I grew up in the cosmopolitan, very urban city of Bangalore, India. It has only been a little over five years since I left the city for the US and in this short time the city has become unrecognizable with its swanky clubs, microbreweries and smooth roads (traffic, however continues to make its presence felt with a vengeance). Of course, none of this progress affects or matters to my extended family and the community I belong to (Learn more about the Iyer community here). Even in year 2014, a woman’s motive for existence continues to be considered as being confined to marriage, babies, preparation of food and looking beautiful (of course by very specific and strange standards of beauty set by the community).
In the last seven days I’ve heard the best of well meaning but highly invasive and sometimes downright meddling questions, comments, concerns and advice. Here are my top 10 favorites:
- Why did you quit your job? Are you pregnant? No? When will you have a baby?
- Why did you cut your hair short? It looked better last time. What is this red color on your hair? Henna?
- When are you planning to move back to India?
- Don’t go out late at night.
- Why are you standing? Sit down!
- You must wear a bindi.
- You must wear some jewelry. Married women must not walk around with bare necks and wrists.
- Why are you wearing shorts? Wear something that covers your legs!
- Your cousin refuses to get married. What a tragedy.
- Your husband makes you breakfast on weekends? What a wonderful man he is! (Note: I don’t deny that my husband is the most wonderful man ever but no one would ever say a woman is wonderful for making breakfast would they?)
-Nish =)
PS: This post is one in a series of posts that I hereby categorize as “Idle Chatter”.
many people, including myself, have had people ask them similar questions. sad state of affairs, really.
Hello there! Thanks for commenting 🙂 I agree – At this point in my life I find these questions amusing and entertaining since I hear them very rarely. Its the only way to maintain my sanity in larger gatherings 🙂
I’ve got the “When will you get married?” coming at me right now. Just today my mum, out of frustration, went “Why can’t you be normal and want to get married?” 😀 I’m doing just fine though..and moving to one state away next month 🙂 It was always the plan for when marriage-talk began..and quite fortunately for me, it’s working out!
Haha good plan! When I was of “marriageable age” I made an announcement to my folks that they needn’t go around looking for a groom for me because I was not going to marry someone they picked for me. That made things much easier for me. Its shocking to me how 22 year olds in my extended family are telling their folks that they’re “ready for marriage” – I just want to walk up to them and smack them kindly on their little heads and say “No you’re not .. now go study or earn some money or something”