Arranged Marriages

Artwork by Amina

Get wrapped up in torrid pursuits
Lying with
A stranger
In tricky
Intimacy.

Give you bland life a kinky break
Get quite occasionally misunderstood or quite
Deliberately
Left in the corner of a drawer
Like a rusty screwdriver or a shoddy vegetable-peeler.

II
Tall, sweet, affable, graduate, unpretentious
Glamorous like Ash, homey, emotionally stable,
Linux user, four-wheel driving, specialized
In hospitality, nursing and TLC
In child-bearing age
Available
For arranged marriage
Ideal
For tall to medium, gold-collared, thoughtful,
considerate, workaholic
Elegant, stylish, Richard Gere-ish
Sloppy in kitchen or emotionally complex
Hi-tech wizard, ideally specialized
In art of fatherhood and
Romance management.

III
Well, strange family...
Father-in-law
Accomplished crook
Eldest daughter
Squint, dim, dark
Get the picture?
Wasn't expecting her
When they passed
Her to me
Like a greasy lantern.
The matchmaker had
Evidently stashed her away
And given me before the vows
Were made
A tantalizing glimpse of the younger sister
A beauty who,
Had flirted promisingly
From underneath a flimsy veil.

Nuzhat Mannan teaches English at Dhaka University.