Girl, Interrupted

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Yes, I sort of liked that movie. But I am not going to talk about the movie here. However, you are free to draw parallels between the movie and the below post, as you please. You will see the connection (well, almost)

So here I am, all alone, solitary, single (well, not exactly, I am committed but not quite the official news). Now come the good parts about it. You are free to do what you like. You are free to while away your time. You are free to look silly, do silly, talk silly. You are free to lock yourself up and daydream and curse and get envious about everything and everyone. You can cry foul when things don't go your way - you know like, how I am a single girl, independent but still the society is callous to me, sort of thing)

Good parts end right there though.

In come the talking aunts, girlfriends, neighbors, acquaintances, storekeepers, janitors, gym trainers and so on and so forth (without any gender bias, please feel free to count men also). You get the drift. And they all freely talk about the single most hotly debated topic in the Indian milieu - My marriage.

I mean forget the slumping economy, the surging food prices, communal violence and disturbing scale of scandals in the country. Leave all that aside. Let's focus on the most important crisis - my marriage. 

Of course, they are all just concerned about me. #sarcasm

A typical conversation even with a close friend starts with a "How are you? Long time" and jumps abruptly to "Marriage ka kya hua?". It feels like a Himesh Reshammiya song ringing in your ears all the time. "Oooooooo....marriage...oooooo". (Yes, I know you know. Just wanted to sound dramatic)

Of course, my close friend is concerned. Lets say hypothetically I do marry, ok. Then what? Will it be "Babies ka kya hua?". This is like a never ending sequel. Remember that movie Lethal Weapon? I could never keep a count of the sequels of that movie and I just gave up one day. Same thing I will do here - give up and pay no attention to any sentences with keyword "marriage". Blanket rule.

Even if I go to grocery store, the guy who checks the bill on my way out looks at me weirdly. I secretly think even he is wondering about my marriage. The other day, the bank guy asks me the same. Asks me if I have a joint account with my husband. No, I do not have a husband FYI. But I can get me a fictional husband, if you like. Anyway, I don't believe in this joint account business (yeah, I am sort of like that. A girl with a strong set of beliefs. Ok, actually, it was because of my dad. He kept saying right from when I was 4 years old - never keep a joint account, b****** will take all your money and run off. Classic. He just drilled that thought into me, didn't even wait till my puberty. So the other day as I watched Satyamev Jayate episode on domestic violence, mom goes wide-eyed and tells - "See, dad was right". Mom and dad don't have a joint account btw. Nice trusting couple there.)

I have one doubt though. People are visibly upset when they know I am not married, and happen to know my age (which btw, I will not tell you because then you will ask me about marriage). Why are they upset? Shouldn't my parents or I be the one who should be upset?

Frankly if you ask me, it is easier to file taxes being single. I don't even know what's with that dependent healthcare and joint taxes bullshit. And I am not looking forward to figuring that out. As if I have less paperwork to do.

And after all this, I go home one day and I see mom I immediately blurt out "marriage". She honestly thought I said "drainage". (Mom has a hearing problem. Too many Sun TV serials have taken a toll on her. All that yelling and drama in those serials I tell you).

Although it would be weird if mom and I wanted to play a game like that - Chalo, lets play "marriage marriage" today.  Only barbie dolls in a dulhan's dress would be missing (btw do they make that? That will make an interesting gift to someone I know).

Yet another day, I was in my "Why God, why me only?" depression mode because of some unexpected happenings. At tough times like that, I open youtube.com and search for "feel good movies". (Btw, the search results for that phrase suck. And I always see two ads, no matter what the keyword search - Hangouts on YouTube and Dhanush is back with his new single. How are they relevant to my search I don't know. This is heights only :-/). Frustrated, I opened the hindi movie, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun. That movie has been my friend in the harshest of times. Only later, I realized that movie is all about marriage, baby cermonies and funeral. Irony. More depressed I got.

Thankfully, I found respite in an amusing climax scene in the movie Life in a Metro -
Konkana Sen runs to Irrfan Khan's marriage to confess that she is in love with him but the man interrupts and says "Lekin petticoat, blouse sab uske naap ka sil gaya hain. Itna late kyun bol rahi ho?” (But the wedding dress has been stitched to the bride's measurements. Why are you confessing so late?).

Even the latest library book I checked out, had an entire section dedicated to relationship and baby advice. I picked it up thinking it was a business book (They sold it as a book that applies business theories to life.  Also it had 5 star reviews on Amazon. Got pawned there. Honestly, who wouldn't be tempted to read a book whose title reads - How will you measure your life? Ok maybe not you.)

But seriously, a single Indian girl can take only so much. Enough is enough.

*Insert an imaginary picture of me standing in temple yelling at God angrily about the injustice*

Someone asked me this week about pros and cons of relocating to India after living in the US. Remind me to write this rant in my reply to that enquiry.