Going through the matrimonial columns of the newspapers is one of our hilarious pastimes on Sunday afternoons. Apart from the fact that it tells us a great deal about how petty, greedy, foolish, habit-bound and generally cussed people actually are behind all their workaday pretensions, they are always good for a few belly laughs. Here’s a tiny selection of ads from today’s edition of Bartaman:
The girls usually always call themselves fair-skinned, pretty, ‘homely’ and ‘convent-educated’, of course (no matter how dark, ugly, unpleasant and dumb they might actually be) and almost universally seek grooms who are dah/ih/sho. cha (daktar/engineer/sorkari chakurey), no matter whether they look like apes and behave even worse. But here are some that really take the cake. One prospective groom touts the fact that he is a teetotaler (seems to be his only virtue), declares that he hardly earns anything, and that he’s willing to marry anybody, just so long as his father in law puts him up permanently (a ghorjamai: he’s quite candid about it). Another who is 45 declares that he looks no older than 37, and touts his Rs. 26,000 a month clerkship in a government aided school as though that’s as good as being a millionaire playboy. Yet a third who by his own admission makes just about Rs. 3000 a month (I paid my driver more than that!) generously says that he will ‘accept’ any bride, so long as she is willing to keep him in her father’s house. A girl in her mid-30s who proudly announces she has studied upto class three is looking for an ‘established’ groom.
After we had stopped hiccupping with laughter, my wife, daughter and I thought it would be nice to write down some such ad for me, if I were to put myself on the marriage market again (did I tell you that a couple of years ago the rumour had gone around that I was divorced, and I had started receiving lucrative offers for a second marriage already?) Both of them insisted I'd be deluged with requests...
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2 comments:
Dear Sir,
The first thing that came to my mind when I finished reading your piece on advertisements adorning matrimonial columns on leading newspapers was: Honestly, what were these people thinking when they agreed to get these put up about themselves on a regional daily? I mean, who does that? Incidentally, my mother makes it a point to read the matrimonial page/s almost everyday and I never understood why till the day she read out a few excerpts and within a few minutes we were both laughing our heads off. For one, I have never been able to take the concept of advertising for brides and grooms on an newspaper seriously, maybe because most such advertisements tend to border on the ridiculous. Then, there are these stock phrases all advertisers seem familiar with and keep using like they were part of a special code only traders in the marriage market were privy to. "Lekhapora jana, ghoroa meye", for instance, is something I can't quite wrap my head around. What does it mean, really? However, that might probably be because the English equivalent of the term 'ghoroa', viz.'homely' confuses me as well. And what is up with the whole 'gouroborno/borna' deal? How does one's complexion affect one's suitability for marriage? Why does it even matter? When you are searching for a wife or a husband, wouldn't you rather prioritize on qualities that would make that significant other easier to live with? I could be grossly mistaken, but clearly, common sense doesn't seem to be a strong point with a large number of people or even a requirement for being eligible for marriage in this case.
Hahaha, Urna. Your logic is spot on, and yet the really strange thing about this madness is that for millions of people, it seems to work - after a fashion, at least!
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