For centuries, India has had a complicated relationship with skin colour, but at no other time in history has the obsession with fair skin been so extreme as now. An estimated 65 per cent of Indian women use fairness creams; the Indian fairness cream market generates annual revenue of more than US$400 million and has been growing by close to 20 per cent annually.
This obsession with fair skin is nowhere more visible than in India’s burgeoning matrimony industry. Marriage remains the cornerstone of Indian society and is widely thought of as the most important step in a woman’s life. Beauty comes into play as women strive to make the best possible match in a highly competitive arranged-marriage market, where eligibility is based on a few select factors such as wealth, looks, education and family status.
So many girls are rejected as brides by boys and their families, only because of the colour of their skin. When dark-skinned girls finally do manage to find a match, their families have to pay out larger dowries, which take the form of throwing grand weddings and giving expensive gifts to their prospective sons-in-law.
It is through the prism of marriage that I decided to explore how the beauty epidemic – and, more specifically, an obsession with skin colour – manifests in India. This journey is a deeply personal one because I too am part of India’s beauty epidemic. I have used skin-lightening creams extensively. I have been a finalist in the Miss India pageant, and I have spent an inordinate amount of time in marriage bureaus, not only in the guise of research but also looking for a husband. At the marriage bureaus, I have personally experienced how a decision of a lifetime can be made in a matter of hours, and how important, through all of this, skin colour is.
Part 1: GROOM WANTED – for beautiful girl. Slim. Wheatish. Family income Rs 50 lakh+ Works in M.N.C. Religious. Homely. Family-oriented.
‘Please find her a husband,’ beseeches Mrs Mehta, her chapatti-round face solid and sincere. Lines of silver fleck her thick, oiled plait – her lumpy, generous body is draped in a peony pink chiffon sari, and clunky golden bangles jangle around her chubby wrists. Mrs Mehta is the classic Indian matron known universally as ‘Aunty-ji’. She takes a quick look at her daughter, Sakshi, the subject of the matrimonial advertisement above: slumped in a chair, staring languidly at her Blackberry, visibly distraught to be present at this meeting. In stark contrast to her mother, the office-going Sakshi is dressed drably in a loose black pantsuit with a pair of dusty flats, on their last legs. Despite her unbecoming clothing, Sakshi is a comely girl – she’s got the lithe frame of an athlete, a pretty, heart-shaped face with well-proportioned features, and, perhaps her best asset, passed down from her mother, thick, shiny, serpent-like hair.
Mr Gopal Suri, the proprietor of South Delhi’s most successful marriage bureau, A to Z Matrimonial, gives Sakshi a sceptical look and then turns back to her mother.
‘Madam, at the moment we are very busy. It is difficult for me to take on any more clients.’
‘But Gopal-ji, Sakshi is twenty-five years old! If we don’t find her a husband now then it will be toooo late. And her papa – he is willing to pay a very high price for this,’ squeals Mrs Mehta.
At the end, an avaricious Mr Suri simply can’t resist, and he signs on the Mehtas, with a 30 per cent hike in his usual fee on account of the difficulty of the job that lies ahead of him.
Prima facie, Sakshi is the perfect client – an attractive, 25-year-old, educated girl with well-to-do parents who are desperate to get her married and ready to pay any price for it. But for Mr Suri, who assesses clients day in, day out on their marriageability, Sakshi has low marks. Sakshi is considered highly ineligible on India’s matrimony market on account of the colour of her skin. Though the matrimonial advertisement that her parents published in the papers markets her as ‘wheatish’ – a uniquely Indian term as common as black or white, used to describe a dark-ish complexion – the reality is that Sakshi is not the colour of wheat but the colour of dark chocolate. With over fifteen years of experience in the matrimony department, during which he has brokered close to a thousand arranged marriages, Mr Suri has found that there are few takers for girls as dark as Sakshi.
‘We want pretty, fair girls only,’ asserts Mrs Gupta, an aunty who arrives shortly after Mrs Mehta.
Mr Suri is at his obsequious best. He pulls out all stops – endless cups of lemon tea, snacks both savoury and sweet from the local market, and, to appear as if he has abundant resources, his entire team of six sit in on the meeting. Mrs Gupta has a coveted asset – an eligible son whom she is desperate to find a bride for.
A true salesman, Gopal Suri pulls out his knock-off iPad to show Mrs Gupta biodata of prospective daughters-in-law.
