Why are there smarter and intelligent single women and fewer eligible men around, these days? We all know that the ‘ideal age’ for getting hitched has certainly gone up. But the paucity of eligible men has become highly evident especially in cities where men seem to be enjoying their singledom and women seem to be panicking about their biological clocks ticking. City girls should be having the time of their lives too like their counterparts, I’d say.
In this era of independence, freedom of choice, eateries, and clubs to frequent, holidaying throughout the world should be one's agenda. Instead, there is pressure and stress of the marriage; urgency by parents' or societal ideas of an appropriate age to be ‘packed off’ to another house.
What exactly is getting married ‘on time’ is what I am questioning here. When there were no avenues and opportunities other than setting up a house and bearing children, the idea was fine. But today women are important contributors to society. In cities where I see this growing problem, I really must question the desperation and urgency to get hitched at any cost, and this predatory urge to look at anything eligible with the hungry eye of spotting ‘prey’!
I wondered whether it was one of those pressures that women put upon themselves or was it a parental pressure, but I discovered it was both. Women sometimes feel left out when all their friends are getting married and they panic that they are not even dating someone worthwhile.
Even some of the more self-assured girls who counsel themselves and preoccupy themselves with engaging pursuits, find parents nagging them, piling their own apprehensions to ‘get settled’. And then there are the ‘well meaning’ relatives who keep asking ‘concernedly’ about marriage adding to the pressure: “She’s such a wonderful girl, how come she’s not married yet?” “Has her boyfriend proposed yet?” “When is she be thinking of getting married?” Or obliquely calling a guy she’s dating her ‘fiancé’ to draw out an admission. These all are bad forms.
Leave the girl alone to breathe. Why do you want to make her feel as if she is a liability? Move with the times. Women have made it to the Moon, so why are we so eager for her to make it to the kitchen? Women must stick with their own kind. Mothers and aunts must encourage their families to give girls a breathing space and find her a man when she’s ready or when she comes across someone who would enhance her life, not pull her down.
My friend confides, “My parents even have issues with me travelling and exploring alone: “Get married first and then travel the world,” they insist.” Trust me, it could drive a girl to the edge. Enjoy your girl while she’s with you, you’ll never have this carefree piece of your child’s time once the wedding bells arrive.
She’s not some perishable food item that will ‘expire’ after a set date.
Is it so urgent and important to ‘get settled’ with so many works and creative opportunities available to a girl today? Must you really encourage her to ‘lower her standards and be less ambitious’ and give her the ‘leftover’, ‘unwanted’ material? Things actually work out better with less pressure, in reality. Sometimes when you least expect it, the magic moment happens and you’re daughter is hitched.
The one thing single girls and their parents should realise is that anxiety and stress about marriage definitely would not help a girl get hitched. Pessimism never helped solve a problem, did it? Objectivity, positivity, buoyancy are more effective.
Here, I’d like to introduce my own take on the situation. The elders in my house when I was growing up always said, “let go and let God do his own thing”. Why obsess over something when time and tide wait for none? “Property and marriage have their own fate-line and come when they’re meant to come,” my father always said. I urge all girls out there to be happy, comfortable, excited and proud with the present and enjoy the moment.
Rushing and pushing don’t change what’s going to happen. When someone meant for you come you will have an instinctive connect. Love has no explanation and cannot be clinically forced. Enjoy your parents, siblings, friends, work or whatever preoccupation you enjoy and freedom in your maternal home while you can. Marriage comes with its attendant responsibilities. We live in a sparkling age where I see spunky women getting married in their forties and fifties or only when they are ready. So just relax and chill out, you might just stumble onto something special, you never know.
The writer is a columnist, designer and brand consultant. Mail her at nishajamvwal@gmail. com
