Marriage Mela

SHE Magazine (2003)

When you come to think of it, the only industry in Pakistan that keeps running profitably is the marriage industry. Floods may come and floods may go, ships may capsize in the Arabian Ocean and oil slicks may wash away any hopes that the people of Karachi may foolishly imagine, but the marriage market just simply rolls on and on.

Everywhere you see, throughout the year other than the month of Ramadhan, fat and generally bored aunties are fully occupied planning or executing marriages. It would not come as a surprise that even during the month of Ramadhan they would be chalking out their future programmes with full gusto. There are thousands of women in Pakistan whose sole pre-occupation is to organize matches and pair off as many people as they can. To this end, they will waddle to any part of the country and spend any amount of time fixing up the numerous details that required to be resolved before the complicated business can move forward. It requires a certain single minded, one track mindset to forge ahead, overcome logistical hassles, impossible demands and even more impossible budgets to tie the happy knot. It does not matter that most marriages end up being full of drudgery, boredom and misery. As far as the auntie brigade is concerned, it simply marches on. How they find the resources to initiate contacts between totally disparate parties or the most unlikely couples is a matter that perhaps we can leave to the X Files to figure out. Through rain, sleet, sunshine and dust storms the aunties move like the American liberating armies move through Iraq and I suppose in a way, with the same disastrous results. However, since the aunties have really no abiding concern with the sum content of happiness generated by each match they patch together, they simply shrug their ample shoulders and lumber on.

The negotiations which can take months to figure out let alone resolve are at all stages, closely monitored by the marriage brigade which obviously takes its job very seriously. The kind of skillful wheeling dealing that the aunties are generously gifted with would make any foreign office drone dribble with envy. In sheer terms of diplomacy, ruthless bargaining and silent kill, the aunties are a force to contend with. It is a pity that their considerable talents are not available to the government of the day which could weave circles around the most shifty foreign government officials. Once the obstacles are swiftly removed, the show moves on settling quickly into top gear as dates approach and more rituals take over the lives of otherwise sensible people.

Sanity of course for the parties involved is the first casualty followed quickly by a large scale exodus of money that develops its own momentum of dizzying flow and leaves the most astute money manager wringing his hands in horror. Men and women who have lived their lives in relative sanity and reason, seem to shed these for what can only be termed as an attack of madness. Since the entire marriage ritual is full of time wasting and money bashing activities, one insane and utterly lunatic function is replaced by another one. Because Pakistan is happily over stocked in terms of dust and millions of people crawling out of the woodwork, match making is carried on full time and with a regularity that even beats the occupation of Pakistan by the Pakistan Army every now and then.

One casual look at any market in the country will convince even the most doubting person that everything and everything is geared towards the marriage market. The amount of jewellery shops is simply beyond belief in a country where 40% of the population cannot have drinking water and where, as per the new definition of poverty, 62% of the people earn less than 1US$ per day. Every market boasts of dozens of shops each laden to the gills with the most ostentatious and evil designed gold apparatus that may look good on Godzilla but is most likely to snap the bride’s head in two were she to attempt and wear one. That this wild display of gold and precious stones sell at the same speed as turnips do, is the great paradox of Pakistan. All day long people line up at these abbatoirs and part with their hard earned money for a few trinkets that are worn once and never seen again but are locked away in a safe to accumulate in value. In similar fashion, thousands of beauty parlours and just as many products that promise you the moon and deliver zilch continue to sprout in the country. Here women in hordes arrive and more money changes hands. What it does for the eternal feminine charm is a matter of great controversy. What is important is that this cog in the big marriage wheel also grinds on happily making money and fools out of millions of people. Equally prominent are the zillions of tailors and fashion outlets where you can either buy a “jora” which will be worn for precisely one evening and then never seen again – or buy a car but of course since common sense is just about missing in big numbers, everyone falls for the “jora” and the misery of wasted money simply has another chapter added to it.

In all this of course one can step aside and wonder why is this business of hitching for life such a big deal considering that most of these encounters lead to more unhappiness than anything else. It is a question that figures largely on the landscape but like so many questions that we have, this too has no answer.