Mrs Gupta is unimpressed by the A to Z inventory.
‘Gopal-ji, these girls are not fair or lovely enough for my Rohan,’ she complains.
Mrs Gupta is not particularly fair-skinned herself, nor is her son. But she, unlike Sakshi, might be described as ‘wheatish’. It appears that most of Rohan’s friends are Punjabi and Mrs Gupta tells us that if she finds a bride as fair as cow’s milk, then her son would marry her in a heartbeat. Propelled by Indian mass media, the ‘Punjabi’ notion of beauty – fair skin, big eyes, long thick hair – has become hugely popular. Punjabis are typically tall, fair and more ‘Western’-looking than most other Indians. There was a time, not so long ago, when a woman like Mrs Gupta – from the Marwari community, known to be conservative and reserved – would be appalled at the thought of nuptial ties with the Punjabis – known to be brash, loud, colourful and a bit flashy.
After spending weeks at the marriage bureau I have developed some matchmaking expertise myself. It isn’t exactly rocket science; rather, the way that Mr Suri matches two people is so simplistic that I am often left flabbergasted. Relationships, especially finding ‘the One’, feel like the most complicated things in the world to me. Here at A to Z, though, they are decided practically every day.
Mr Suri creates biodata for all his clients. This biodata lists height, the date of birth, caste, education, family income and family details: parents’ professions, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts and whomever else the client chose to include. The biodata always comes with a few photographs.
The most important criteria for matching are age, family income – both the families should be in similar wealth brackets – and the photograph. For boys the most important criterion is looks – they all want to marry pretty girls, and in this case ‘pretty’ means ‘fair’; only colour photos are circulated, so the fairness of a girl’s skin can be assessed.
And these days nothing happens without ‘chemistry’. This new factor has significantly complicated Mr Suri’s simplistic model, and he can never understand why two people who match so well on paper don’t seem to get along in real life. This is where my expertise lies – I am good at gauging chemistry – whether two young people will get along and be attractive to each other. After all, most of the clients at A to Z are close to my age, and many of them are more open with me than with Mr Suri about what they hope to find in their future husband/wife. I have made four matches over the past six months.
Rohan is twenty-seven years old, of medium height, and undeniably average-looking. He has lived in Delhi all his life and he loves sports, especially tennis. I immediately think of the sporty Sakshi, a local tennis champ. It turns out that Sakshi and Rohan live a few blocks away from each other, studied a few years apart at the same high school and even went to neighbouring colleges. Both families are in similar wealth brackets and also from the same caste. It is quite literally a match made in heaven – especially when the in-house astrologer at the marriage bureau confirms that their birth charts match perfectly.
I share my discovery with Mr Suri, who immediately slams the match.
‘I think they’ll get along like a house on fire.’
‘Yes, they will set the house on fire and then Mrs Gupta will blame me only,’ grumbles Mr Suri. ‘Mrs Gupta wants beautiful girls only.’
Over the past few weeks I have come to know Sakshi well and have become fond of her. She regularly visits the bureau with her mother, who frantically scours the A to Z database for potential sons-in-law. Sakshi is sweet, easygoing, funny and bright – a great girl who works at a respectable consulting firm, and, contrary to how the matrimonial ad has made her seem, she loves going out, drinking, dancing and having a good time. Though Sakshi has had a seemingly modern life, since the day she turned twenty-one her parents have been putting pressure on her to get married. Because their daughter is dark-skinned, the Mehtas have always known that marriage isn’t going to be an easy task, and so they have been amassing dowry – jewellery, saris and items of gold and silver that they will give as gifts to Sakshi’s future husband’s family. They have also started an investment fund through which they will pay for their daughter’s wedding. It seems bizarre to me that Sakshi’s life could be so modern and yet so regressive at the same time.
One fortuitous afternoon at the marriage bureau, an increasingly desperate Mrs Mehta comes across Rohan’s biodata on the database.
‘This boy,’ she gasps, ‘is perfect for my Sakshi.’
Sakshi, too, is taken by Rohan’s pictures – professionally shot, one of him posing with his red car, another with a fuzzy white dog, and a third with his tennis racquet.
Under the combined pressure of my enthusiasm, Sakshi’s willingness, Mrs Mehta’s anxiety and Mr Mehta’s fat cheque, Mr Suri begins strategising.
