Mishti Mashi and the Perfect Match!

Dr. Priyamita tells us about the search for a prospective groom, a perfect match for Taniya. Replete with sparkling wit and humour, she tells us about it. Find out more. An exclusive for Different Truths. 

Mishti Mashi (MM), literal translation Sweet Aunt, was worried as her only daughter, Taniya was refusing to get married. MM kept badgering her to tie the knot every day and of late, had also developed this uncanny ability of steering any conversation towards marriage. 

One day, Taniya forgot to send an attachment in the mail. MM had chided her, “What would you know of attachment? You need to get married to understand love and attachment.”  

MM had also put an ad in the matrimonial (newspaper) – “Suitable match required for Bengali, Hindu girl, JNU-educated journalist, 26, fair, slim…” 

Thankfully, after visiting Taniya’s hostel room one day (which she had not cleaned for three weeks), she had removed the word ‘homely’ from the ad. She met some prospective grooms thereafter.  MM only wanted Bengali guys though there was a special loophole for non-Bengalis who earned more than a package of 20 lakhs. 

Moreover, MM took it upon herself to write Taniya’s profile in the matrimonial websites, which explained why the afore-mentioned prospective grooms were shell-shocked when Taniya ordered a beer (according to the website she was a strict teetotaller) or cursed loudly (she was supposed to be ‘shy and docile’).  

Lately, even my male colleagues (bachelors) had started complaining that MM had befriended them in Facebook and, without even so much as a preamble, regularly attacked them with questions like ‘what is the exact time of your birth’ or ‘what is your annual family income’ or the deadliest question of them all ‘are you a bangaal or a ghoti?’ 

Taniya was not entrusted anymore to go out alone with these guys after she blew perfectly round smoke rings in the face of her last suitor when he had enquired about her culinary skills.

In her defense, some of these suitors were more bizarre than the COVID guidelines. Moreover, MM’s screening of these guys from the websites was hardly fool proof. The last boy that Taniya had met had claimed to be an English professor at a reputed university. After the first phone conversation with Taniya (It had gone something like this… “you are liking Hindi phillums? Let us go to the cinema hall and see a phillum tomorrow…”, “I am liking shopping too much and I buy only high-cost brands…”), she realised that he was just as much an English Prof as she was an astronaut! 

Anyway, this desultory groom-hunting went on and on and was becoming more rushed now with each passing year. 

MM called me desperately one morning.  “Hellooo, are you busy tomorrow?”

Now, this was a tricky question. I wanted to tell her that whether I was busy depended on the rest of the information that she was about to provide. If she was inviting me out for dinner, I wouldn’t be too busy but if I had to run errands for her, I would be super-busy.

“Come onnn… It’s been ages since we met. We hardly have any family get-togethers nowadays. You must be missing a lot of family time…” With her in the picture, I wouldn’t say I was ‘missing’ it. 

Anyway, by the time I could come up with a suitable excuse for not meeting her, she had convinced me to accompany her and Taniya for lunch where we would be meeting this guy, Navin and his mother. 

She hung up, saying, “I have only two words for you…Thank you.”

I also had two words for her, namely, ‘GET HELP’ but she hung up before I could tell her that. 

Navin and his mother came in a black Verna. I was a tad bit confused to see ‘Joy Maa Taaba’ written in Bangla on the rear windshield. Was Taaba some mysterious God/cult that we were unaware of? However, closer scrutiny revealed that it was meant to be Maa Taara and the dot in the Taara had faded out. After the mystery of the missing dot was solved, I concentrated on the prospective groom.  

Navin looked like an overgrown child, with his pudgy frame and round face, thick glasses, and well-oiled hair.  He sat down awkwardly, fiddling his thumbs.

MM whispered to me, “Won’t they make a lovely couple? I can already feel the underlying electricity between them…”

(Electricity?! Even Ghaziabad had more electricity, what with all the power-cuts.)

We ordered soup and sandwiches. I fervently hoped that MM wouldn’t ask the waiter to split one soup into three, like she always did. She pointed at the menu and asked the waiter in a fake accent, “Yeh kya hai? Man-chaha soup…”

“It’s Manchow soup,” I hissed in her ear, while Taniya snorted into her hanky.

We sat there awkwardly, while Navin slurped the soup loudly. Taniya glared at him. I knew MM had woken her up early today and without at least three cups of strong coffee, she would not have adequate emotional strength to deal with loud slurping noises.  

A couple with a baby was initially sitting at the table next to ours. Now, the baby was crawling on all fours all over the restaurant, while the mother was chasing him. The baby went to the wall and started licking it. Navin’s mother looked at him and said fondly, “My Navin also used to lick the walls like him when he was little…”

I looked at Taniya. She was sitting with a stony expression. Navin’s childhood preference for Nerolac instead of Cerelac didn’t seem to impress her at all.  

Not to be outdone, MM pitched in, “My Taniya was the sweetest. She was very shy as a kid…even now, she’s like that. Arrey baba, I see the college kids nowadays… ufff…all drinking and doing drugs…my Taniya is not like that at all…”

Yeah, we all know that you don’t pay her enough pocket money for her to have a drug problem. As far as drinks were concerned, I had seen six glasses of rum-n-coke going down her throat faster than a fat kid on a seesaw.

Navin’s mother steered the conversation suddenly, “Navin is very career-oriented, aren’t you, beta?”

Navin, “Yes, I believe in giving 110% in everything…”

Me, “Thank God, you are not a statistician…”

Taniya smirked while Navin frowned. Poor bloke didn’t get my joke.

Navin, “No, I mean, whatever I do, I always give my 100%”

Me, “Then you should never donate blood.”

Me and Taniya started giggling like schoolgirls.

