Getting Married

What’s wrong with me? I am short but handsome; educated and earning well; my career path is well set and I know I am destined for greater things. I am just thirty years old; well thirty is the right age to be single, but for my parents, it is worrisome that I am yet single. It is widely accepted that the marriage of a boy should happen before he crosses thirty, say twenty-six or twenty-seven.

Even as I go about building my future, this one thing, marriage, has begun to haunt me. My brother, now twenty-five, is well set in his job and his marriage is also an issue. Not because of his fault; because I am single, and that is coming in the way of his marriage. It is a tradition that the elder one in the family gets married first, and if that is delayed, the entire chain of marriages gets broken.

My parents are those traditional types who would love to have their bahu at home, tending to their old age needs. For them, times have not changed though it apparently has for the rest of the world. My father is deeply involved in acquiring and studying profiles of suitable girls for me. He must have, to the best of my remembrance, scanned tens of proposals. It has become his prime time job. 

Where is the hitch? Do girls find me unsuitable for them? Do their parents think our family is not adequate for the girl to settle down in marriage? Are we, my parents, too demanding? Or is it that I am looking for too many qualities for a wife?

What began as a simple exercise in matchmaking has now become a major source of tension for me. Indian families having boys usually do not have to exert too much for a match. Families of girls look for a stable family, a boy with regular income flow and are actually prepared to pay a price for getting their girl married to such boys. Our family is small; my parents and my younger brother. There being no sister in my family is an added advantage to any girl wanting to marry me. The reason is simple. Wives enjoy a more than healthy enmity with the sisters-in-law. Of course, the mother- in- law problem is rampant, but the current generation of girls has somehow managed to find practical solutions to tackle this.

 In the good old family system, the bride always had to contend with a lower ranking in the boy’s family. This was so because the girl coming last stood last in the queue. And though brides do not like to be relegated to such a low rank, they could hardly do anything except grin and bear it all. I have seen households where even the maids and servants, all part of the family for ages, enjoy better ranking and respect than the bride.

As I told you, this new generation of girls has done their homework quite well. They have analyzed very well the position of brides in a joint family. By joint family, I also mean those families where only the parents of the boys live. So you see, joint families are not what you normally imagine them to be; large, with a huge number of families all under one roof; with the head of the family being the oldest member(male). The present does not afford the opportunity for such large conglomerations of individuals under one roof.

Coming back to girls of today, they have cleverly sorted out the pros and cons of a joint family as defined by today’s standards. The TV also provides them with great inputs on how scheming the mother -in- law can be, and how detrimental this can be to the aspirations and desires of the bride. Of course, most girls now are well educated and read papers and magazines carrying stories of the latest trends in married life. 

Financial management is again another integral part of marriage. When I say finance, I mean not only money but also wealth. Part of the wealth comes from the family acquisitions that are transferred to the sons as heritage. The transfer may happen immediately or at a later suitable date when the owner of the wealth expires. Girls today have a great understanding of matters relating to finance and wealth, and would logically like to be involved with the management of such affairs. In the olden days, the boy simply would pass on the salary to his father or mother, with the wife totally kept in exclusion.

Another important aspect of girls today is that they are very keen students of psychology and human behavior. The relation between father and son, between mother and son, between brothers and sisters, are all complicated and can get murky sometimes, hampering the aims and aspirations of brides. Especially, the mother-son relationship has several important dimensions that have to be understood. Unlike any relationship, this particular relationship between mother and son is deep, strong and extremely volatile in terms of the emotions involved in it. 

So how does a girl want to handle this sensitive relationship? History is proof to many a husband-wife relationship being completely undone and derailed by the mother-son equation. In the past, many women have tried to understand and cope up with the sensitivities of such relationships. But have either ended up a nervous wreck, surrender their entity or simply get out of the marriage. Not any more. Girls today are observant. They have seen happenings in their families and have watched their parents quite carefully and closely. They have been witness to their brothers being harried and harassed by their mothers on the one side and wives on the other. It is natural that they themselves would not like to be put under such a situation.

Being married is one thing for girls. Being happily married is more important and challenging. Finding ways to be happily married is what girls today are trying to do. If you think I am making out a case against women who are finding solutions for a happy marriage, you are mistaken. But this aspect has a very intimate and important connection with why I am unable to find a match for me.