He orders a photo shoot for Sakshi, and then personally supervises the Photoshopping process so that, at the end, Sakshi looks almost fair but also fluorescent in her pictures.
It appears that the marriage broker does know best and the Photoshopping, combined with Mr Suri’s waxing eloquent about the Mehta family’s many virtues, lands us an invitation from the Guptas for tea – the first and critical step in the courtship between two families.
Mrs Mehta begins preparations for the meeting, organising sufficiently opulent outfits and jewellery for herself and Sakshi, purchasing gift baskets piled with fruit, sweets and nuts for the Guptas, whisking Sakshi from the salon to the dermatologist to have her at her glowing best, and consulting an astrologer to prescribe an auspicious time for the first meeting. Mrs Mehta even asks me what I am going to wear for this meeting, and in her temporary spirit of largesse offers to buy me a new outfit.
After a frenzied week, the day of the meeting is finally here. Mrs Mehta arrives, puffed up like a Pomeranian, draped in an extravagant sari studded with Swarovski crystals, and covered with jewels to show off the family’s wealth. Even the usual monochromatic Sakshi has on a glittery salwaar kameez. She has had her make-up professionally done and she has a cake of foundation on her face. Although it lightens her up sufficiently, it has also made her look anaemic and tinted with grey. Her hair is set in frothy curls.
The Guptas are welcoming and, much to Mrs Mehta’s pleasure, seem impressed by the assortment of gifts – the trays of dried fruits and exotic imported fruits, the containers of sweet rasgullas, and the large bouquet of flowers. Sakshi seems equally dazzled by Rohan, who in real life is more handsome than in his photos – he is gym-fit and, with his gelled-back hair, tight pants, big belt buckle and tight shirt, is the perfect picture of a pampered Delhi rake.
Mrs Mehta dominates most of the conversation, braying on about the wealth of the family and the plans they have for throwing Sakshi a grand wedding. The Guptas seem increasingly excited and I notice that Sakshi and Rohan are throwing approving glances at each other. Everything is going according to plan and I notice that a tense Mr Suri, sitting quietly in the corner, is beginning to relax a little.
Then, apropos of nothing, Mrs Gupta leaps up from the sofa, a look of alarm on her face. She motions for her husband to follow her into the kitchen.
Mrs Mehta is not concerned with their departure, taking this time to carefully appraise the room we are sitting in – assessing the clarity of the crystal pieces, the value of the paintings on the wall and the quality of the furniture. I can almost see the math in Mr Mehta’s head as he calculates the square footage of the house.
The Guptas return and as Mrs Mehta launches into another spectacular rant, they are unusually quiet. A few minutes later, an embarrassed Mr Gupta mumbles that he has to leave for a meeting. A tight-lipped Mrs Gupta stands up, thanks everyone for coming, and rudely leaves the room. Mrs Mehta’s pride is totally deflated, but she is a tough lady and she storms out of the room with gumption, a confused Mr Mehta in tow and Sakshi and me trailing. Mr Suri stays behind to pick up the pieces.
‘She says that her feet were very dark. They don’t want such a dark girl. They were very angry,’ he says darkly.
Gauging my utter incomprehension, Mr Suri’s assistant patiently explains to me that looking at a girl’s feet is an age-old trick to determine her ‘real’ skin colour, since make-up or fairness creams are rarely ever applied to the feet.
I’m in equal measures speechless and disgusted. In so many ways, Rohan and Sakshi are a great fit – I could tell, even by the brief meeting, that they had excellent chemistry. The families, too, are compatible. The only reason they are holding off is the colour of Sakshi’s skin. Unbelievable – especially because it isn’t so easy anymore to find an appropriate match for two young people. In the olden days, two people were married off if their families approved. But these days the ‘chemistry’ factor makes it harder. Though Sakshi was on the arranged marriage market, she wouldn’t just marry a man her parents chose for her – she would have to like him too.
Seeing me looking so distraught, Mr Suri tells me with unexpected gentleness, ‘Ira, this is the way it is only.’
The more time I spend at the marriage bureau, the more I realise how correct Mr Suri is, and how indeed this is the way it is only.
The matrimonial search continues for Sakshi with limited success. Sakshi and her parents have several first meetings with families but hardly any second meetings follow. Mr Suri attributes this mostly to the colour of Sakshi’s skin.
