A piece of humor by
oohi ashu


My parents wanted me to get married. Every evening, as I returned home from the office and slumped down on the family couch with a cup of steaming Ilam chiya to watch some quality programs on MTV, my mother's constant "its time you got married, Ashu," 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 every time the topic of wedding came up. As a 20-something male working as a banker by day, and watching Hollywood 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 came to visit me only in my dreams: Manisha Koirala, Madhuri Dixit, Pamela Anderson 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 in Kathmandu.

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 absolute 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 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 Rooftop on Durbar Marg. Picking at the salad, she gushed about the Beatles, Merchant-Ivory movies and Dr. Pratyoush Onta's writings. Her idea of fun included listening to Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasiya play raag bhairavi on the flute, spending hours at Mandala Book Point browsing through Oxford University Press books and reading back issues of Himal South Asia magazine and The Kathmandu Post Review of Books. Talking to her, I felt I had to be extra-witty, extra-smart and extra-not-so-myself.

In the end, with my head bursting with knowledge or gyan-goon ka kura gained from her, I decided that she would be way too brainy for a Kamana- and Men's Health-toting loafer 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 will 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, puckered up her lips with a you-pathetic-loser tightness, and gave me a cool bye-bye -- leaving her pizza-pie on the table, uneaten.

Miss HINDI FILMI: Fashionably dressed and smelling like Mayalu saboon, she was waiting for me at Aroma Restaurant in Jamal. Since loud Hindi music was blaring from the speakers, we ended up chatting about Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol -- the ubiquitous Bollywood couple.

Soon, 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, despite shared giggles over vegetable pakauras, nothing kuch kuch happened between us.

Miss NGO ACTIVIST: Over sweet and sour chicken at Rice & Bowl in Tripureswor, she looked straight into my eyes, and explained what what she had studied at some pricey liberal arts college in western Massachusetts in the US of A. She spoke in complete, flowing sentences, asked me probing questions about my hobbies and ambitions, and seemed to know more about Nepal and the world than I ever hoped/cared to know.

Her job was in Lahan, where she was supervising indigent 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 someday.

And so, at the end, moved both by patriotism and sagging confidence, I thought that such a dynamic woman must be saved to run the country someday.

So, there I was: Four dates, and no suitable girl in my arms. Surely, there must be a few marriageable Nepali women with a great sense of humor and a zest for life, right?

But, sitting here in Kathmandu, I wonder, and I wonder.

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(Originally published in 1998, under the pen name of Bhupendra Rawat)