I have never understood why some of my fellow Memons take second and even third wives even though their first ones are still around. Over the years I've seen one Memon with three wives, he took a second wife when the first one couldn't give birth to males, with the second one he had a male child, but then he took a third one to look after him in his old age. And old he certainly is nowadays. Five years senior to me, he is now bed-ridden, having fallen down a few times and broken a few bones in the process.
Then there was that cinema owner (a neighbor of mine) who one day sent his wife and children to Murree for a couple of weeks, and before they returned he had taken a second wife (a close relative of a film actress). She was not a Memon, and her children didn't look like Memons either. But the man kept both wives and their children in his huge mansion until his death. I suppose that's what wealth does to men who acquire it without much effort.
There was a relative of mine who took a second wife because the first one couldn't conceive. He became the father of three, so at least he had some justification. But there are two cousins who are childless and have not used that reason to marry again, despite having endured years of taunts from their friends.
Some mullahs are also to be blamed. Years ago there used to be a woman writer who would advise other women to help their husbands get second and third wives, because (in her opinion), there were many unmarried women in society who might turn to prostitution to support themselves. And that is also what a mullah says every Friday to his audience, one of them being another relative of mine who is almost eighty. The only thing wrong with this kind of thinking is that there are many more males in Pakistan than females, and if some of them take many wives, there will be more males who will not be able to find women to marry, so there is great danger of such men to go to prostitutes to get sex.
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