MM whispered in my ear, “Enough with the wisecracks…”

MM started talking to Navin’s mother. “Taniya is so helpful y’know…. She wakes up early daily to help me in the kitchen with the chores…”

I nearly choked on my soup while Taniya patted my back loudly. You see, the sudden closure of my pharyngeal walls that attributed to the choking was brought about by a memory. I remembered the one time we had gone on a vacation to Darjeeling, and I had woken up Taniya at the crack of dawn to see the sunrise at Tiger Hills. My blood still turned cold at the memory. The moment I woke her up, she shook with rage and grabbed my T-shirt and hissed like a venomous rattlesnake, with bloodshot eyes, “Listen…and listen carefully…no sunrise in the world is beautiful enough to wake me up so early…do you get it?  DON’T EVER FORGET THAT.” That was the last I ever woke someone up. As far as chores were concerned, she has never tidied up her room even once. Her housekeeping style could best be described as, ‘there appears to have been some struggle.’ 

MM, “She is the ideal girl – obedient, soft-spoken, kind and generous….” Then, looking at me, she added, “Don’t you agree?”

(I’d agree with you but then we would both be wrong!)

MM continued with what seemed like a well-rehearsed, premeditated and somewhat irrelevant soliloquy. Excerpts of whatever I remember of this extremely one-sided conversation, is as follows:

“Ultimately, I believe… one should accept their own self; however, they are…”

(Unless one is a serial killer…then one should not accept, but try to change, I suppose…)

“Just look around…everyone has problems…but my Taniya never runs away from her problems…”

(Of course, she doesn’t run away from her problems, she sits on the sofa, watches television, fiddles with her phone and ignores them just like everyone else.)

“In our lives, it’s the right attitude that matters…. I know some people who can smile even in a crisis…”

(From my experience, he who smiles in a crisis has found someone to blame!) 

After her philosophy had drained out, she turned to Taniya with moist eyes. “My father also loved Taniya very much, I am sure he is looking down on you from Heaven right now.”

MM’s father (my grandfather) was a very condescending man and he looked down on us even when he was alive, so that was nothing to write home about.

“What did you say?” MM suddenly asked me.

Me, “Who? Me? Nothing…”

I must have rolled my eyes out loud! I kept shut after that as my mouth usually got me into trouble and if it wasn’t my mouth, it was my facial expressions.

MM to Taniya, “Okay beta, why don’t you two talk, we’ll take a stroll outside?” Saying this, she nudged my elbow. I got the hint and was about to get up when Taniya shoved the small of my back firmly and pushed me down. She obviously didn’t want to be left alone with this unknown creature.

The mothers left while I sat awkwardly between Taniya and Navin. Nobody spoke a word and the awkwardness was almost palpable.

I tried to cut through the eerie silence, “Say… Navin, this is hardly the perfect set-up for you to meet Taniya, right? What do you think would be the perfect date?”

He looked sky-wards and there were deep lines on his forehead as he concentrated like I had asked him some formula in trigonometry, “The perfect date would be 5th February…it’s neither too hot nor too cold…”

Me, “No, I mean, perfect date, as in…perfect place for you guys to meet alone and chit-chat…”

Taniya glared at me, and I quickly shut up. She was highly prone to mood swings, but it looked like the chains of one of these swings had just snapped.

Taniya asked Navin curtly, “So, have you met any other girl?”

Navin, “Yes, I had met one girl, but my mother did not like her…”

Taniya, “Why not?” 

Subtlety was not one of her finer qualities. I could see from his sweaty palms and shifty gaze that he didn’t want to say.

Taniya, “Well…?”

“Well…” he gulped. “She told me she had a boyfriend before and had almost got engaged to him…”

“So??” Me and Taniya chorused.

Navin stuttered, “Well… my m-mother didn’t think th-that she was all that good… I mean, a b-boyfriend and all…”

I didn’t really understand the reason for his dull wittedness, but I admired his total commitment to it.

Taniya, “Okay, look here, Navin. First of all, …”

Now, from years of experience, I knew that whenever Taniya started a conversation with “First of all…”, one should drop everything that one was doing and run for cover. That’s because these ominous words meant that she had done enough research and analysis (replete with pie charts/pivot tables) to prove her point and destroy her opponent. 

Navin, however, was unaware of these facts. He just sat there stupidly, basking in his stupidity or whatever, while Taniya lashed out at him savagely. All the thoughts in her head went for a quick stroll through her mouth…and that is rarely a good thing. Her diatribe abated after three minutes. By then, Navin looked like he had jumped on a bicycle only to discover the absence of its seat. 

Taniya stormed off to the lady’s room to cool off, while I stood there sheepishly, facing Navin.

Me, “Well, er…”

Navin, “Yes?”

Me, “Umm… I would like to stand here and talk to you… but I am not going to…” 

I also followed Taniya. 

We found MM in the washroom. “Well? How did it go? What do you feel?”

Is ‘ugh’ an emotion? Because I really felt that very strongly. I wanted to tell her that it was like the time she had convinced Taniya to buy organic vegetables for dinner, but she had ordered pizza instead! 

Taniya came out from the nearby loo. Her poker-face betrayed nothing.

Taniya, “Well, Navin didn’t like me all that much….” She shrugged nonchalantly.

MM looked thunderstruck, “But why not?”

Taniya, “They are looking for a super-rich girl and want a handsome dowry…. Yeah, I guess, that’s it…”

MM, “WHAT! Is he mad?”

Me, “My guess is he hasn’t been diagnosed as yet…” 

To cut a long story short, that was the last that we saw or heard of Navin. The fruitless search for Taniya’s groom continued but I made sure I was never dragged into it again.

Images Designed by Anumita Roy, Different Truths