Meanwhile, without the knowledge of their parents or Mr Suri, Sakshi and Rohan have connected over Facebook and have been meeting clandestinely. Sakshi seems to be over the moon about Rohan, and she comes to the marriage bureau more frequently than ever on the pretext of looking at biodata, though while she is there she either goes to meet Rohan or spends her time locked in one of the cabins chatting to him on the phone.
While is it clear that Sakshi has fallen for Rohan, and would marry him in a heartbeat, Rohan’s intentions towards Sakshi remain unclear. He has been meeting girls pre-approved by his mother. And there is one girl, who looks and behaves like an over-indulged poodle, with whom he seems to have hit it off.
I can’t stand watching Sakshi fall deeper into the black hole of love, and I confront Rohan and ask him squarely about his intentions, or lack thereof. His leading Sakshi on is unfair.
A few days later, a lacklustre Sakshi walks into the office. She’s not her cheery self – her usually glowing face is splotchy, her normally perfect hair is limp and her typically manicured nails are dirty. She is spiritless and, though she is supposed to be perusing biodata, she’s staring blankly into space. After three cups of sugary tea, she reveals to me that Rohan has stopped replying to her texts.
I feel horribly guilty. That lily-livered Rohan probably backed off after our confrontation. I confess to Sakshi that I had put Rohan in a corner, and have probably scared him off.
Sakshi is silent and I brace myself for a scolding, but she is too dejected to be angry.
‘It’s because I’m dark, isn’t it?’ she says with a whimper. ‘That’s why he doesn’t like me.’
Part 2: Bride-hunting in the Punjab
‘Kaalia1, get in the right lane,’ yells the hot-blooded young Punjabi, wearing sunglasses, a fluorescent yellow t-shirt and no helmet, his long hair in a greasy ponytail, as he whizzes past us noisily. His horn blasts with an angry wail.
‘Welcome to Punjab,’ says Tej to me grimly, slowing down and switching to the correct lane. He settles behind a truck emitting a dark cloud of pollution and transporting a dozen terrified, bleating goats.
‘I just don’t like seeing them being taken to their death,’ Tej grumbles, referring to the goats.
‘Maybe they’re being taken to a farm,’ I say, gazing at the picturesque mustard fields and bucolic green fields, flanking us on both sides.
‘Wishful thinking,’ Tej says, cautiously keeping a safe distance behind the truck.
Tej Bajwa and I are on a road trip in the Punjab. Tej is a marriage broker specialising in acquiring brides for wealthy N.R.I.s (nonresident Indians). His global business, which takes him around the world from Canada, Hong Kong and Kenya to Punjab, is hugely successful, and today we are enjoying the fruits of his success as we drive in his sleek Mercedes Benz, a gift from a client whose divorced son he arrange-remarried.
Our mission today is to track down girls for a special client of his – Ram Kuttuswamy, a technology millionaire who lives in Washington D.C. Originally from Tamil Nadu in South India, Ram has recently divorced the woman he was arrange-married to at the age of twenty-one. In his second innings, buoyed by his move to America and his newly minted wealth, he is in the market for a new bride.
Ram’s only requirement is for a young and beautiful wife. In his case, beautiful means fair, and so we have set off to the Punjab, one of the few pockets of fair-skinned denizens in India.
‘What if his fair-skinned bride is not a cultural match for him?’ I ask, concerned.
‘He’ll send her to a finishing school,’ says Tej matter-of-factly.
‘And the emotional connect?’
‘In any marriage, that comes over time.’
I met Ram in Delhi, and he struck me as being a modern, open-minded, progressive sort of guy. But he had internalised the fact that fair skin was beautiful, to the point that it surpassed all rationale.
Our first stop in the quest for Ram’s wife is Bathinda, a medium-sized city which until a few years ago was mostly farmland but today sports the ubiquitous trappings of development – traffic, concrete eyesores and shopping malls. We are here to meet Sikh priests at the local Gurudwara or Sikh temples, which double as local marriage bureaus. The Sikh priests form a crucial part of Tej’s business. They are the first point of contact for families with marriageable young sons and daughters, whose biodata they pass on to Tej. Over the years, Tej has forged relationships with these priests and created networks at hundreds of Gurudwaras around the world.
