The Matchmaker's Match
"Aunty Reshma is Bradford's most successful rishta aunty—until she meets Pervez, a widower who challenges everything she thinks she knows about love. At sixty, she discovers it's never too late."
The Matchmaker's Match
"You want me to find you a wife?"
Aunty Reshma stared at the man across her kitchen table. She'd been matchmaking for thirty years, had arranged over four hundred successful marriages, and had never been more confused.
Pervez Malik was seventy, recently widowed, and entirely too handsome for his age.
"I want to enjoy my remaining years with a companion," he said simply. "My children think I'm crazy. But life is short, and I'm tired of being alone."
"I... don't usually match people our age."
"Then consider me your first senior client." He smiled. "I'll be very cooperative."
Finding matches for Pervez proved frustrating.
Every woman she introduced him to was lovely, accomplished, interested—and he turned them all down.
"She was too young," he explained.
"She's sixty-two!"
"Young-minded. Looking for someone to take care of her. I want a partner, not a dependent."
"And Raheela?"
"Too similar to my late wife. I'd spend our marriage comparing."
"Pervez Sahib." Reshma rubbed her temples. "What exactly are you looking for?"
His eyes met hers. "I think I already found her. She just hasn't realized it yet."
The realization hit Reshma like a truck.
"Me? You want me?"
"I've been coming to your house for two months. Not because I can't find a wife myself." He leaned forward. "Because you're the most remarkable woman I've ever met."
"I'm a fat old rishta aunty from Bradford!"
"You're a brilliant businesswoman who's brought joy to hundreds of families. You're kind, funny, beautiful—"
"Stop." She held up her hand. "This is ridiculous. I help other people find love. I don't—I'm too old to—"
"You're never too old." He stood, moving closer. "I loved my wife for forty years. After she died, I thought I was done. Then I met you, and I realized love doesn't have an age limit."
"Pervez..."
"One chance." He took her hands. "Let me court you properly. Izzat ke saath. If you feel nothing, I'll disappear. But I think you feel something too."
She did feel something. That was the terrifying part.
Pervez courted her like they were twenty—dinners, flowers, long conversations. He met her children, won over her grandchildren, integrated into her life with patience and grace.
"People will talk," Reshma said one evening. "The rishta aunty, getting a rishta herself?"
"Let them." He kissed her hand. "You deserve happiness too."
"I'm sixty-three. I have high blood pressure and bad knees."
"I'm seventy with a heart condition. We'll keep each other alive." He smiled. "Marry me, Reshma. Let me spend whatever time we have loving you."
Their first night as husband and wife was tender, careful—bodies that had known decades learning each other anew.
"Is this okay?" Pervez asked, hands gentle on her curves.
"More than okay." Reshma pulled him closer. "I forgot this could feel this way."
"Neither of us is forgetting anything tonight."
He loved her with patience and attention, finding pleasures she'd thought were long past. When she came—for the first time in twenty years—she cried.
"Good tears?" he asked softly.
"Bohot good tears."
The Bradford Pakistani community was scandalized for approximately two weeks. Then they saw how happy the couple was and started requesting Aunty Reshma's services again.
"She must know what she's doing," they reasoned. "Look at the match she made for herself."
Best testimonial in her thirty-year career.