When the Groom Failed to Count Beyond 9, This UP Bride Called off the Wedding

A bride from Gulariapur village in Mainpuri district of Uttar Pradesh called off her wedding when she found that the groom was unable to count beyond nine and could not answer some basic mathematical questions she asked. The bride, Khushboo Saxena, is resident of Gulariapur, and her marriage had been fixed with Omveer Singh from Auraiya district.

Khushboo’s family thought that Omveer was a good match for her because they were told that he is a graduate.

Picture for representation only. Source: Meghdut Gorai/Flickr

However, when the marriage proceedings were going on, one of her friends informed Khushboo that the groom was not able to recite the mantras properly. This was when she got suspicious and decided to test him.

First she asked him to count some coins, but Omveer failed to count beyond nine. When her parents tried to stop her, she told them she couldn’t get married to an illiterate person. Then she asked him to differentiate between 69 and 79 in Hindi, but he could not answer that too. Lastly, Khushboo asked him to dial her number on a smartphone. When he failed to do that as well, Khushboo decided to call off the wedding.

Omveer tried to convince her by saying that he could not answer the questions because there was too much noise and he got distracted. A panchayat of local leaders also gathered there and tried to change her decision. But Khushboo remained unaffected by all their pleas. Her family alleged that Omveer is ‘illiterate’.

All the gifts and jewellery exchanged between the families during pre-wedding rituals were returned. According to relatives present at the wedding, Khushboo has studied till Class 8 and wants to become a teacher.

The villagers are proud of her. Sri Krishna Babu Saxena, her father, apologized for having fixed her marriage like this.

“Those acting as intermediary allowed us to see the boy from a distance but we were not allowed to talk to him. Thus we could not make an assessment about the boy and shortcomings in his mental abilities,” he told Hindustan Times.

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