man thought that I might be a suitable bride. Hilarious. That was until a “good match” showed up.

See, behind every great joke is a glimmer of truth, and the truth here was my Dad wanted to see me married to a solid Indian man. A doctor prepared to fly me to Frankfurt for a date, was too good to be true. My Dad nagged me to go for a week and when I flat out refused he rolled out his classic argument:

“Why do you hate your people? Give him a chance!”

Doctors always made him crack. I ended up deleting the account and he sulked for a week.

Just like Wile Coyote, the man didn’t give up. Over the years he’s tried to foist me on shop owners, halal butchers and one time, an “Olympian” flautist. The guy had played at the opening ceremony in 2012. Playing fast and loose with the term, Olympian, Dad.

My mum, a woman who once compared arranged marriage to finding a car in Auto Trader, also likes to chime in from time to time whenever she’s worried my womb might go stale. Her dating advice sounds like dialogue straight out of Mad Men. My personal favourites are “Don’t talk until after the wedding, then it will be too late for him to change his mind” and “Maybe you could become a secretary and marry your boss.” Ah, maternal guidance.

Together, they’re the scourge of every unmarried political canvasser, gas man and Jehova’s witness who comes to the door. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been tricked into my living room with a cup of tea, only to find a canvasser they’ve cornered. I’ve become the Harriet Tubman of our living room, helping these poor men to freedom, before my parents come back with the Bombay mix and a photo album.

Now I’m in my 40s, they’ve mostly given up on the spinsterventions. Mostly. The sound of my biological clock ticking away like The Tell-tale Heart, can get unbearable and then my mum will beg me to just “move nicely” with a boy, like I’m a rebellious wildebeest, ruining it for the herd.

Every time I think they’ve given up completely, there’s a sign that they cling to hope. Last time, it was my dad insisting that I didn’t stand directly in front of the microwave in case I “fried my eggs”.

I suppose if he can remain hopeful, maybe I can too.