As I have told you earlier, my parents have scanned hundreds of proposals for me without success. You would think that there must be something wrong with me, or my parents. Well, after a great deal of contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that there is a slight aberration, a deficiency, with me. This I confess with a great deal of hesitation.

Let me spell it out for you clearly; what I think went wrong with me. In the initial days, when I was utterly confident of my personality and abilities to attract girls, I had a few preconditions. The girl I desire should be good looking; (not unreasonable). She should possess the qualities of a good housewife (housewife defined as one who can take care of the family and home, and run it efficiently, the whole time); she should, therefore, have no ambition or desire to make a career of any sort. I did not want my wife to be working for money, as I am doing the job well. I felt there was no need for two incomes when you can do with one good source of income (you may call that contrarian thought in present times). It was quite important to me that my wife should love my parents more than me. In other words, one might be led to conclude that the marriage proposal was more tilted towards my parents than me. Of course, when I discussed this with my parents, they pooh-poohed the thought and castigated me for thinking about them.; but I could, with my insight, guess that they were extremely pleased with my line of thought. It is ironical that parents always want to make their children happy and the children always think of making their parents happy. It so happens that both sides end up being unhappy.

During my conversations with prospects, I used to air my thoughts quite freely. That was a great mistake, I now feel. The girls left with dark thoughts of a boy wanting to please his parents, wanting a housekeeper instead of a life partner, wanted someone who could serve the household rather than stand shoulder to shoulder with all. I was indeed blinded by my own vision of wanting to see my parents happy.

As I began talking to prospects, I got the feeling that the girls too were looking for something they desired. The thought never had crossed my mind that a girl could think of having her terms apart from what the boy has. The first few cases of rejection were something of a shocker for me. I felt shattered that a girl can refuse to marry me. My parents could sense my feelings and assured me that the girls would have anyway been rejected by them.

The procession of girls and the list of rejections grew. In some cases, I had the pleasure of rejecting prospects on some flimsy ground or the other. But in most cases, it was the girls who would reject my terms. It was then that it struck me that my stars were not right. On the suggestion of one of my well-wishers, and without the knowledge of my family, I consulted a palmist first, had my horoscope read by an astrologer, and even met some sadhus of repute.

The reports of all these fortune-tellers were disturbing, to say the least. The palmist could not find marriage lines in my hand, both hands. He was however nice enough to tell me that he had seen many such cases but, most of them got married. He, however, gave me hope by saying that I would have three children, all males. I wondered for a long time how one could be destined to have children without being destined for marriage, but I did not contradict his findings and paid up his fee gladly. I shuddered to think what could happen if I had three sons who would be called bastards!

The reader of horoscope, a famous one, told me something different. His reading was that my star configuration was such that matrimony would come only at a late age. What age he refused to divulge. Quite seriously, I asked him for ways to prepone the date, if that was possible. Astrologers always have solutions and he gave me one. He asked me to perform puja for the Elephant God, Vinayak, every Tuesday for six months; this, he promised would hasten my marriage to a near-future date. Believe me, I have now taken a fascination Ganesha and without fail, I make a twenty kilometer trip from my house to the most potent of the temples in the city every Tuesday. I have however lost count of how many times I have visited, but it is definitely more than the prescribed number of times. I religiously go to the temple after taking a bath, stand in the long queue, buy the puja thali and make a fervent appeal to God to bless me with a bride. I brave the crowds, all jostling with each other to make their own important appeals to God. I whisper my wish into the ears of the mouse God also, for that is the tradition at the temple. But elephant or mouse, I am still awaiting a positive response. Maybe there is a huge backlog of appeals with God.

As for the sadhus I met, and there were quite a number of them; one saintly godman directed me to perform a havan so that the dark clouds marring my matrimonial prospects could be dispelled. The havan cost me 5K, but believe me, I did it diligently. There was this other man of God who very plainly told me that my marriage would not happen as long as I lived in the house where I live; the reason being that it was inhabited by evil and malicious spirits. Now, I thought long and hard about this and even doubted if we could be the spirits that haunted the house, but ultimately decided that the theory of my home, my childhood home where I was born and have lived for all these thirty-odd years being haunted was rather too far fetched. Yet another sadhu advised me to wear a lucky charm whenever I met a prospective bride. The charm had to touch the skin near my heart and had to be worn only at the time of the meeting. It cost me another 5K but I bought it. 

