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It was a perfect Sunday morning. Well, at least for me. What can be a better start to such a morning for a single woman like me than a lazy start? Nothing, I guess. You know you are a singleton when you can get up at whatever time you like on a holiday, which gives you the utmost power to make anytime the morning time; when you can eat whatever you like, which means you can make the noodle forms of food such as maggi and cup noodles your staple diet; and when it hardly matters to you whether your home sweet home is clean or not, or, if you are a cleanliness freak, cleaning it at whatever time you wish, whether it’s morning, noon, evening, night or late night or even early morning. That’s the beauty of single-hood. You are your own boss, master or God whatever you like to call yourself.
Yes, it was such a beautiful Sunday morning and I was still in bed when I looked at the clock which was strongly signaling, “Morning jerk, get up, it’s half past nine”. Yet I was reluctant to leave my bed thinking that I could easily make it to 11. But then I remembered suddenly that I had got chores to do, which, if I neglect could make my life hell for the next six days of the week. Agreed, no matter how disorganized or undisciplined I am, I can’t live in an unclean home. Being a girl, I have not yet mastered the art of being a complete dork. And so, I had to get up making my sweet Sunday a little bitter.
So, to make it groovy again I started dusting in the tunes of Kenny G listening to his “Morning”. The day was looking nice again when at about 12:30 my phone started ringing.
“Hello”.
“Hi sweet”, came the reply from the other end.
And by the time I could realize that the call was over, my clock indicated again, “Jerk, it’s 2:30”.
He was a close relative of mine. To be true, in these two hours of my life, I was lectured, hammered, crucified brutally for my uncanny inclination towards single-hood. Ehhhhhhh? Okay, that was a little exaggeration. Well, to be really true this time, these two hours were the first two hours of my life when someone from my family tried to convince me desperately to leave my singleton status behind and talked to me about the advantages of a married life (now what’s that?). It’s not like that my parents never questioned me for staying single. After all, I have passed my mid twenties and now I officially belong to the late twenties club. Well, they definitely talk to me about it, but those talks last for only a few minutes. They know it’s useless to lecture me. So, they just restrict themselves in letting me to know that they are worried. It’s something like as if they try to say, “Get married miss smarty pants ASAP and leave us of all the trouble of thinking about it and do whatever you like to do, as crazy as that can be, after your marriage”.
Anyway, my talk with the well wisher was over with a reply from my side saying, “I have left the matter on time. Let’s see where it’s going to take me”. I don’t know whether I disappointed him or not, but I was certainly relieved to think that the call was over. But then, those two hours of interrogation made me to think. Now, that’s trouble.
I was thinking, “Is there really something wrong with me?” I mean, the problem is not that I am not worried. The actual problem is that I am not at all worried. Why is that so? Especially, at a time when most of my girl friends are getting married one by one or at least planning for it, why am I so not worried about my future? As my thinking bulb started blinking, many answers arose from the grave of my black hole-ic mind. Some of them were usual answers common to most people suffering from the singleton-ic syndrome. And out of all that came into my mind, I found two very important reasons for the state of my uncompromising position.
1. Fear of Disaster: It’s a common reason. You are single because you are afraid of the uncertainties that exist surrounding this institution called marriage. However, I am not only afraid of the uncertainties that come along with a person with whom you have to share your life, I am also afraid of myself. It’s just that I am so capable of causing havoc out of nothing. I am prone to causing disaster so much that it will require someone with a degree of Disaster Management in his belt to cope up with me, if there really is someone so daring. Nonetheless, even if there exists such a daring soul, it’s my responsibility not to take undue advantage of his bravery or whatever only for the sake of an unavoidable duty.
2. Fear of the future: In fact this is the most important reason. We all know what marriages are all about. It’s certainly not about going for picnic for the rest of your life. It’s about responsibilities. And it’s about what can be described in evolutionary terms as producing your offspring to carry forward your gene pool. Okay, that sounds very raw. In reality, neither do I like this kind of description of the process of having children. But no matter what, in a marriage, sooner or later you expect to have kids. Having kids is the least of my problems. Problem is in what is there beyond the point of bringing your kids to this world. Am I talking about those sleepless nights, dealing with the messy natural outputs, taking care of the irritating tantrums, saving for their education and wedding, taking all the blames for whatever goes wrong with their lives when they grow up, having to deal with separating from them etc. etc. Yeah, those can be problematic too, isn’t it? But what I am actually talking about is my expectations from my future offspring who will be there as a result of my marriage. It’s not that they will have to bear the load of my expectations, but it’s just that they will have to do so with sheer perfection to the depth of the core. They will have to be as classy as Da Vinci with all the glare of art and science. Whether a boy or a girl, they will have to master in art like Picasso, creating something new, giving rise to some sort of ism like cubism. They will have to sing like Lata Mangeshkar or Asha Bhosle or Kishore Kumar or Sonu Nigam. They will have to be rock stars like Eagles or Scorpions. They will have to be poetic like Gulazar. They will have to be musical like Rahman. Even if they don’t become Nobel laureates for their scientific achievements, they will have to at least possess the brilliance to charm any expert. They may not be Olympic gold medalists, but they will have to be athletic enough to live a healthy life of more than ninety years to enjoy their uncountable wealth earned during their lifetime. Okay, now how’s that? You can see that this amount of expectation from my side is certainly going to create enormous pressure on my future offspring. Making them to be scared of me, to be irritated by me. They can be so annoyed that they might do anything to get rid of me. Who knows what step they might take to solve this unsolvable problem?
Thus, therefore, henceforth, you can see that if I get married, I can be a social disease infecting a lot of people. Hence, henceforth, it is for the greater interest of the mankind that I remain unmarried for as long as possible to protect the interest of all the humans whose lives may be disrupted as the consequence of my marriage ;-)
Asta la vista. See ya again
