Review of Marriage Bureau for Rich People, Author- Farahad Zama

A business that is so close to the heart
Review by Shubashree Desikan 22 Mar 2009 12:20:00 AM IST




WHAT does somebody with a wealth of common sense do if retirement palls?” is the question on the blurb that challenges the reader to pick up this book. It is a light-hearted story of Mr Ali, who, on retirement, decides to open a marriage bureau for want of a meaningful occupation. This business is very close to his heart, so he goes into it with all the gusto of a young person and the wisdom of experience. With the support and sensible guidance of Mrs Ali, the business takes off and soon he has to engage an assistant, an intelligent girl, Aruna, to handle his teeming clients and the office work. In this framework, the author weaves in little stories of a variety of people who approach the agency. Slowly we are introduced to the friendly neighbourhood; the people, with their varied convictions and faiths; the changing perceptions of younger generations and the hot and dusty landscape of the Andhra summer. Totally in tune with her boss’s enjoyment of the work, Aruna unwittingly falls in love with a client, whose relatives want for him, a bride who will bring a massive dowry, not less than a crore. Sadly, Aruna is no such billionaire! Ali’s relationship with his son is fraught with tension: while he himself wants no better than a well-settled future for him, the son is slowly shaping into a political leader who wishes to fight for the rights of the marginalised poor. The writer manages to extricate the story from an unending spiral and everything ends well at the close!The strongest aspect of the novel is the vividness of presentation. During the descriptions of Aruna and her sister’s excursion to the hill temple, one is sucked into the story and can feel the dusty heat and the relentless glare of the sun that so characterises the south-Indian summer. The scene describing the people’s protest against acquisition of their land is also a great, yet easy to assimilate, description of the conflict of development here. But the dialogues, which emulate spoken south Indian English, fail to convince, and the author could have worked more on them. Another question that rears its unwanted head is about the love story of Aruna and Ramanujam. The temptation of writing about the love story of a young woman who comes to work in a marriage bureau must have been irresistible. Why can’t something else happen to the woman, other than meeting her destined soulmate?For various reasons, Zama’s novel has been compared to Jane Austen and Alexander McCall Smith. One can even see traces of R K Narayan in his stories. While the writer does seem to have been influenced by these people, this book is quite different and needs to be seen in a totally different light. For instance, the title, The Marriage Bureau for Rich People, is reminiscent of Alexander Mc Call Smith’s No 1, Ladies Detective Agency. The cover design and the blurb text reinforce this feeling. Therefore, one may open the book with preformed ideas. Also, the story revolves around the themes of marriage and relationships, which were important motifs in Jane Austen’s stories. But the resemblance is slight, for while Austen’s novels delved deep into the minds of the characters, this book is more outward-looking, more concerned with describing social patterns than the inner landscape. However, the book engages readers by leading them into a colourful and varied description of life around Visakhapatnam. Any disappointment about the lack of similarity to an earlier, favourite writer may be attributed to the publicity and book design, which does tend to lead one on, is more like a comment on the lassitude within the publishing industry which seems to find it hard to carve out new paths to publicise and sell new products and tries instead to fit them into older, tried and tested moulds.

The Marriage Bureau of Rich People
By Farahad Zama
Publisher: Abacus, Little Brown Book Group,
Pages: 480
Price: $17
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