India in Love by Ira Trivedi

Author:Ira Trivedi [Trivedi, Ira]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789383064595
Published: 2014-02-28T18:30:00+00:00

MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER

THE MARRIAGE BROKER

At the South Extension, New Delhi, offices of A to Z Matchmaking Management it is an unusually busy day. A set of parents who have arrived on the morning train from Lucknow wait their turn to register their daughter for marriage. Another anxious pair is scouring biodatas on the A to Z database. Three weddings that the company has brokered are taking place and as part of the service agreement, representatives of the company have to be present at all of them. The auspicious wedding period has begun and there are thousands of weddings taking place every day. There is nothing like a wedding to make people feel anxious about marriage, so clients are pouring in.

Gopal Suri, the founder and man in charge of the most popular marriage bureau in South Delhi, is a small but aggressive man, abrasive in a way that at first is off-putting, but over time becomes endearing. He always wears tight shirts and black jeans, combining his standard outfit with shiny, black, pointed shoes in the summer and a pair of cowboy boots in the winter. He has weaselly eyes and reading glasses dangling from a long golden chain around his thick neck. He is bald, the gleam of his cranium matching that of his shoes. He works out daily, and his chest stretches his shirt impressively. He has a staccato manner of speaking, and his hooded gaze is direct, almost fierce. He is an unlikely marriage broker. I could easily imagine him as a gangster or the operator of a rather shady import-export business. The first time I called, asking if I could interview him, he became extremely defensive, inquiring if I was a private detective, and if his wife had sent me. A year-and-a-half later, I am a regular at the firm. I know most of the cases on file, I have edited biodatas, I have posed as Gopal Suri’s assistant in over fifty meetings, I have been set up on dates with prospective husbands, I have even taken charge when Gopalji (as I call him) was indisposed, matched prospective candidates and made marriages happen.

Gopal Suri entered the marriage business by sheer luck. He began his career working with his father in the property business. He then started a guesthouse, Swisston Palace in Karol Bagh—a congested residential area in Delhi. In 2000, a guest from the US stayed at Swisston Palace for over a month, an inordinately long time even at the low rates offered by Gopalji. At this time, there was a rash of terrorist attacks taking place in the country and Gopalji grew suspicious about his foreign guest, Mr Singh. When he eventually confronted him about the unnatural length of his stay, and asked him what he did in his room all day, Mr Singh looked sheepish and said he had been trying to arrange the marriage of his daughter, without any luck. She was thirty and her time was running out; he could not go back to Chicago until he had found her a groom.

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