Chaudhry Saheb Ki Beti

By Mohammad Shehzad

This piece of writing is just fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

Chaudhry Saheb was a grade 23 bureaucrat. You must be thinking how one could be in grade 23
when there is no grade above 22. In fact, he got one extension after retirement from grade 22. He
had circulated an email (when he was in power) to all and sundry that he should be called and
written as grade 23 officer.

Chaudhry saheb was a nice man but like most of the nice men of his ilk he too had the same
problem – ego – which itself had layers of problems inside it like an onion. Do you recall Amjad
Islam Amjad’s legendary play Waris and the lead character Chaudhry Hashmat? Hashmat was a
tyrant and his ego was absolutely inflexible. He was not tyrant but he shared Chaudhry
Hashmat’s ego.

He was blessed by a beautiful, tall and slim girl. She was foreign qualified and employed by a
foreign organization that would offer her a salary ten times more than a grade 22 officer – if
fazle rabbi (bribes) is not included in the salary package. His only conundrum that was giving
him sleepless nights was he was not getting Mr Right for his daughter despite having a simple
criteria keeping taqwa [piousness] on the top. Many Goliaths failed to address his simplest
criteria: a) the boy must be six feet or above (without exception); b) foreign qualified and that
too not from universities from where Babar Awans or Aamir Liaquats had had a doctorate
degree; c) he can be two years younger to the girl but should never be more than two year older
than her; d) he must be never married, never engaged. He must be admired that he did not make
caste a prerequisite. It was a preference but not mandatory. The criteria were not strict. Friends,
relatives, acquaintances and well wishers pulled up their socks and connected him to dozens of
such boys. All of them rejected!

The simple criteria’s simplicity started showing its magic. Most of the boys were turned down
because they were not handsome. Those who were handsome were turned down because they did
not come from the affluent class. Those who were handsome and affluent had foreign degrees in
such subjects that in his ‘wisdom’ were least impressive e.g. bar at law from London! Those who
had foreign degrees in the areas of his interest (and had met other conditions) did not have
educated parents. One boy’s mother was just a matriculate which was a stigma to his daughter.
And the criteria of piousness was not that the boy must be praying five times a day or fasting
during Ramadan, but he should have never tasted the ‘colorful syrup of the West’ [mashroobe
maghrib]

Chadurhy saheb looked down on marriage bureaus. In his opinion all of them were just like
property dealers. [In fact, this notion was right to good extent]. But when the shadows of her
daughter’s youth started growing deep, he resorted to the professional matchmakers. He was
connected with the best options but he rejected all citing one reason or another. One promising
boy was turned down for not having a landlord’s background. As the girl’s age increased, the
‘simple’ criteria kept on becoming ‘simpler’. Now he wanted a boy who is preferably settled
abroad but at the same time he would be living within Punjab not beyond Lahore’s boundaries!
The matchmakers just gave up.

For many, Chaudhry saheb was not serious in his daughter’s marriage. Finding a suitable match
for her was his only pastime. He had excellent drafting skills but they were catching rust after
retirement. He would highlight matrimonial ads in the paper and write to advertisers long emails
in typical bureaucratic style that would either soar above recipients’ head or bore them to death.

His daughter was Ms Right for an unfortunate father of a US national boy. For one month, he
had been calling Chaudhry saheb daily. Each call was above 60-min duration and Chaudhry
saheb just recited verbatim the long emails that he had written to him. He will not come to the
point. He won’t share his daughter’s pictures; he won’t let the girl and boy talk to each other on
phone or skype. [By the way, I forgot to mention that the daughter would travel all over the
world alone on company’s expenses and she does not wear hijab. She is a modern girl.]

When the boy’s father insisted that the girl and his son should talk to each other, Chaudhry saheb
asked the father to get in touch with his son in the US! When Chaudhry saheb’s well wishers
advised him to let the boy and girl talk to each other, he, like a typical bureaucrat wrote to them:
‘We are not desperate. It is against our honor. The case may regretfully be considered closed!’

Time kept passing and Chaudry saheb’s daughter was 30. He had rejected more than 200 best
options. Proposals stopped knocking his doors. His well wishers advised him to consider such
boys who were best in all respects but they were divorced without children. He did not budge.
He received a serious blow when his daughter was rejected for the first time in life – soon after
her 30th birthday. She was never rejected before. It was he who was rejecting the boys. All his
well wishers left him one by one! I too lost contact.

Ten years later, I saw an ad in the paper. I was looking for a 10-kenal farmhouse. The ad was
from a property dealer. I got the address from the person who attended the phone (a decent lady).
I reached the office and was surprised to see Chaudhry saheb. He had become a property dealer.
He was looking after his son-in-law’s real estate office and telling me with pride about him. He
kept on talking incessantly like always and I could retain only this in my memory: the boy was
55, matric pass, divorced with two adult daughters from first marriage who live with him. And
according to Chaudhry saheb’s ‘pearls of wisdom’: ‘Mera damaad masha Allah nek aur sharif
barkhoordaar hay aur aisay rishtay kahan miltay hain aaj kal?

The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher based in Islamabad. Yamankalyan@gmail.com