By Drishti Rakhra

During conversations with humans who worship testosterone (and don’t know it) there’s often a moment that takes away all my words. It’s often sudden. Everything I have told myself till that moment makes no sense. They make more sense, and why would I be right because that doesn’t make any sense.

A cousin visited my family three months after her wedding with a story unlike the ones I had heard from the women in my family who had apparently married perfect men and lived perfect lives.

Mid-conversation, the cousin stopped talking and looked at my father with a so-serious-please-relax look and said, “If your daughters don’t get married, they’ll be fine.”

This was the perfect moment for an explosion, but nothing followed apart from an awkward silence that begged to know why my sisters and I will be okay even without husbands.

(I never found out why.)

Then, when my rule-breaking cousin and I sat down at 2 am to have sister-talk, she looked at me with a smug I-know-more-than-you look and suddenly I didn’t know anything. Then, in the I-know-more-than-you voice, she smiled like I was going to learn something important, and went ahead to tell me that women must do smaller, unhappy things to live a happy life.

Somewhere in my mind, Dumbledore’s explanation about sacrificing for the ‘greater good’ flashed in my mind and I got lost in her explanations while mine made no sense to me anymore.

A woman has two options, I was told. This choice is between a happy life and pride. She chooses the happy life if she doesn’t mind making fresh chapattis because her husband needs to have fresh chapattis, or she chooses her pride if she doesn’t cook after work in the evening. Then she asked me, what’s the point of fighting when you just have to make three chapattis?

This is that moment I was talking about. The conversation stopped because I forgot to reply after my brain stopped working. I am convinced that her line of thought was contagious because suddenly, there was nothing I could say that doesn’t sound more confusing than what I’d just heard.

(I want to live a happy life, so why wouldn’t I make chapattis?)

This was shaadi number one in the last year. Shaadi number two outdid shaadi number one by a margin that was large enough to leave me tongue tied after every conversation with testosterone worshipping shaadi lovers.

In shaadi number two there were eyes that followed everyone everywhere and people looked at each other with an arrogance that comes from knowing what will happen next (shaadis, more shaadis).

And since this was one year after shaadi number one, I was older and suddenly people were telling other people that they’d see each other after three years at my wedding because this is the only possible way the future can shape up.

One relative I’ve never met before asked me what I was studying. When I told her about my BA, she looked more delighted than I imagine I did when I heard of my admission (final year? Very good, very good). Are you going to work after this, she asked me. I told her about some higher education plans that might happen and she looked surprised.

Then she laughed and promised me that everything will be fine. Things will work out and soon enough, I’ll be married with two adorable children to look after.

In the silence that followed, she looked more accomplished than I’ve ever felt. A pat on the head later, I found a corner that protected me from more you-need-a-man advocates. This happened twice more before it was time to wind up and go back home.

These are moments I have come to expect, and yet, I have nothing to say that might make sense. What can I say to people who have clearly found the key to a happiness that I’m refusing? Why would anyone want to refuse happiness in the first place?

This piece was written at the Ladies Finger writing workshop Write Like A Girl, which was conducted earlier this month. 

Image credit: Beautiful Punjabi Bride by Russ via Flickr/CC by 2.0