It’s about 5 AM in the United Kingdom. I am putting final touches to a chapter in my upcoming book. My phone blinks and there’s a message from a second cousin, my age, who lives back home in India.
I open her message, respond about my wellbeing and there comes the ultimate question, “How do you survive all alone?” followed by, “Don’t you get lonely? What do you do all day and why don’t you get married?”
This is not the first time I have confronted this question though. Members of my extended family, neighbours, friends and acquaintances back home often grill me with these questions. And when they can’t find me, they target my parents. They love to make up stories about me, like how I might have married a white guy secretly and hence pretend to be single back home.
The last time I visited home, I decided to spend most of my time with my parents and not socialising with my relatives because I am aware that most people have that ‘marriage question’ in mind. For some reason, people cannot seem to digest the fact that a 30-year-old Indian Muslim woman has actually chosen to stay single and accomplish things in life instead of getting married and having babies.
I mean, I get it. My path is not the traditional path, but is it so unconventional that people won’t believe this is even possible? There is another interesting angle to this scenario.
I am a huge fan of Urdu poetry and my favourite legends are Mirza Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir and Ahmad Faraz. I often share their couplets on my social media profiles. Now, if you’ve read the Urdu poetry of these poets, you’d know that their literature is not about rainbows and lollipops. They’ve written about serious subjects and provoke deep thought and insights in the reader.
And then, my sharing of those couplets is associated with me being heartbroken over a man and hence pining over him by being single. I recently got some messages from some high school friends, blatantly asking why I was sharing those couplets and if they were about a man who left me. I mean, to heck with privacy, right?
One might ignore them and move on instantly and continue focusing on their life, but when you look at the larger picture and add all these acts up, you’d realise these have an official term. These are ‘microaggressions’ that women face from both genders just because they are women. Sexism is not always bald-faced and obvious. It can also be covert and deceptive.
When people ask these questions, they pretend to care about me. Whatever my response is, they claim that they are concerned about me and only because of the concern, they want to know more about my life. When I tell them I am a happy, single, independent woman living in the UK for the last eight years and not for a second wanting to tie the knot, they don’t believe me. They have no CONCEPT of a happy, single woman.
Women in India live varied lifestyles – from the rural life buried in restrictions and economic instability to the urban modern women juggling both inside- and outside-the-house jobs. I consider myself to be one of the privileged ones because my family provided me with proper education, my father was not that typical egotistical control freak and he is actually the one who encouraged me to live life the way I please. These are all privileges denied to many women in an Indian Muslim household.
Despite the privileges, when I analyse the life I live, even while not being in India, I don’t feel I am free. It’s weird to think about this, but it is true.
In my last book, “Third World Woman”, I have written a whole chapter called “The Moral Policeman My Mom Planted In My Head”. The chapter has a list of all the things that I do not do because of that social conditioning that restricts our free thought and actions as Indian women. And I know that whatever I do here in the UK has consequences. Either I am forced to live a secret lifestyle and cut all connections with people back home. Or despite living in the UK, I follow certain traditional norms that don’t put me on the blacklist of the guardians of culture.
Personally, I don’t care about what such people discuss. They are behind me for a reason, but the problem is that these people would question, grill and embarrass my parents. Any social gathering my mom visits, the women around would ask her why they haven’t got me married yet. As if that is the only one thing that will ensure the rotation of planet Earth!
This might sound like a rant but I’d appeal you to see this as the microaggressions and internalised sexism that prevails in our society and which is only exclusive to women. Other women like my cousins and friends are terrified of these questions and hence gave up on their dreams and careers long ago. In fact, girls are raised with this one goal in mind that as soon as they graduate, they would be married off.
While marriage is a common concept, I don’t see it is mandatory or essential for living. Most importantly, it is about choice, but for the people back home, it is only and only about culture and tradition, not about choice. This is what restricts women from reaching their potential and representing our gender in businesses and parliaments.