The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama

Reading Level: Adult Fiction
Submitted by Gerti

I started to read this book because I had heard it was sort of Indian "Pride and Prejudice," which is a book by one of my favorite authors.  And I can see how such a comparison can be drawn-as Aruna, the clerk at the eponymous Marriage bureau, is poor, but of noble (Brahmin) birth, and she falls in love with a rich Brahmin boy, but the two books only intersect in their focus occasionally, and are not that similar.

In this book, the focus is really on Mr. Hyder Ali, a retired civil servant who desires not to annoy his wife during his free time, so he starts a match-making business in South India.  He is a Muslim, but in the new India portrayed in this novel, that is of less interest than it would have been a half century ago.  He has clients who are Muslim, Christian, and Hindus, and in one of the final scenes of the book, one of his neighbors comments exactly on the change that country has undergone, where Muslims and Christians can attend a wedding of a Brahmin couple and nothing seems amiss.  It is an amazing transformation!

The novel lays out the conflict between old India and new, where old India is represented by the parents who seek to match their children with others of their caste.  But it also shows how the younger generation has changed: various clients are divorced and seek a match, and others do not care about the caste of their future spouses.  What seems to be the top priority in the matches Ali makes is money, and perhaps in that, the novel pairs up well with Jane Austen's British classic.  The novel, however, is larger in scope, spending more time dealing with the issues between Indian citizens and their government, than Austen even did.

The charm of this novel comes from the dialogue, as the irrepressible Mr. ali interacts so well with his equally likeable spouse, his many clients and neighbors.  Like Austen, it describes a specific place in time, as Mr. Ali carries on a normal life rarely seen by us in the West, going to ethnic weddings or buying mangos from street vendors.  And although this book is modern, it still has the Austenian virtue of taking the reader to another world, this one many thousand miles rather than centuries away.  And it is a fascinating world, as the final "essays" which describe the cast system, the scenery, religions and languages in depth clearly show.  I only wish those chapters had come earlier, as I didn't even realize that the word for "father" or "mother" was different in Urdu and Teluga, the 2 languages of the main characters here.

In short, I was thoroughly charmed by the characters, especially Mr. Ali and his wife.  However, I think for an American audience, reading Mrs. Ali's essays (written as she is trying to perfect her English) at the end of the book would be a better introduction to the world the author shows so beautifully.  The book is like a good first date-you wish it would go on forever!