The relationship is symbiotic and Tej is helpful to the priests for a number of reasons. First, he gives them money if a successful match is made; second, it is good for the priest’s reputation to marry off poor Punjabi girls to rich N.R.I. men. Third, the weddings that the priest brokers typically take place in his Gurudwara, which means more money.
For many families, Ram would be a catch. He neither wants dowry, nor does he expect the bride’s parents to throw a lavish wedding. The downside is that Ram is divorced, he has a daughter from his previous marriage, and he is Tamilian (might as well say alien in this part of the woods) and his wife will have to move far away from the innards of Punjab to Washington D.C., with infrequent trips back home because Ram dislikes India and has only been making trips here to secure a bride.
On arriving in Bathinda, we enter a small ramshackle Gurudwara where a wizened, gnome-like priest, with a long flowing grey beard and a baby-blue turban, is delighted to see Tej.
‘Sat Sri Akaal, Tej-ji,’ he bellows in Punjabi.
Tej gives the priest a bright smile, embraces him, and then speaks in fluent Punjabi.
‘So good to see you! The blessings of Guru Nanak have brought us together again.’
I am handed a cup of delicious salty buttermilk, and then I am largely ignored as Tej and the priest pore over biodata and photographs of pretty, plump, fair-skinned Punjabi girls.
After Tej shortlists a few girls – the youngest and fairest of the lot – the priest makes a few phone calls and sets up the meetings. Tej has a definite bounce in his step as we leave the Gurudwara to meet three potential wives for Ram.
The first family that we visit is just a few kilometres away from the Gurudwara. We drive through a congested residential colony and arrive at a shanty home – decrepit but clean. When we arrive, we find the whole family, along with a street dog, intently watching television. Despite our fervent protests, they get up from the small cot they were sitting on and offer it to us, making themselves comfortable on the floor.
I hadn’t expected grandeur of any kind, but the conditions inside the house surprise me. The entire house consists of two rooms – the one where we sit, the living/dining/TV room, and the other a small bedroom, attached to which is a squalid toilet. Wires hang loosely from the roof, and a few light bulbs sputter from the ceiling. The only decoration is a dusty portrait of a snowy-bearded Guru Nanak on the wall.
We are offered cups of sweet chai, served by a shy, pretty girl who I assume is the bride-to-be.
The father looks proudly at his daughter.
‘Cow’s milk,’ he says proudly, referring to the health of her complexion, patting her on the back so hard that she spills the buttermilk on the floor.
The father looks furious, and the daughter flies out of the room, her fair face beet-red with embarrassment. Seconds later her mother returns with a washcloth and mops up the mess.
Tej does the talking. He explains that his client, Ram, is worth millions of U.S. dollars, lives in a house with seven rooms, taps that spout hot water all day, and electricity that never gets cut. Ram, he gushes, owns three cars (I know for a fact that he owns only two) and he is a loving, caring son to his parents and will be equally loving and caring to his wife and future in-laws.
The father shakes his head approvingly, and with each passing second I can see his growing excitement.
‘What’s the issue?’ he asks politely, for obviously there has to be one for a man so rich to look for a poor bride in the Punjab.
Tej is matter-of-fact.
‘He has a daughter. She’s ten. But she lives with the mother, Ram’s ex-wife.’
‘Have you seen the divorce papers?’ asks the astute father.
‘I have them here with me,’ Tej says, pulling a few papers from his briefcase.
The father takes a quick look at them. The paper is upside down, and I realise that he can’t read English.
‘Can I see a photograph?’ asks the father.
For a second Tej hesitates, and he makes a show of shuffling papers around.
‘I’m not sure I have one,’ he says, sifting through the papers.
I am Facebook friends with Tej, and I know that Tej has about twenty photographs of Ram on his page. I am about to offer to show some pictures on my phone, but I stop, noticing the nervous look on Tej’s face.
After his infinitesimal silence, the father says in Punjabi. ‘A photo will have to be seen.’
‘My phone!’ says Tej nervously. ‘Of course, I have a picture on my phone.’ And with that, Tej taps at his phone, gushing to the father that the expensive iPhone was a gift from Ram, and then hands it over to the father.
It’s as if the sun has set over heaven. In a matter of seconds the father’s face, which until just a few seconds ago was aglow with expectation, is contorted into a look of fury.
I don’t understand most of the expletives, but I see that the cool-as-a-cucumber Tej is frightened. He crouches on the cot, while the father, over six feet tall, stands up, yelling at him.
