Daily Times

This piece of writing is just fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Mr Chaudhry was a grade-26 bureaucrat. You must be thinking that how could one be in grade 23 when there is no grade above 22. In fact, he got extensions after extensions and by this virtue he could have rightly placed himself in grade-26.

Needless to mention that like most of the bureaucrats, ego was his ‘hallmark’.  He was blessed with a beautiful, tall and slim girl with winsome looks that everyone wished they had. She was an IVY Leaguer, employed by an international NGO that would offer her a salary ten times more than her father would earn provided he says ‘No’ to ‘fazle rabbi (bribe). His only conundrum that was giving him sleepless nights was, he had failed to find a ‘Mr Right’ for her despite having a ‘simple criteria’ i.e. taqwa [piousness].  Many Goliaths failed to address it since it will not end with taqwa.

The wish list was infinite:  a) the boy must be six feet or above, without exception; b) foreign qualified, preferably IVY League; c) he can be two years younger but not a few years older than the girl; d) he must be never married, never engaged.  Caste was also a preference. Friends, relatives and acquaintances connected him to dozens of potential prospects but nobody could impress him.

Most of the boys were not handsome. The handsome were not affluent. The handsome and affluent did not have the professional degree.  The handsome and affluent with a professional degree had it from wrong institutions. Any institution outside the IVY League was no institution!  The handsome and affluent with a professional degree from IVY League did not have equally educated parents!  The handsome, affluent, professional degree holders from IVY League with educated parents must pray five times a day, must fast and never go near a sundowner!

Mr Chaudhry looked down on marriage brokers and property dealers but when the shadows of her daughter’s beauty and youth grew longer, he resorted to all of them without any success. He was connected with the best prospects but nobody would address his ‘simple criteria’. As the girl’s age increased, the ‘simple’ criteria kept on becoming ‘simpler’. Now he wanted a boy who is preferably settled abroad but at the same time he would be living within Punjab not beyond Lahore’s boundaries! The matchmakers just gave up.

For many, Mr Chaudhry was not serious in his daughter’s marriage. Match-hunting was his only pastime. He had excellent drafting skills but they were catching rust after retirement. He would highlight matrimonial ads in the paper and write the advertisers long emails in the typical bureaucratic style that would either soar above recipients’ head or bore them to death.

His daughter was ‘Ms Right’ for an ‘unfortunate’ father of a US national boy. For one month, he had been calling Chaudhry saheb daily. Each call was above 60-min and Chaudhry would just recite verbatim the long emails that he had written to him. He will not come to the point. He won’t share his daughter’s pictures; he won’t let the girl and boy talk to each other on phone or skype. [By the way, I forgot to mention that the daughter would travel all over the world alone on company’s expenses and she does not wear hijab. She is a modern girl.]

When the boy’s father insisted that the girl and his son should talk to each other, Chaudhry asked the father to get in touch with his son in the US! When his well-wishers advised him to let the boy and girl talk, he, like a typical bureaucrat would say: ‘We are not desperate. It is against our honor. The case may regretfully be considered closed!’

Time was flying and the girl was now 32. Chaudhry had rejected more than 200 best prospects.  Proposals stopped knocking his doors. His friends advised him to consider widowers/divorcee without kids but he paid no heed. He received a serious blow when his daughter was rejected for the first time in life – soon after her 30^th birthday. She was never rejected before. It was he who was rejecting the boys. All his friends left him one by one, including myself.

Ten years later, I saw an ad in the paper. I was looking for a 10-kanal farmhouse. The ad was from a property dealer. I got the address from the person who attended the phone (a decent lady). I reached the office and was surprised to see Mr Chaudhry who had become a property dealer. He was looking after his son-in-law’s real estate office and telling me with pride about him. He kept on talking incessantly like always and I could retain only this in my memory: the boy was 65, matric pass, divorced with two adult daughters from first marriage who live with him. And according to Chaudhry, he had the best son-in-law in the world!

The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher based in Islamabad.Yamankalyan@gmail.com