All’s well that ends well

Pakistanis and Indians love a good wedding, especially when it involves famous people who also happen to make a pretty couple.

Rational and forward-looking people on both sides of the border will be happy and relieved that after the initial fiasco and controversy Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza have managed to tie the knot. This, by all accounts, is a happy end to what some had feared would become a long, drawn-out matter. Was Shoaib already married and if not then what was Ayesha Siddiqui doing insisting that he was? Was he duped into marrying a girl who was not the one he said he had met over the internet? And if that was the case, could he be that gullible?

Then came charges that he had defrauded Ms Siddiqui, after which Indian police quizzed him and took his passport into their possession. All this happened until a few days before their marriage on April 12, and that left many people wondering what would eventually happen. While the Pakistani and Indian media focused on this – a bit too much some would say – behind the scenes a deal was more or less made. An announcement was made that Shoaib Malik had divorced Ayesha Siddiqui (one Indian newspaper also claimed that a hefty settlement had been agreed upon) and he was then free to marry Sania Mirza.

Now that the two are united in holy matrimony it would be good if people let them be. To rue her choice and lament about why she couldn’t have found a boy in India is as bad and jingoistic as saying that she is a ‘qaum ki bahu’. She is neither. Sania Mirza is simply Shoaib Malik’s wife, and he her husband. We wish them a long and happy married life.