What me, marry?

Dear oldly married/newly married/soon to be married women.

You’re not special.

The term ‘achievement’ is reserved for a degree. A medal. An honour.

Getting married doesn’t qualify as one.

When you get a promotion or a raise, you’ve done something meritorious.

Getting married is not.

Signing a paper is not.

Exchanging vows is not.

You’re just married.

Like how an ant is an ant.

Being married does not make you special or unique in any way whatsoever. Having a ring on your finger doesn’t give you super powers or instant wisdom. It greatly disturbs me that you feel that being married affords you the right to tell all single women to immediately get married themselves. You do realize that marriage is a choice and not an inevitability, yes? If you made the choice to be married, I made the choice NOT to be married. Or perhaps, you didn’t have a choice? And you were pressured into the decision, so you feel the need to share this fate with all those who have eluded it thus far?

In which case, let me feel bad for you, and not the other way around.

You tell me that if I don’t tie the knot soon, I will be the odd one out among my circle of happily married, bursting with babies friends.

And that once I hit my thirties, the only viable candidates for my inevitable nuptials will be divorcees or men in their 40s.

That security must be prioritized above happiness. Because we all need our weekly trips to the beauty parlour don’t we?

This issue of security in particular makes my blood boil.

Did your parents send you to the most expensive educational institutes to learn how to charm rich men into marriage? Or perhaps, while I was learning how to be independent and fend for myself, you were practicing the art of being a damsel in distress.

Your parents and grandparents will tell you to compromise and adjust, and plain ol’ just suck it up. Because apparently, there’s no fate worse than being alone.

Because they know best and should never be questioned, right? They must be right. It doesn’t matter that they drown their sorrows in bowls of ghee and secret stashes of alcohol.

Dear deluded married folk. The fear of being alone is not a reason to be with someone.

I would rather be the odd one out who’s unmarried and at peace with myself, than be one of the pack of unfulfilled, soul-dead, should I would I could I has-beens who looks down on women who choose the alternative.

And you judge divorcees? Seriously? Firstly, the fact that they got married at all is the reason for their current status!

Secondly, what right have you to judge a divorcee as a person less desirable than anyone else? Do you know what kind of bravery and conviction it takes to proceed with a divorce in India’s climate of ‘dead habit’ and irrelevant traditions? That you not only have to fight your own personal misgivings, but a whole bombardment of viciously assuming and interfering relatives who think it’s better to stay married and miserable than show the glass houses of society that you know better.

Because anything is better than being an unmarried girl in her late 20s.

No thanks.

I’ll take my chances with the highway of singlehood.

And if I happen to meet someone I want to share my life with along the way, I’ll CHOOSE to get married.      

       

I won’t get married because I’m scared to be alone.

I won’t get married because I want to have something in common with my circle of wedded friends.

And for heaven’s sake, I won’t get married for the sake of financial security.

                                                      

I’m on the eve of my 29^th birthday.

Here’s what I’ve done so far.

I’ve traveled a good part of the world on a ship.

I’ve been a member of three bands.

I topped a singing contest that won me a month-long trip to France.

I’ve sang at Someplace Else.

I’ve been for a holiday to London and paid every penny of the expenses.

I’ve watched The Lion King on Broadway.

I’ve done a jazz ballet routine on stage.

I’ve rescued and rehomed more stray cats and dogs than I remember.

I’ve cut off the full length of my hair and donated it to cancer patients.

I’ve played football at Wembley Stadium.

I’ve started playing the ukulele.

I’ve bought my mother a tablet.

I’ve baked apple pie from scratch, and it was mad delicious.

I was the recipient of the Nihil Ultra Award at St.Xavier’s College.

I am a loving and supportive daughter (for the most part).

And I’m a damn good friend.

I have lived.

All of this, I have achieved without being married.

Because, this isn’t a note for the married ladies. It’s one for the unmarried ones. Who are being pressured to take decisions they don’t truly want. Who have to hear that they’re lesser than their married counterparts. That their future will be bleak, unimaginably horrific and pointless.

Dear unmarried ladies.

You’re perfect. You don’t need to alter your status to discover that.