The novelette “An Eligible Boy” by Ian McDonald was published for the first time in 2008.
Jasbir is looking for a wife but in India, in 2045 that’s not easy. The imbalance in the gender ratio caused by the fact that many parents wanted no daughters caused heavy consequences. Jasbir met a girl using a dating agency but to conquer her his friend and roommate Sujay advised him to get help from an artificial intelligence.
Ian McDonald wrote several stories set in India in the future. The most famous is the novel “River of Gods“, others were collected in the anthology “Cyberabad Days”. “An Eligible Boy” can be read independently from the others.
According to Ian McDonald, the India of the future will keep on having many contradictions and will remain a mix of modernity and tradition. It’s for this reason that Jasbir tries to conquer a girl using an updated version of the traditional methods. An artificial intelligence suggests what to say but in the end, the results won’t be the expected ones.
The tone of “An Eligible Boy” is light-hearted recalling “Cyrano de Bergerac” but also Bollywood, an explicit reference as Sujay programs avatars for a soap opera. However, this lightness hides a number of themes that can be very serious.
The India of the future pays the price for the choices made today by many couples who accept to have only sons. In thirty years there will be four men for every woman so finding a wife has become very difficult. To improve his appearance, Jasbir had cosmetic dental surgery but that’s still not enough to make a good impression on a girl.
The artificial intelligence that advises Jasbir what to say to the girl is somehow alive. This means that it has its own motivations and desires that don’t necessarily coincide with Jasbir’s. Humans use artificial intelligences as tools but their relationship is more complex and the protagonist realizes it at the end of the story.
In the end, “An Eligible Boy” is a really funny story that at the same time gives food for thought. If you have already read “River of Gods” or other stories by Ian McDonald set in India in the future you can enrich your knowledge of it, if you’re unfamiliar with that setting this can be a good introduction to it. In any case, I recommend you read it, also taking advantage of the fact that it’s available in its own ebook.
It’s also available within the anthology “Cyberabad Days.”
