This is how my grandparents got married...

There is a very sweet and simple story behind how my maternal grandparents were married.

These of course, were the days when all Sindhis still lived in Sindh. My naani's elder uncle (tauji) had called my (then prospetive) 18-year old nanaji to meet him. It is important to note that the meeting was out in a deserted area next to their village temple (tikaana). Tauji asked him only one question, almost conversationally, "In what direction is the wind blowing today?". I, of course, don't know how my nanaji felt. He just bent down, picked up the lose sand in his hand, and let it whittle down slowly. Having observed the flow of the sand closely, he responded. Pleased by the display of a thinking mind, tauji agreed to the match.

There's much to learn from this simple incident, isn't there? When I heard it first, I was already married, and had already been through the detailed evaluation of family background, education qualification, salary slips, et al. But are any of these as determinant, or as useful in times of trouble as a working mind?

Of course there were also other unkind thoughts in my mind about our generation of "knowers" (as against "thinkers", or "figure outers", to stretch the language a bit), and how any of us at 18 would have reacted to a question like this.

How would you have?