As you would have astutely observed, much of my time now was being spent on finding out why I was not getting accepted by girls, though I did possess adequate qualifications. When I was not visiting a temple or an astrologer or a sadhu, I spent time in introspection; or brooding as you may like to say. And the more I thought about it, the worse I started to feel, till finally, a deep depression came over me.

During my depression days, I decided to talk it out with my close friends. Most of them laughed at my desperation to get into a marriage. All of them suggested I get out of this marriage syndrome and do something constructive. They observed that my work was suffering and my concentration and focus was becoming more and more like a laser beam, focused mostly on my marriage. My parents too worried about me and the more they worried the more my depression would grow.

In my depression, I analyzed a lot. Most of the girls I found wanted a career besides marriage, while I was looking for one who would be at home. Many of the girls wanted to live an independent life, in a nuclear family, where there would be no parents present. I wanted my parents to be with me and would not compromise on the issue. Most girls wanted to have children after five years or more of married life. I wanted children in the first year of marriage, as my parents loved grandchildren. Clearly, a match would be difficult with such a mismatch of expectations.

Till the time the great depression took possession of me, my parents had been harping on girls from my community. I will not say which community. I do not wish to precipitate a caste war. Within this small community, my parents were seeking a match from within a subgroup or sect. During my introspective sessions, I began feeling that the search was being too narrowed, and my parents were perhaps being unfair to me. I told them to widen the search to the entire community.

I never knew that a spiritual frenzy had gripped my community. We are given to eating flesh (the edible ones of course) and never could I imagine that this could come in the way of my marriage. But from my experience with matchmaking, a majority of prospects had subscribed to some spiritual sect or the other. And most spiritual sects debar their followers from wine and meat. I was asked by families of girls whether I could stop eating meat and whether I will subscribe to their spiritual faith. These appeared to me as requests as first, but then sounded more like a demand, a precondition for marriage. I would have none of it. I even went to the extent of suggesting that the girl could use different utensils for her kind of food habits; she would never be forced to touch or eat meat etc. But all these sops were roundly rejected.

I now had reached a point when the very thought of marriage would set me in a mad rage. To top it all, my brother fell in love with a girl he worked with. The girl was hurrying him for early marriage and poor brother could do nothing, as long as I remained unmarried. It struck me suddenly why I had not fallen in love with some girl? Or, why some girl had not fallen madly in love with me. I instantly recalled a brief affair I had had with a colleague of mine. She did, if I remember right, say something like marrying me. At that time I was too smitten by the caste bug and was averse to marrying out of my caste and community. 

Things have come to such a desperate pass, I thought of revisiting my colleague to check if her passions for me were still intact. There were chances she would have got married. But there was a chance, a slim one though, that she may yet be single. Desperately I hunted her contact number down and rang her up. She was pleasantly surprised by my call and we decided to talk over a cup of tea or coffee at CCD.

To my relief, she was not yet married. Without telling her about my bitter experiences with match-fixing, I quietly proposed to her. She was non-committal, but I could see the love for me in her eyes. This is it; after the entire mad chase for girls, here was one, waiting for me; such a fool I had been to forget the great love we had for each other. I took her silent demeanor as tacit acceptance. I would now inform my parents about my lost love, now found again. They would be happy, at least to see me happy.

One week after the fortunate meeting with my love, and before I could muster the courage to tell my parents, I received what appeared to be a wedding card. You guessed right. My only true love was getting married. I got it from her later that she was already engaged when we had met at CCD but could not express because she did not want to break my heart.

I think this was the tipping point for me. I began hating girls. I erased the word marriage from my dictionary. I told my parents that I choose to remain single. I told my brother to go ahead with his marriage before it was too late. I stopped talking to girls and women around me, except for my mother. Even my mother, I blamed her for giving birth to me. I applied for an opening in the US, got selected; but to my great misfortune, just as I was ready to leave the homeland for good, there came this letter regretting that the company was suddenly facing tough times and that they had put my appointment on hold for the time being. ‘Time being’ was forever.

Well, I have told you all about me trying to get married. Despite my avowed hatred for girls and the entire feminine clan, if you happen to have a girl in your mind for me (I have told you all about me), I still won’t mind if the girl is not from my community (for community details contact me personally). There is actually no bar on color, caste or creed. If your reference ends in matrimony I shall even give you a suitable monetary reward.