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Is this how to find a spouse? Have your say at the bottom of this article
A close friend of mine is stubbornly single. At the age of 37, she simply cannot seem to find the right man. She’s tried kissing any number of frogs but, as yet, her prince has not materialised. I now realise that we, her friends, have all subtly given up on helping her find a mate; we invite her out to overtly girlie evenings or, even worse, rely on her to make up the numbers at our children’s parties.
It’s as if we are so embarrassed that we are fully sprogged-up wives that we’d rather not press the point by indicating she is the odd one out. We’ve all been playing mating musical chairs for the past decade, but now the music has stopped, our friend is still standing in the middle of the room. I suspect things wouldn’t be this way if we’d all been Asian. And if Aneela Rahman had had anything to do with it.
Rahman, from Glasgow, just can’t help matchmaking. “I talk about arranging people’s weddings all the time,” she admits. “It’s a very Asian thing to do. I’m interested in people, and I’m not shy about asking people about their personal life.
“If I meet an unattached woman, I ask her why she hasn’t got a partner, does she want to, how old is she, what does she do, what’s her background. It’s not that I go out overtly to arrange a marriage, but I try to match up people with the same goals, values, expectations and educational backgrounds.”
How successful has she been? “Oh, there’s a lot of people in Glasgow whom I have match-made,” she smiles, tossing back a glossy mane of hair. She found one of her sisters a husband; but then Maqsood, her own husband, was set up for her by her mother. She and Maqsood have been married for 15 years and they have two children.
“It’s part of our culture. If you go to a wedding, all the mums will sit at the table having a little gossip, and one might say, ‘Who’s that girl over there? She’s very pretty.’ And then the other might say, ‘I know someone who is looking for someone like her’.”
It might sound too calculating for those of us weaned on the romantic ideal of love at first sight, but as Rahman, 39, sees it, we in the West have a pretty odd manner of selecting a life mate. “You wouldn’t buy a car or a house drunk, would you?” she asks. The implication is that we fall into bed with any old person, usually in a spirit of intoxication, and then spend the subsequent years repenting. In her mind, a preselected spouse, chosen with the help of friends and family, is a far better rock on which to base the foundations of adult coupledom. The famously low divorce rates in the Asian community might suggest she has a point.
Currently, she is working her formidable charms on a group of confirmed but unhappy singletons in a television series, Arrange Me a Marriage, which continues on BBC2 this Thursday. In this oriental version of Blind Date, Rahman plays the perfect Cilla Black, corralling friends and family to find the perfect mate for her guinea pigs.
Frankly, she is such a perfect exponent of the Asian immigrant dream that it is rather fitting Rahman now has a television show to add to her achievements. Her parents came over to Glasgow from Pakistan in the 1960s. Her father started as a bus driver, and then opened a newsagent. He now runs a buy-to-let property portfolio. Her mother was a traditional homemaker. “But when they came to this country their aim was to get their children educated,” says Rahman, who has three siblings.
She and all her siblings went to university. After working as an optician, and then teaching English abroad, she set up her own business, buying five Subway sandwich bar franchises in and around Glasgow. She’s not ruling out the possibility of owning more. “My husband and I are very businesslike,” she says crisply. “Once I became a mother, it suited me not working in an office all the time and worrying about leaving my children in childcare.” But from Subway to small screen is quite a leap in anyone’s book. How did she manage it? “Because the sandwich bars were going so well, I was sitting at home a bit,” explains Rahman. “My sister was working as a TV developer anyway, and she heard the BBC was looking for someone to present this type of show. She always said, ‘You should do something with communication’.” Rahman went for the interview and was offered first the pilot and then the series.
She also has a property portfolio, the details of which she will not divulge, save to say that she loves converting property “as cheaply as possible. I get a real buzz out of it . . . we are modern Asians, we have careers to juggle”.
This commitment to progress only makes her conservative approach to marriage all the more intriguing. In summary, Rahman’s doctrine goes thus: try to find someone with a similar background. Don’t go out of your comfort zone. Look for someone who has been educated in the same way. Ideals are encouraged, but silly wish lists are firmly dissuaded. Husbands whom Rahman will not find for you include millionaires, heads of companies or old Etonians. Compatibility and parity of background are key. Overt gold-digging is not.
“What I say is that you should try looking for someone similar, someone who has made the same journey,” she says. “They will appreciate you more, maybe understand you a bit more. I’m not saying that posh people should stick together, but if you have tried crossing social boundaries, and it’s not working, try something else.”
In her view, it’s about time the Asian way of matrimony had a decent shop window. “Asian marriages get a bad press all the time. Forced marriages are something that happens. But there are so many cases where arranged marriages are happy and content; that’s what we are trying to show.”
Sceptics might say the series is nothing more than a craven wish from the BBC to tick an ethnic minority box in prime time. Even if this is the case, Rahman doesn’t seem too bothered. “There should be more Asian people on television. People are learning a bit about the positive side of our culture.”
Generously, she indicates that with just a little forethought we could get there. “People in British culture set up relationships anyway. But without much thought. They think, hey, I’ve only got seven people for dinner, I need an eighth person; he’s single, let’s choose him. And then the woman he ends up sitting next to thinks, why am I sitting next to this man? We have nothing in common.
“All I’m saying is: think about who you are going to ask to dinner beforehand. That’s all.”
Although in Rahman’s smoothly sorted, highly orchestrated world, a rather irritating fly is lurking in an otherwise unsullied ointment. “There’s a shortage of good men, even in Asian culture,” she sighs.
By Rosie Millard Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article2935518.ece
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