The inner workings of a marriage bureau

The Wedding Wallah, like my previous books, is based around a marriage bureau in South India. The bureau is run by Mr Ali, a retired Muslim civil servant, in the verandah of his house. He is a pragmatic man, who can quote the Qur’an and philosophy, while not being above the odd subterfuge to arrange matches among the sons and daughters of his clients. For unlike a dating agency in the Western world, the people who come to Mr Ali are not the young people themselves, but their parents and families. Meanwhile, his wife keeps a watchful eye on him from behind the scenes and makes sure that everything is running ship-shape.

Since my first book, The Marriage Bureau For Rich People, was published, many have asked me whether the bureau is fact or a figment of my imagination. Some have assumed that it could not be true – that Hindus would not patronize a marriage bureau run by a Muslim and that the vision of tolerance and amity among the different communities that I depict in my books is a rose-tinted fiction seen through the spectacles of homesickness and nostalgia (I am an expat Indian, based in London for the last twenty years).