What started as a quest to find a suitable groom for her daughter has led Prabha Panse to set up a marriage bureau for the differently abled Its alright if you are not tall,fair and slim. In fact,chances are that you use a crutch to walk or an aid to hear. You may be far from perfect for the world around you. And yet,if you believe you can find a life-partner whose definition of perfect is same as yours,Jeevan Sathi Marriage Bureau is the place you are seeking. For,this is no ordinary marriage bureau. What started as a quest to find a suitable groom for her daughter more than 20 years ago led Prabha Panse,teacher to children with hearing impairments,to establish a small set-up at her residence to help physically challenged persons find love. Since then,close to 500 such marriages have become a reality due to Panses unending efforts. Despite her old age,playing cupid for the less fortunate youngsters is not something that the 84-year-old finds tiring. Even though my daughter is normal,it took quite an effort to find a suitable groom for her. I was at that time the principal of the Lions Club School for the Deaf in Dadar. That is when it struck me that it would be much more difficult for differently abled people to find a suitable partner. That instant I knew what I had to do and within days of retirement,I started working towards this dream, says Panse who has been offering her services free since 1989,when the set-up was started. Panse operates twice a week from her residence-cum-office apartment in the heart of Shivaji Park. Her clients range from someone with a minor handicap such as two missing fingers to major disabilities such as blindness or loss of limbs. Imagine someone getting rejected repeatedly because their two fingers were lost in an accident. Due to the societal obsession with fair skin,even dark skinned people come to me believing that it is their handicap. I try to convince them that they are not really disabled. Apart from its clientele,Panses marriage bureau is different on other counts too. For instance,in the age of Internet,where even finding a potential spouse may require you to take a virtual trip of matrimonial websites,Panse likes to do things the traditional way. Her house is filled with stacks of marriage files categorised on the type of handicap. In them she neatly writes out detailed bio-datas along with the photograph of every individual who visits her with the hope of getting married. She then sifts through these to find possible matches. She insists on meeting the eligible bachelor or spinster. When I see the person,I can do a much better job of matching profiles. This is not a place where you will marry someone who has the same disability as yours. There are deaf people who have married someone without legs or someone suffering from polio. In a society where caste or religion is still a bar for marriages,these are hardly an issue for the disabled. One great thing about them is how progressive and flexible they and their parents are in these matters. I have wed off Brahmin girls to boys whose caste is not even known to the girls family. Many a times,they see each other for the first time at my place,take a liking for each other and decide to get married, she says. And this is what makes Panse the happiest. I cannot express my joy when these couples come back to me with their normal children. The happiness and pride on their faces when they show off their perfectly able son or daughter is priceless. This is something that has kept me going, she says. As if this was not enough,Panse has even borne the cost of three marriages for families who were not in a position to afford it. In a much inspiring way she concludes,I love what I do and I will continue doing this till the time I am alive.
