How To Find Your Perfect Son-In-Law : Free Advice For Indian Parents

Dear Indian Parents,

Only in recent years has the portentous truth slowly dawned upon me that Indian parents who have an unmarried daughter in the age group 22 - 28 have one massively oppressive headache on their minds : how to find that peerless son-in-law for their nonpareil daughter. In order to help you to form a reasonably good idea of what to look out for (and also what to expect from young Indian men these days who can be pretty uncultured and uncouth), I present for your perusal four Indian bachelors whom I have categorised into the following four types.

(A) Marriage as A Social Debt : Mr Atal Bihari Dasgupta :

Mr Dasgupta is an excellent type of bachelor (may his tribe increase!), a person who is deeply rooted in the hoary traditions of Indian culture, who is aware of the rich cultural and linguistic heritage of his Motherland, and who passionately seeks to promote his country's rich patrimony into the next generation. Which, in short, is why he wishes for your daughter's hand in marriage, and I wish to assure you that you shall not be disappointed in giving your assent to his heartfelt request. As an additional bonus, he also comes from a very well-known family with excellent credentials : his late grandfather who was the Chief Justice in the High Court at Calcutta was also a renowned poet-novelist, and his father has recently retired as the Chairman of the Indian Insurance Company, an honourable post. His mother is a loving, caring, and devoted housewife who has ensured that he has picked up all the good customs and all the decent mannerisms of our ancient Indian culture, and his elder sister was married off two years ago to a family in Patna with impeccable credentials. He informed me the other day when I was listening to him reciting some Sanskrit verses (yes, he has mastered Sanskrit too) from the Bhagavad-Gita that he thinks of our sacred custom of Hindu marriage as a divine system through which he shall repay his social debts to his departed ancestors, and when I heard him say these words as precious as heavenly manna, I literally broke down into a flood of warm tears. How can I explain to you how sweet, how tender, how beautiful those delightful words sounded to my parched ears! How many so-called educated bachelors are there in India today who have attained to the heights of such a precious wisdom? He went on to tell me that it was not just your daughter that he was going to marry but her entire family as well, and what does this reflect if not our venerable Hindu belief that marriage is first and foremost a social institution?

Do I need to tell you after all this that bachelors like Mr Dasgupta are extremely rare to find these days, indeed as exceptional as a shining diamond in a muddy field of rice? So here is my advice to you : please do not delay and hasten to catch him when you still have the time.

(B) Marriage as A Heroic Defiance : Mr Jawaharlal Misra :

Now we are already moving into muddy waters, for here comes along the pompous Mr Misra who harbours all kinds of fancy notions about what marriage is, or more disastrously, about what it should be. Here, for example, is one of them : he thinks that marriage is not a social system but a personal contract between two individuals who are in love. Love? What on earth is that supposed to mean? He has an extremely pernicious habit of floating freely of all social and cultural moorings, and of pretending to be a multicultural, hybrid, global, and universal Citizen. He has no knowledge of Indian history, no engagement with Indian culture, and no sense of identity either, and thinks that just because he has mastered the intricate nuances of English he can repudiate all his links with Indian customs overnight and start fraternizing with the British. Most terrible of all, he has no respect whatsoever for his elders, and thinks that he knows it all better than them whom he routinely denounces as a bunch of reactionary windbags. What vile effrontery! Indeed, when I met him two days ago, and asked him to describe to me what his Ideal Wife would be like, he had the nerve to give me the following reply : 'She should be very cosmopolitan. Indeed, she should be so planetary that she should be able to read Jacques Derrida in German, Friedrich Nietzsche in French, Fyodor Dostoivsky in Italian, and Umberto Eco in Russian'.

(C) Marriage as An Ironic Superfluity : Mr Salman Aggarwal :

'Horror of horrors!' is how I shall summarise the only conversation that I ever had with Mr. Aggarwal, for I have never met a bachelor with greater impudence, a more depraved heart, and a nastier tongue than him. He is of the opinion that marriage is like the white icing on a birthday cake, you may have the icing if you want it but it really is just that --- superfluous, nothing more, nothing less. Can you believe that --- the consecrated Hindu institution of marriage being written off as superfluous? O' heavenly Gods, what hellish times are we living in, what new darkness has set upon the minds and the hearts of our dissolute young men? If that were all, however, it would still be a venial sin on his part, but he committed the mortal sin of rebuking bachelors who believe that marriage is a sacred system with his ironical remarks about Mr Dasgupta and Mr Misra. He said that Mr Misra is a bachelor who wants to marry a woman whom he loves, but as for Mr Dasgupta, he will compel himself to love the woman to whom he has already got married. Fancy that! Playing with words and bringing base irony into a holy matter as serious and grave as marriage!

(D) Marriage as A Nostalgic Yearning : Mr Lal Krishna Rajamohan:

After meeting Mr Aggarwal, a conversation with Mr Rajamohan is like a whiff of fresh air in a fusty room. Mr Rajamohan went to the University of Chicago for his Ph.D. in Astrophysics, but instead of pursuing his educational interests there he spent most of his time during the first six months carousing in the university's bars and pubs. One morning, however, he woke up at the crack of dawn, and as the sun's first rays touched his drunken lips, he underwent an apocalyptic conversion. He suddenly realised the immense hollowness, the utter perversity, and the inner moral bankruptcy of Western Civilisation which he felt at that moment was on a descending slope of irrevocable decline. Returning to India within a few weeks, he launched a national campaign to educate Indian children about the intrinsic purity of Indian Spirituality which, he believes, is far superior to anything that the West has produced so far. He is a pious twice-born Hindu who will never glance at any Western woman even once for he sincerely believes that they are the nests and the instruments of the Devil.

So, then, it is now time, my dear Indian parents with unmarried daughters, to make your choice from among these four Indian bachelors. Mr Dasgupta, needless to repeat, comes highly recommended from all quarters, with Mr Rajamohan, of course, breathing down closely on his neck, but which the lesser evil between the two of Mr Misra and Mr Aggarwal is must remain a ponderous issue that I am frankly unable to settle.

Yours transparently,
Mr Ironist