Tej hops up from the cot, grabs his briefcase and, forgetting all about me, rushes out of the room. I follow him quickly lest he leave me behind, and we hop into his Mercedes, which has a gaggle of admirers floating around it. The screaming father follows us and as Tej drives away I hear a huge bang – someone, I presume the angry father, has thrown something at the car. Tej drives recklessly fast, knocking down two dumpsters in the process and running over some sort of animal, which I pray he hasn’t killed.
We find our way out of the crowded neighbourhood onto a large street, and a shaken Tej finally relaxes.
‘Does this happen often?’ I ask.
‘Sometimes,’ he says wearily.
‘Why did he go crazy?’
‘Because Ram is dark and also because he is South Indian,’ he replies.
Responding to my shocked silence, Tej says, ‘In these parts being dark is like being a leper. Also, South Indians are looked down upon because they are typically dark.’
‘Despite all of Ram’s money?’ I ask.
‘They’ll marry her off to a wife-beating drunkard. But that’s okay, as long as he is fair and Punjabi,’ he says.
Tej skips the next two meetings in Bathinda – he doesn’t want to stick around these parts, so we begin the three-hour drive to Ludhiana. I too am relieved to be leaving Bathinda. I keep looking over my shoulder, paranoid that a livid Punjabi father will emerge from the shadows to take down poor Tej.
We arrive in Ludhiana, where the local priest, savvier than the last one, has already shortlisted and emailed Tej biodata. We head straight to the homes of potential brides. At the prospect of a potential husband for their daughter, Indian parents are at their obsequious best and, despite the fact that we have informed them only two hours before our arrival, they are happy to welcome us.
On the drive over, Tej is moody and anxious. I suspect that it is because of the recent fractious encounter, but he reveals that something else is on his mind. Tej is worried that he may never find Ram a bride. This is Tej’s seventh trip to Punjab, bride-hunting for Ram. He has been inculcating priests for several years, and Ram has paid him over US$100,000 in fees. Tej has never had this much trouble with a client; he attributes the difficulty of finding a bride for Ram to the colour of his skin.
In my research of the matrimonial market in India I had seen how important it was for women to be fair, but here in Punjab, the mecca of fair skin, I realise how pervasive the obsession with fair skin is. In every single permutation and combination of India’s complicated class equation, Ram qualifies as high class. He belongs to the high-caste Brahmin community and he is rich and well educated. But in the eyes of the father we just encountered, and so many others like him, class rests in the colour of the skin, and he considers it a stain on his family’s honour to give his daughter in marriage to such a dark-skinned man. It is also ludicrous that South Indians are looked down upon by Punjabis because they are dark-skinned. As wealth, caste and class lines become increasingly blurred in India, fair skin is more important than ever before, and the beauty epidemic in India has become so pervasive that even men are falling victim to it.
A priest I met in a Gurudwara in Chandigarh with Tej told me that fair skin determined class in a time when nothing else did. Low-caste farmers have become millionaires in months because of booming land prices; caste doesn’t hold as much status as before, since high castes are poor and poor castes are rich, so because of the lack of any other metric, people are using skin colour to judge class.
I suggest that maybe we should look for a bride elsewhere for Ram, but Tej tells me dismally that Ram is set on a fair-skinned Punjabi bride. Nothing else is more important to him.
‘This,’ asserts Tej sadly, ‘is the only way.’
In Ludhiana, we cross a busy market place, pass through a few gargantuan structures – malls, which have become all the rage here in Punjab – and make our way to our destination. Our G.P.S. leads us to an apartment building on the outskirts of town. We park and cross through several dank, winding corridors till we finally find ourselves outside apartment 14B, block C, wing E.
The door is opened by an elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Singh, who are friendly and welcoming. Their flat is surprisingly charming – especially after the horror of the Bathinda encounter. They seem to be quite religious: there are pictures of Hindu gods and gurus everywhere.
Pleasantries are exchanged, tea and samosas are served, and then Tej begins his usual sales pitch. Mid-pitch, the doorbell rings and Mrs Singh leaps up to open the door. A chubby, fresh-faced, smiling girl comes into the apartment.
She greets us in perfect English, and her parents ask her to sit down with us.
Tej has done a quick expert survey, and from the glint in his eye I can see that he approves.
