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For Matrimonial PurposesBy Kavita Daswani“My grandmother was married off two days shy of the tenth birthday. My mother found a husband when she was twenty. I thus reckoned that if, as it appeared, every generation brought with it an increment of a decade for an acceptable age for marriage, I should have become a wife by thirty at the latest. But at thirty-three, I was nowhere close to being married. And it was this that brought much consternation to all… Since arriving in Bombay a week ago, I had on the receiving end relatives never thought to ask about my interesting and independent life in New York, what I did there, who my friends were, had I scored a ticket to “The Producers” when Mathew Broderick and Nathan Lane were still in it? Instead, it was incessant: ‘Why aren’t you married yet?”
As a girl in Bombay, Anju dreamed about what she would be when she grew up, just as every girl does. But every girl doesn’t have these considerations to take into account as she listens to her mothers same response no matter what career she mentions…”First get married, then do what you want.” So for many years she heeded her mother’s advise and watched her dainty, demure and fair-skinned cousins snapped up her prospects for a suitable husband. Then finally, after passing the ideal marrying age, she set her sights on studying in America. While first appalled by the idea, her father relents when his brother, who lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey, tells him about the local bounty of single Indian men. Her father gives in, and allows her to go study at NYU. She falls in love with New York City, and lands a plum job as a fashion publicist who adores her new life. Then it is time to return to Bombay, as she did each year, to continue the search for the perfect Indian husband. What’s next for our heroine. Will Anju ever find her dream man? Or is a husband chosen by her parents and sanctioned by her family, who simultaneously support her career, respects her intelligence, and shares her tastes, the stuff of pure fantasy? True to real life, FOR MATRIMONIAL PURPOSES does not have a simple storybook ending. But, thanks to the impressive talents of Kavita Daswani, readers will come away with a sense of wonder and hope in the power of love. Find this Penguin Putman novel at you local bookstore, or contact: G. P. Putnam’s Sons Reviewed by Karen Devine |
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TM
With
such a plight, an unconventional and not-so-young woman torn between two
cultures and searching for love was I, Anju. Kavita Daswani builds her
heroine the smart self-reliant and unhappy single girl – tell her
frustrating, heartbreaking, hilarious and ultimately romantic story.