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SOME husbands are living proof of the fact that a woman can take a joke. How else does one explain the umpteen number of smart, intelligent, independent women getting married to chauvinists and changing their entire outlook for that mandatory milestone in life that we call ‘ marriage’? They believe they need to either do that, or get slotted into the ‘ failure’ category. I see some of them living double lives — one when they are outside the home and the other when they are under scrutiny of their in- laws. Gone are the days when the typical matrimony ritual had the boy’s family visiting the girl’s with the girl coyly handing out tea and demonstrating her culinary/ sewing/ singing/ knitting ( take your pick) skills. Cut to the present. Families meet in cafes, where the ‘ boy’ and the ‘ girl’ are given time alone after both parties size each other up. Most meetings end up without results because there’s hardly any interaction before the two parties meet, no picture exchange, the only conversations on phone being limited to the ‘ elders’. The ritual is based on the concept of suitable ‘ bio- data’, where almost everyone writes things like “ hobbies — listening to music,” and at most horoscope matching. The ‘ boy’ and ‘ girl’ squirm under the scrutiny of the opposite party – utter obligatory nonsense – and the real picture becomes clearer much later with a phone call. One figures that the only ‘ type’ one would meet under these circumstances are ‘ mama’s boys’. Some ‘ boys’ and ‘ girls’, and even families, hang around on matrimonial websites, which are glorified dating sites. The goal, at least for some of us, is to meet educated, employed, decent and available men ( the last being a very important attribute, for most available men lack the first three qualities). The assumption that one would get to meet such men outside the protection of their mother’s pallu gets shattered soon with the kind of experiences one has on such sites. Take for instance the typical “ Orkut fraandsheep request”- type users who flock the matrimonial sites, spamming anyone with a profile. Or the freeloaders with a daily income less than the cost of a peanut butter jar, who can’t write to save their life. I have been contacted by men between 21 and 62, with professions as varied as ‘ sweeper’ and ‘ zamindar ’, their marital status ranging from divorcee- with- twokids to got- married- a- monthback- now- separated. Some weirdos give reasons like “ I have no problem with the age difference of just six months but my parents want an age difference of at least three years” — as if the parents were the ones who were going to marry me. Some — including the weirdo category — seem to forget that they had been written off in the past — they reconnect anyway, armed with a new profile. The online world gives freedom of expression but there’s no escaping the mother’s pallu. I have met them all. Right from being called up early one morning by an NRI ensuring I was a woman, thanks to a bad experience with a gay man masquerading as a woman on a matrimonial site, to hearing about how one ‘ profile user’ stole another’s credit card when they met, to people lifting someone else’s pictures and passing them off as their own, to cyber stalkers who have followed me after being rejected. I went through the matrimonial process for many years, investing my free time into the search and approaching it very methodically. Taking the cue from another ‘ organised user’, to make sense of the information overload, I even maintained XL sheets for the various people I contacted and those who got in touch with me. The sheet would be updated daily with the meticulousness and dedication I would assign only to my finances. Talking of finances, I might as well add, working in the IT industry for several years put me in a decent salary bracket and allowed me to buy my own car and house. With time, I moved out of my parents’ place and started living independently in the aforementioned house and swooshed around the city in the aforementioned car. Now that is considered a very bad move for the marriage market. I instantly got typecast as the ‘ fiercely independent’ type and I could imagine the rejection thought process of parents of prospective grooms — “ live- in boyfriends”, “ can’t adjust into family” … you get the picture. Having a head on my shoulders that actually does think and has opinions doesn’t help matters either. With time, taking the cue from some online matrimonial profiles that stated clearly they were looking for people earning as much or above their salary level, I added something to that effect in my profile as well. As expected, I received mixed results. Some people could identify with it, whereas others contacted me on only to harass me for the ‘ attitude’. A guy wrote, “ You have such proud ( sic), just coz u have Lakshmi ki kripa .” That response was just begging for a reply and got it. I wrote back, “ Yes, I am blessed with Lakshmi ki kripa , but you aren’t even blessed with Saraswati ki kripa — you can't even write properly!” Another user with misplaced patriotism contacted me just to tell me: “ You Pakis! Just go back to your country!” because my profile stated that my grandparents had migrated during Partition from what is now Pakistan! I S IT a crime if a woman is more successful or smarter than her better half? Most men take that as a sign of their own failure. Some of my classmates from engineering, well- educated people with good family backgrounds, actually wanted a wife who would not work after marriage! Strangely, they never had a problem dating their own ambitious classmates from college, but their standards just changed during their ‘ wife search’. The hypocrisy refuses to go away. Someone who has had the freedom to find one’s path in life is the kind of person who’d also respect the choices of one’s better half, and not get intimidated by them. My search for that kind of someone is still on, but till the time, the elusive groom who fits into the required attributes and doesn’t get intimidated by me, comes by, I’ll go by what Carrie Bradshaw has to say: “ Why get married and make one man miserable when I can stay single and make thousands miserable?” — Priyanka Sachar is an IT project manager who has turned social media consultant and photographer |