(Don’t) Marry Me

I was reading a blog today, one that I uncovered after the usual digging into blog roll after blog roll. It was my kinda blog – simple; I could see the girl didn’t have the time to explore snazzy design templates, which I liked – no frills, to-the-point. And her writing met my basic criteria of mostly grammatically correct, mostly fully formed sentences, with just that teensy bit of unintended humour here and there. I was enjoying her posts about her day-to-day life, finding myself relating to her packing-and-moving issues, lunch buddy issues. And then I read something about her husband. She’s married. Out of respect I finished reading that post, but after that I hit Ctrl + W.

I’ve done this before. I once met this wonderfully friendly girl, my age group, in a small city I used to live in. She was a judge at a singing event I was handling in the office cultural fest, because she was a singer herself. We got chatting; she was bubbly, and she had an interesting career. Now I didn’t have a lot of girlfriends in this city, most of the girls I knew were homely. Yes, I’m anti-homely. As I was talking to her, I thought this is nice. And she even voiced my thoughts and said out loud how nice it was that we met at this event else we wouldn’t have met. And then she started talking about potty-training her two-year-old. About how recent studies show that you shouldn’t impose the potty-box-thingie on the guy cuz it may make him shy and insecure later in life. We exchanged numbers, I avoided her calls, and phased her outta my life.

What is it about married people that repels me so much? Married people my age that is. My best friend from school is getting married next month, and I couldn’t be unhappier for her. I mean of course I’m happy for her. But it’s just that I still see this marriage thing as something we do later in life. I always thought we need three full decades behind us before we can claim to be ready to share our lives with other people and make offspring and all that. I am there for her, I want to celebrate with her, but every bone in my body screams ‘It’s too soon’ ‘You don’t have to marry at 25, you can wait another year’ ‘You’re not ready! You don’t know how to shop for veggies!’

And you know what the real kicker is? I am like ready to marry K. (Eventually, not right now. Right now everything’s fucked up.) Between him and me, HE is the one who freaks out about marriage, he is the one who curses his cousins for getting engaged, and I am the one who gently cajoles him into a state of acceptance of guys our age willingly settling down with the loves of their lives. To me, our future looks all rosy and fulfilling. But I am his equivalent in the me-singerlady equation.

Is it unreasonable for me to believe that married people are fundamentally different from single people? For instance, if my married friend and I are sitting at a bar, and we see a favourable-looking guy across the room, I’d think of how to make subtle enough eye contact that says ‘I’m interested, but I’m so not interested, so YOU come over.’ And my friend would think ‘How do I avoid this guy, I just got my guy to be on board with the going to the movies with male friends thing, we are not ready for this.’ This very difference in thought, does it not violate the very foundation of the relationship between my girlfriend and me? How will life ever be the same if we can’t check out favourable-looking guys together?

Does this have something to do with me not wanting to grow up? Hey I’ve grown up plenty. I have all my bills sent to me online, I own a smartphone, and I know how to check for good bhindi in the market. Heck, I even pulled off baking a cake last month. But start a PF account for kids I haven’t even met yet? Yeah I’m gonna try and make sure I have a date for New Year’s for now, thank you very much.

God I miss 21.