The M - word

This is a journey through years, during which I have heard the M-word way too many times for my liking.

15 years old:

Mom: "You know there is this guy, who is our family friend's friend's son. He is going to do his MS in USA and his parents wants to get him engaged to be married before he leaves. It would be something like we are giving them a word, nothing more that. Shall we .... "

Me (with my ears not believing what I was hearing): rolls eyes, hello, has someone heard about child marriage yet? &*^%$#

18 years old:

Mom: "You know there is this guy who works in USA, has a good job and all. We are getting way too many proposals of similar sort. Shall we ..."

Me (again rolls eyes): "I have just started my engineering course mom. Let me finish it atleast.

21 years old:

Mom: "Now that you are done with your engineering course, shall we start looking into the proposal that we were getting. Shall we ..."

Me (again rolls eyes): "I want to study further. I want to do my MBA. I don't want to get married right now"

Mom: "You can do your MBA after getting married also."

Me: "No, I want to do it before getting married. I need time."

24 years old:

Mom: "Oh my god, you have grown so old. You have surpassed the marriageable age too. Now that your MBA is getting over, I think we should seriously start looking for good matches. It takes time to get a good guy you know."

Me (gives up at this point of time): Sigh

So you get the drift right? It had been more than ten years and I have heard the 'M - word' way too many times. There were concerned parents, hyper relatives, nosey neighbours and acquaintances. All of them wanted to know only one thing - "When are you getting married?". Well, its beyond my realm of understanding why should anyone else be concerned about when I am getting married. Marriage for me happens when you meet the right person and you celebrate your togetherness with your wedding. It is a natural progression of my life, rather than something that drastically changes my life. It's not a whole new life, but an extension to your existing life where you grow more as a person. I know it comes with a whole lot of responsibilities and adjustments and thats exactly why I call it natural progression. Anyway, it doesn't matter what I thought about the whole marriage thingy. Because, there were a whole lot of people who were thinking, mapping and planning it all out for me.

For the last two years, the pressure to get married had been so much that it was literally driving me nuts. No one payed any heed to whatever you have achieved so far. No one looked into the facts like you worked hard for your degrees or you excelled in your jobs or you are well- read or you have a broad minded view of world or you are a good friend to people or you are always ready to extend an helping hand to people or you never meddled with other peoples lives. These just remained facts that were conveniently overlooked. Because at the end of the day, you are a girl and you are just supposed to get married. If you are not married yet, that means there is something seriously wrong with you. Period. With all my friends and cousins getting married at a alarming rate made me 'the next in line' for sometime now. Coming from a family were the girls are supposed to get married at 21 years old made time was a huge factor against me. I tried to keep myself away from all these talks and concentrate on so many other things in life. My education, job, books, movies, friends, travel - all these formed an integral part of my life.

So what happens next? Well, something very interesting .... :D