By Bhupendra Rawat
bhupenrawat@hotmail.com
My parents wanted me to get married. Every evening, as I returned home from office and slumped down on the family couch with a cup of steaming Ilam chiya, my mother's constant "its time you got married, Bhupu," only made me switch the channels all the more. OK, I agree that my parents are not orthodox morons, hell-bent on forcing me to marry someone they have chosen.
But I couldn't help feeling very annoyed everytime the topic of wedding came up. As a 20-something male working as a banker by day, and watching movies by night, I had yet to find my Miss Right in Kathmandu. Simply put, she seemed not to exist at all.
Meantime, the women of my dreams seemed to visit me only in my dreams: Manisha Koirala, Madhuri Dixit, Pamela Anderson Lee and other bevy of unattainably luscious babes. What's a under-pressure-to-get-married guy like me to do in Kathmandu?
The problem seemed to sort itself out when well-meaning relatives started arranging "dates" for me. My deal was to meet carefully pre-screened (i.e. of the right caste/class/height/weight/complexion . . . whatever) Nepali women -- one at a time, at some restaurant. She and I were supposed to talk, laugh, gaze into each other's eyes, and if sparks flew, I was to ask her out again and again, until she, I suppose in a moment of insanity, said yes.
If no sparks flew, well, there was nothing to get burned up about. This, I was assured, was a liberal Hindu's sort of halfway between a blind date and an engagement. But would I meet my soul-mate this way?
MISS BOOK REVIEW: I met her at Nanglo on Durbar Marg. Picking at the salad, she gushed about the Beatles, Merchant-Ivory movies and Pratyoush Onta's writings. Her idea of fun included listening to Hari Prasad Chaurasiya, spending hours at Mandala Book Point and reading back issues of Himal magazine and The Kathmandu Post Review of Books. Talking with her, I felt I had to be extra witty, extra smart and extra
not-so-myself. And so, in the end, with my head bursting with gyan-gun ka kura gained from her, I decided that she would be mismatched with a Yuba Manch- and Kamana-magazine reading lowbrow like me.
Miss AMERICA-OBSESSED: At Fire & Ice in Thamel, this youngest daughter of a corrupt bureaucrat candidly admitted that the only reason she was meeting me was to find out whether I would take her to the US. Why was America so important to her? Because her sisters were there with their computer programmer husbands. Besides, she added, "In America, there would be freedom to do whatever I want". When I explained that I was in Nepal for good, largely to take care of my parents, she got up, pouted her lips, and gave me a sweet bye-bye, leaving her pizza-pie on the table, half-uneaten.
Miss HINDI FILMI: Fashionably dressed and strikingly made up, she was waiting for me at Aroma Reastaurant in Jamal. Since the Hindi music was blaring from the speakers, we ended up chatting about Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol. Soon after, over mango lassi, we compared notes about the sorry state of Nepali cinema, and, she went on to express her obligatory Kathmandu's middle-classy concerns about Nepal's losing its cultural values "due to [what else but] westernization". Sadly, in the end, unlike in that super-hit ShahRukh-Kajol movie, kuch kuch did not happen between us.
Miss NGO ACTIVIST: Over sweet and sour chicken at Rice & Bowl in Tripureswor, she looked straight into my eyes, and explained what she had majored at some pricey liberal arts college in America. She was articulate, and seemed to know more about Nepal than I ever hoped/cared to. Her job was in Lahan, where she was supervising poor Tharu women on some gender-based income-generating project. She was obviously very smart, earnest, dedicated, and sounded like just the woman needed for Nepal ko Bikas. And so, in the end, moved both by patriotism and self-doubts, I thought such a dynamic woman must be saved to run the country someday.
So, there I was: Four dates, and no suitable girl in arms. Surely, there must be a few marrigeable Nepali women with a great sense of humor and a zest for life, right? But, sitting here in Kathmandu, I wonder, and I wonder.
