Proposal

Proposals are horrible things. They come in various forms and types. You get the proper someone-comes-and-talks-to-your parents type, the passing-remark-over-dinner type, the you-have-a-son-I-have-a-daughter-so-lets-get-them-married-off type, and a host of others.

My first experience of one of these, was ages ago. I was not home on this specific day, but at my aunt’s. If my memory serves me right, I was walking to the loo in a half-sleeping hungover state when I heard the phone ring.

"Uncle so-and-so would like it if you could have a chat with her daughter," said mother dearest. I honestly was confused for a while. She had the headlights of marriage shining brightly into my eyes, and I was the little innocent deer.

The idea was for your’s truly to keep in touch with the daughter for a while, see how things go, and if we click, to have the bells rung in a couple of years. This caused major panic in the Godaya mindset because of three things.

Thing number one: I was young. Like, really young. Thing number two: She was younger. Thing number three: Potential lived in New Zealand. This meant I was supposed to initiate a long distance relationship of sorts, and continue it to a point where we can be married off. Gah!'

This was about two or so years ago, and I'm not married to anyone still. Which would explain to you how it all went. Turns out she was as freaked out as I was, and we had a chat and we laughed about the whole scenario. We're still in touch, and neither of us are married, and have no plans to do so for a while, not even to each other.

But this incident has given me an insight into how the Sri Lankan diasporas community thinks. For some, they can live in the UK, they can study in the UK, they can work in UK, but when it comes to getting their children married off, the spouse has to be an import from Sri Lanka. Even if it's some drummer who is now practically English, they just wouldn't mind.

And the other lesson proposals have taught me, is the principal of going against it. For strong anti-establishment types like me, the mere thought of having your parents suggest, not choose, but suggest a partner is enough reason to get put off.

My mother can come up to me tomorrow, and ask me to marry a really good looking, extremely intelligent budding young photographer based in Mumbai, and I would still say no. No wait. Yes. I meant yes. I'll obviously say yes. But for anybody else, I'll still say no. The Mumbai thing however is an exception.