78.Marriage bells in the family- daughter
A
few episodes back I
had introduced my
daughter and son and how they
became reasonably good
professionals. Naturally in
our typical Mallu families, once you complete your
studies and get a reasonably good job, the next step is to get them
married. My daughter being the
elder one, our first desire was to
get her a suitable bridegroom. Those of
you who have read about her studies in
CREC for her B.Tech and
later partly in KREC and then I.I.T.
Bombay for her M.Tech must have realized
that she is very clear about what she
wants in life. Her
first choice , obviously was her career. Even though as parents we wanted
her to be married as soon as her studies were being completed, she was not willing unless she gets a job like
many other educated girls these days. As she had already lost almost a year in KREC
and then joined her
M.Tech in I.I.T.Bombay, we were getting worried as in our
families girls get married
before they are 22 or 23. When she was in the third semester of the M.Tech course, an advertisement for lecturers
in N.S.S.College of Engineering
appeared in the newspapers and we asked her to apply for the post. Our idea was to
bring her to a teaching job in Kerala so
that getting a suitable alliance
would be easy. She was
reluctant to take up a teaching job. However, as
we insisted, she applied for the
job and appeared for the
interview which was held in N.S.S. Headquarters at Changanassery. She did well in the interview and we heard that she has
been ranked second with the first rank
going to a boy who had already completed
his M.Tech from .I.I.T Kanpur. One
of my teachers was in
the interview board as expert and when
he saw me after the interview and asked
me why I am standing there I told him
that my daughter is a candidate. He confirmed that she has
done well. There was some delay in
the issuance of the appointment order. On enquiry, we found that
the first ranked person in
the list is known to
one of her uncles in near Vaikam. There
was a rumour that N.S.S.
management was collecting some donation from the selected candidates
before issuing the appointment order.
When her uncle enquired with the family of the boy ranked
first, they were ready to give something as donation before joining. Personally, I was against
any sort of donation for jobs and
was not ready to
give anything. If my daughter
happens to know that she will get a job only after giving some donation, we were certain that she
will not come from Bombay and take up the job. Moreover,
teaching was not her preferred job
and by this time, she had got placement in Tata Consultancy Services in the campus placement and was getting ready
to join TCS. Several enquiries from the NSS office was sent to
my wife’s father who was an office bearer of NSS Karayogam of our place asking what is her
plan to join, indirectly asking whether
we are willing to pay something before formally sending the appointment order.
When he asked me several times, finally we said she is not taking up this job and her grandfather
gave this in writing so that the next
person in the list could be
appointed. Uncle was very
particular in this as we
cannot totally ignore the N.S.S.
karayogam in our place as we have to go to them
for conducting the marriage, burial and other important events in our families. In case we were not ready
to give this in writing, it was
quite probable that they will not issue
the appointment order and the list
will be cancelled. Moreover, I was
receiving a phone call from a lecturer in NSSCE whose wife
was ranked 5th or 6th and was ready to pay anything
for appointment against even a leave
vacancy so that she will have a claim for a future appointment. This
gentleman was quiet once we gave in writing that we are not interested in
joining.
Our search for a bridegroom for our daughter was still on. Being in Malabar was another disadvantage
as many parents of
boys from Malabar were not
willing to get their boy married to a
girl from Travancore side, to be precise
for a girl from South of Thrissur. While we were in such a predicament, one night, my wife’s mother called me in the
night after 8 PM. She wanted
to know our willingness to
proceed on a proposal for our daughter’s
marriage to the
son of a distant cousin of
mine who was staying close to their house. This boy was a
mechanical engineer working in Saudi Arabia and had come on leave. They had settled in
Thiruvananthapuram as both the parents were employed in KSEB We said, if she
is happy with the boy, go ahead. Next day morning she
talked to our cousin and her husband and conveyed that they were very happy
with the proposal. They had two boys only, the elder one was doing his Masters
in Chest Medicine in KEM Bombay and this boy was the younger one. Before finalizing the
alliance, we wanted the boy and
the girl to see each other. As the boy was
not planning to go back
to Saudi, he had taken up a job
in Bombay and that gave us an opportunity
for the boy and girl to meet.
Our daughter was in the final semester doing her project.
I requested a friend of mine staying in
Hiranandani flats near I.I.T. Bombay to arrange for a meeting between the girl and
the boy. He gladly accepted and
arranged for a formal meeting in his
house with a sumptuous lunch on a
Sunday. We asked our daughter to go to my
friends house with her friend, one Sri Lankan girl
Thanamagal (Thana for short). We requested Thana
to make sure that our daughter will
like the boy. In the same day
evening when we called our daughter after 9 PM, she was reluctant to say Yes or No, but Thana assured us that she has liked the boy
and asked us to go ahead.
Things
moved fast afterwards. When we had
gone to our native place for the
Onam holidays, my wife and I went to
TVM to meet the parents and we decided
to have the engagement function within a
few weeks and the marriage after her completion of her M.Tech studies at
I.I.T.Bombay. Being the first grandchild ,
my wife’s father and mother was immensely happy to arrange
for the marriage of her first grand daughter at an
auditorium in Alapuzha belonging to the Bhima group. In fact, we
had only
paid the money required,
all arrangements including our local
rice, fresh coconut oil for cooking
etc were all arranged by them
gladly. After the wedding,
both of them went to Bombay, my
daughter to take up her job in TCS and
our son in law to continue his job in Bombay. They had hired a
flat in Kandivali, not very far
from the TCS Software development centre. As
briefly mentioned earlier, after
completing her three-year bond period in TCS, she was offered an H1B
visa job in
USA. As the formalities were getting delayed, she got a
job in Infosys Bangalore and our
son in law chose to undergo
training in SAP programming. When
the formalities of H1B were cleared, both of them left for Boston
in USA. They are still there in Boston with our son in law in Philips
Medical Systems and our daughter
in an insurance firm as data analyst.
They have two children , elder one, our only granddaughter and the younger one a
boy.
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