‘Tell them about yourself,’ urges Mrs Singh in Punjabi.
‘My good name is Sheena Singh. I am a Master’s in Education and English from Khalsa College for Women. I am twenty-three years old. My dream in life is to become an English teacher,’ she recites in a singsong monologue.
Tej seems sufficiently impressed.
‘Good to meet you, Sheena,’ he says, extending his hand, which she takes shyly with a smile. He seems to be in a glittering mood – so different from before that for a moment I wonder if he wants to marry Sheena himself.
After an hour of banter, Mrs Singh invites us to stay for dinner and soon Mr Singh is telling us all about his family.
Sheena is the third of three children. Her two older brothers, Manmeet and Gurmeet, are out of touch. They are addicted to drugs – apparently a common problem among the Punjabi youth – and have squandered much of the family property holdings to finance their addiction. Sheena is the Singhs’ only daughter, and because of the damage their sons have done, they have no money to pay for her wedding and are unable to find a husband for her.
‘Now you have! Ram is perfect for her,’ extols Tej. ‘He wants an educated wife, and Sheena can study further and pursue a career in the U.S.’
Seeing the stunned look on the Singhs’ faces, Tej continues with a smile. ‘Ram is very open-minded and modern. Now, there are only two problems,’ he continues.
All three Singh faces fall.
‘Well, three actually,’ he says. ‘First, he is divorced, which to be honest, nowadays, is not a problem. Second, he has an issue from his first wife. That is also not a problem, because he has plenty of money, and his daughter lives with his first wife. Third,’ continues Tej, a slight strain entering his voice, ‘Ram is from Tamil Nadu and he is dark.’
I wait to see the look of horror on the Singhs’ faces, but thankfully they still seem to be hanging on to Tej’s every word.
‘In America, dark is considered very beautiful. Their President is black. His wife, also black, is thought to be America’s most beautiful woman. In America, where Sheena will live, black people have a lot of respect.’
There is an uncomfortable silence, and Tej and I await their comments with bated breath.
‘Is that it?’ asks Mr Singh.
‘Yes,’ says Tej conclusively.
‘Can we see a picture?’
Tej passes his phone to Sheena. All three Singhs huddle over the screen, appraising Ram’s smiling face.
‘He is a little black,’ says Mrs Singh quietly.
I brace myself for disaster.
‘He is a little tanned in this picture. He was just back from visiting the beach, where there is a lot of sun,’ says Tej nervously.
‘If our daughter is okay, then we are okay,’ says Mr Singh with a gentle smile, looking expectantly at Sheena.
‘Is he a nice man?’ Sheena asks me, shyly but intently.
I feel as if a mountain of pressure has been placed on me. I am taking too long to reply and I feel a kick underneath the table.
‘Yes. Yes, he is,’ I say finally, because I do honestly believe that Ram is a nice guy.
Two hours later, at the stroke of midnight, Tej and I head straight to the only bar in Ludhiana. The Singhs have agreed to give their daughter in marriage to Ram on the condition that Sheena can study further in the U.S. and pursue her dream of becoming a teacher. Tej is keen to celebrate in whatever style Ludhiana has to offer.
An ecstatic Tej calls Ram. ‘Broooo, we found your woman!’ he says joyously. ‘She’s beautiful, fair as milk, a real beauty, and a very nice girl too.’
‘Don’t you think Ram should meet her before he agrees to marry her?’ I ask, a little bewildered by this turn of events.
‘Nope,’ says Tej. ‘I know this man inside out. He’s going to love her.’
‘Maybe he should meet her just once.’
‘I’m totally sure. What’s not to like? She’s fair, she’s sweet, she’ll give him fair-ish babies, she’ll look great on his arm after he sends her to finishing school. That’s all he really cares about.’
‘What about her? Will she be fine?’
‘A penthouse in D.C. versus a village in India? Which one would any woman prefer?’
I guess the answer to that question is pretty clear.
Driving back to Delhi from Punjab I remember the truck full of goats we had come across on our drive over. In many ways, this matrimonial process reminds me of those poor goats. These girls, like the goats, have no clue where they are being shipped off to – a butcher’s hell or a pastoral heaven. But then again, as Tej said, at least they are lucky to have a choice, thanks to the colour of their skin.
1. ‘Black’ in Hindi – a common expletive for a dark-skinned person