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A Suitable Bride

So I called my mother and told her “Ma, I am ready to get married. Go find me a wife”.

It was clearly not my intention to take this track, but after years going through an all boys education, 2 years in the testosterone filled army, another 4 years in Engineering and then jumping from one Engineering firm to another, all I remember seeing was men, men and more bloody men. And when you ex finally decides to find herself a boyfriend and all your closest friends decides to get married within the same 2 month period, it hits you.

“Fuck, I need to find someone”.

The general tendency in such cases was to grab the nearest woman you can find and ask her out, but when living in a country where foreigners are generally viewed with overall suspicion, any kind of grabbing ,of anything, was highly advised against. And when your white friend next to you with his crappy pictures was getting more Tinder matches than you with your best pictures, at some point you come to realise that 1) You ain’t white 2) Online dating was not going to work and 3) that money spent on that Tinder premium membership should have been spent at Mustafa Gemuse Kebab. So you decide to sign up for Dance lessons and then somewhere in Wuhan, some guy decides to eat some wild animal and next thing you know you are stuck at home with not even a pole to dance with.

So I called my mother and told her “Ma, I am ready to get married. Go find me a wife”.

The profile was set up, the preferences locked in and the floodgates were opened. 

Barely a stream trickled out. Which was worrying, for this was the backup plan all along, or at least that’s what my parents told me right after lecturing me for 2 hours about the consequences of falling in love (its bad for your studies etc) after I revealed a crush on my New Zealander classmate in 4th grade. Ok if they knew best, I would leave it to them, which in other words is like letting your mum set up your tinder profile and letting her doing the swiping. In other words, it does not work very well, not so much for her lack of trying, but more for a lack of her marketing and IT proficiency, something I should have realised given she searched for my file on my table after I told her it was on the Desktop.

This I would discover when I would eventually open my profile to check, only to see the not the most flattering pictures of myself posted along with a description that focused on my prowess as a money printing machine out of Germany (no mention anywhere about my 100 daily push-ups). Inexplicably the height filter for the bride was set to a maximum of 165 cm, which I assumed was my mother trying to convey the idea that either no woman be taller than her in the house or that the bride would still be given some opportunity to grow. Also were some really decent offers that came in not even considered while some really questionable ones were being pursued, which she attributed to the fact that there were too many things to click on that site (what else could it be?).

Frustrated, I decided to call it off. It was time to take back control and chart my own destiny, to find my own partner, whatever the odds. And she comes to mind. Ah yes, her, she who would have been so compatible with her writing, her thoughtfulness and her gracefulness. Had it not been for other women in my life then, it would have been her, for we always crossed paths in the unlikeliest of places and unlikeliest of times, as if the universe was saying, “Do not forget her”. Yes, this was my love story. This is what everything has been building up to, to this moment. 

So I message her after a long 2 year gap. Her facebook profile seems somewhat outdated, so a very private person indeed, another point for compatibility. I initiate the conversation and she is responsive. Going well. Going good. After a while I get straight to the point.

“Wanna hang out”, or basically that’s the mild version of the idea I try to convey.

“Dude, I am married”.

So I call my mother and told her “Ma, I am ready to get married. Go find me a wife”.

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