Critically Emma

I woke up the first morning of this month to find my grandmother talking animatedly on the telephone. A date had finally been fixed for Bunty chacha’s eldest daughter, Twinkle, to be married and Beeji, my grandmother, who had played the match maker was obviously delighted. I, however, found this early morning dose of high pitched laughter and the rapid Punjabi, a 'lil nerve wrecking for my taste. Grumbling my way to the bathroom and ignoring questions about lehenga cholis and ‘matching’ jewellery hurled at me switched with the usual ‘good morning’, I couldn’t help feel sorry for Twinkle who had fallen victim to Beeji’s weird hobby, match making.

I darkly decided that the older members in families, often in the age group 50-so on, love playing Cupid and take it as their sole responsibilities to get the younger generation ‘nicely’ married. The weekly bhajan/keertan samarohs and the daily dose of fresh evening air, I discovered are actually undercover marriage bureaus where women like Beeji daily assemble and decide who to hitch with whom.

But I was soon forced to reconsider my opinion and wondered if it really is just a grandmotherly venture to be incessantly involved in fruitless match making meditations? Well, I soon discovered it was not.

For a girl who contemplates the next prospective ‘serious’ relationships of her best friends, I shamefacedly confess to be a minim replica of my grand mum. Further, every woman I know, and I know a lot many, confessed that, she has, even if it was for some fleeting seconds or on a very minor scale, played ‘Emma’ or more recently ‘Aisha’ sometime in her life.

All these facts got me even more interested on the subject and I wondered what is it about match making that excites and enthralls us, the women, so much? Well, I have heard that the world gets boring as we grow up and we tend to find comfort in the securities of the pleasant memories of our childhood and that the fairer sex being the one, more affected by fairy tales and the stories of the prince charming rescuing ‘the maiden in distress’ than the brawny race, thus tends to bring in elements of the same in her own life. Either too old to wait for her own prince charming now or too unsure to be able to think for herself, a woman willingly plays the benevolent fairy godmother for some others like her.

Moreover, if assistance be taken from Georgette Heyer, the creator of Regency England genre of romance novels, the ton (read the elite) always had women certainly on the wrong side of forty, often dressed in an amazingly youthful fashion and complete with a lively countenance painted in a lavish style, playing compassionate chaperons to their charge at Almack’s—a social club of young unmarried men and women. Way beyond the permissible age to be the eligible members of these clubs, the older women I sadly comprehend, contented themselves with the chaperoning.

But on a more serious note, it is needless to say that even the hardest of people like cute love stories and happy endings. And the women, the genteel beings, having a weakness for anything which comes within, even a millimeter of being cute or ‘aww-inspiring’, do not think twice before ‘helping’ in matters of such importance. But matchmaking or no matchmaking, love stories cannot cease to exist and if the interference of a fairy godmother saves the day in the end? Certainly, All’s Well That Ends Well.