The Cheats

Today’s Mumbai Mirror carries this magnificent headline:

Man’s 6th marriage to woman who had 11 husbands foiled by 5th wife.

The absence of clarifying commas makes that headline slightly misleading, but it’s a hell of a story either way. Basically, this dude named Mohammed Sayeed wants to divorce his fifth wife, Subina, who gets pissed off and allegedly tips off the cops to some business hera-pheri he is doing. He’s arrested, just as he’s planning marriage to a woman whose bail he organised. And what a woman!

Sayeed’s love interest is Kausar Begum alias Umme Kausar, 26, who had married 11 men from various parts of the country and abroad. Each time she claimed that it was her first marriage.

“She would then foist dowry charges against her husband him and fleece him [sic]. Police said marriage was just a medium for Kausar and her sister to cheat rich men.”

It’s a fascinating story. I wonder, did Sayeed know about Kausar’s past and fall in love and want to marry her regardless? What kind of feelings did she actually have for the men she married? What would she have done if she fell in love with one of them? What if this realisation struck her after she’d duped him? What if one of the men she duped loved her even after being duped? Questions, questions: there’s much scope for something novelistic to come out of this—though this particular novelist has other things on his plate for now. Such stories there are around us!

(Link via email from Krishna Warrier.)