I Was Not Born To Be A Wife
For someone who has been very tight-lipped about dating, marriages, and the like, I realise this is the fourth post of the year on this topic. Bear with me it’s like a dam has been opened.
So, I’m turning 28 on the 28th this year. And I am VERY excited about it. Does it sound a little odd? Now, I’m not one to celebrate my birthday as an accomplishment but I just like the idea of turning 28 on the 28th. I think it’s something worthy of a celebration and I think it has a nice ring to it. Except, I’m constantly reminded that this is not something to be excited about. Because I am single. Because I’m heading towards 30 and I’m still single. Because it brings people great pain for some reason, to see me by my more than happy self shrivelling away like a prune, single.
For people who don’t know me, this is how most conversations go:
Person: “So you’re working or studying?”
Me: “I’m working”
Person: “Oh you looked very young, so I thought you were studying.” Me: *awkward, tired laugh “Hahah I know, I’m working.” Person: “So how old are you?” Me: “27”
Person: “Got a boyfriend?”
Me: “Nope.” Person: *stares at me in horror. Proceeds to talk about whether I’m dating, if I want to get married, etc.
As for people who know me, they have been asking my parents what they are doing about my current "situation".
Like this is a role I have not fulfilled.
I’ve had enough of both.
I’m not going to bore you with how I was born to be many things – my career, my hobbies, my interests. I just want you to know that I do agree there are certain roles you are born to carry out. Like being a good daughter to parents who work very hard to provide you with a good life and opportunities they didn’t get. There are certain roles you grow into, like being a responsible big sister. Then there’s the role of wives and mothers, which I’m constantly made to feel like I was born to see through. Like a civic duty and a responsibility I have failed to execute.
For some reason, conversations with society stunts at my singlehood. Society just can’t bear the idea of me being unmarried and wants to fix this “problem” right now and has a million solutions. Now, I’m not going to deny the times (read: years) I have thought I was incomplete until I found my “better half” to share my life with. It was ingrained, I’m extroverted, and I like company. And no, don’t worry, this is not going to turn into a spiel on my enlightenment of how “I’m fine on my own” either. It’s just that I have realised many people are uncomfortable with the idea of a woman not being a wife. Because from society’s point of view, womanhood is something women attain. It’s not something they are born into. And society insinuates that the ultimate achievement of womanhood is pregnancy. Through a marriage no less. It tracks a woman’s progress in her journey of becoming a woman through her puberty, marriage, and pregnancy. And based on that gold standard, society feels I have failed to become a woman.
I mean, all society seems to do with its daughters is to raise them to be wives. For as long as I remember, society told me how to dress because it can land on the ears of someone who could be my husband or my in-laws, who could then reject me because of what they have heard. Society continues to tell me how I should carry myself in public because I could be seen by someone who could tell someone who could be my husband or a member of a family I marry into. Society tells me how I should know chores – not that I should know how to cook to manage a basic, primal need or to keep things clean for health and wellbeing but so that I could be a good wife. Society has been insisting I pick a marriage over a career in recent times.
And now that I’m 27 waiting to turn 28, it’s on society’s shoulders to get me married as soon as possible because clearly, my parents are not doing a good enough job. Society is rushing me because I’m on the last leg of my reproductive years and thinks it’s about time I start making some sacrifices to save my eggs time – my career, my expectations, my socioeconomic status. My overall wellbeing. Anything to make said marriage happen. Society tells families to flaunt themselves more so as to seem more attractive – the shiniest of the apples in the fruit section of a grocery store that you just can’t say no to. All by parading wealth and beauty – either by faking them or bending over back to achieve the impossible. Society treats women like a jar of pickle with a shelf life and so pressures them to be married by a certain age.
I don’t understand. The society I was born into has many goddesses – an attribute many cultures just as old lack. And each goddess is more powerful than the other. Sarasvathi for education. Lakshmi for wealth. Mariamman for rain and fertility. Durgai for war and warding off evil. It’s ironic to me that people would pray to Sarasvathi only to squabble over a girl’s education to deem her as a better or poorer candidate in the league of marriages. That it’s okay to worship Durgai or even Kaali and fear them. Only to instruct women to be as serene and soft as Lakshmi. That you can plead with Mariamman for a better quality of living. Only to tell a girl to negate hers because she’s still unmarried at the frail age of 27. It’s so awfully ironic to me that we present these goddesses with so many arms and so many symbols to represent how multi-faceted they are. I mean, have you seen the variety of weapons in Durgai and Kaali’s hands? It’s so ironic that it’s laughable to me that we preach how all these goddesses are incarnations of just one Devi, to represent how multidimensional women are. And then we trivialise our girls, their accomplishments in their lives, and their presence in the world simply because they are not someone’s wife. Where and how did this dissonance happen? How is it so important you become a wife that it's okay to sacrifice everything about yourself?
If you’re anything like me and you dare to speak up about these, you get a flippant “Why are you so anti-marriage?” or “You don’t understand now, everyone earns for a partner when they are old.” From a society that expects a thaali, metti, and kungumam on the forehead of women once they hit a certain age. A society that enforces absolutely nothing for a man to symbolically represent the fact that he is married. I am frustrated and deeply disappointed. I’m not disagreeing with the fact that I, personally, would probably earn for a partner someday too. I just mean I was born to be many things. And sure, if I so choose to, feel ready for it, and find the right person, “wife” can be one of those. But, it is damn well not all I was born to be.
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