“How come you’re unmarried?” The clean-shaven investment-banker-type asked Leela Unnikrishnan at a party in her hometown of Kochi. She had attended a party after ages. Truth be told, she avoided them like the plague. Often because she knew she was going to be asked this same question time and again.
Leela was one of those people who lit up a room the instant they walked in. No wonder people were amazed she was still single. That too at the ‘ripe’ age of 30.
“How come you’re married?” Leela retaliated. The gentleman stuttered: “Is – isn’t that what everyone does? You know, as a rite of passage?”
“And what makes you think I’m everyone?”
Excusing herself on the pretext of getting a refill of her whiskey, Leela sauntered to the bar. She spent the rest of the evening chatting with the bartender. He was the only guy who did not mentally undress her as they talked. Surveying the scene before she left, Leela knew she could have any man out there. That was not the reason she had gone there, though. A bit of dancing had been on her mind. And she had happily scorched the floor for a while. Until a potbellied uncle started gyrating next to her, beckoning her to join him.
Leela grooved to her own rhythm. She had always been unwilling to dance to anyone’s tune. Anyone other than herself. Thirty years marks the point where Indian girls are considered abnormal by many, if they are not yet married. As though marriage were a way of validating one’s normalcy.
Something changed within Leela a couple years ago, when she embarked on a solo trip to Bhutan
The mountains brought with them a serenity unlike anything Leela had experienced Shutterstock
It is not like Leela was an absolute stranger to love. She had been in a steady relationship that had ended badly. That break-up opened the floodgates to endless marriage proposals in her late twenties. An exercise diligently engineered by Mrs Unnikrishnan, along with a lady wedding planner, who had been entrusted with the task of getting all the girls in her village married.
How many times had Leela told her mother, “Amma! This isn’t a village. It’s Kochi. A city!”
Her mother had always shrugged it off. All that mattered was her daughter getting married. After all, Amma knew best… And so, the proposals came, from as far as Silicon Valley to the guy who lived down the lane from the Unnikrishnan’s. The message was clear. You have not found someone, so we are finding that someone for you.
Something changed within Leela a couple years ago, when she embarked on a solo trip to Bhutan. She wanted to clear her head, or so she told her parents.
“Maybe it’ll be good for her, Aruna. When she comes back, she’ll finally accept one of the marriage proposals,” said Leela’s dad, ever the optimist. Of course, in the Unnikrishnan family, everything was centred around marriage. Not that Leela found any cause to argue. Her parents had not stopped her from travelling. Or working at the local library for peanuts, for that matter.
They were banking on their future son-in-law to take care of their only daughter…
The mountains brought with them a serenity unlike anything Leela had experienced. Once, when she was meditating in the wonderful silence, she thought: “What if I stay here? Find a cheap place to live, spend the rest of my days in peace?” Part of her had given up the world she had been tethered to. All she wanted was to be free. That might have come to pass, too, had she not loved her parents so fiercely.
When she returned, Leela was a changed person. She no longer paid attention to marriage proposals. Over the past couple of years, she had been dating a Chinese guy, Chang, who had stumbled into the library one day, looking for the one book she loved most. That had sealed the deal for her. She had even introduced Chang to her parents. Although she had told them right before he was due to arrive home for a cup of tea that she did not intend to get married to her beau.
“What does that mean? And you’ll still have sex with him? What will our community think?”
“The community doesn’t need to know I’m doing it with Chang!” Leela was aghast. For all her forward thinking, she could not get herself to toss the word ‘sex’ into the conversation, like her father had done ever so casually.
“People will talk.”
How many times had she heard that statement? All of a sudden, the room was filled with a deafening silence. Unlike the serene silence in Bhutan’s hills.
When we marry someone, it is for the same reason we stay single
The best marriages are the ones that liberate partners while uniting them Pixabay
“Well, are you?” It was Amma this time.
“Am I what?”
“You know, having sex with the boy?”
“Yes I am, Ma! And he’s not a boy. He’s a man!”
Mr Unnikrishnan left the room. Mrs Unnikrishnan went to the kitchen, to put the water to boil.
“Does Chang like milk in his tea?” She belted out.
Leela and Chang broke up not long after. In hindsight, Leela wondered why she had brought him home to meet her parents. Her dad had not uttered a word, and all her mother had talked about was the booming condom industry.
Forty years later, Leela returned to Bhutan. One day, while absorbed in meditative bliss, she found herself interrupted by a bunch of Buddhist monks, beaming happily at her. She smiled back. She found herself brimming with love.
Married or single, we all love through random acts of kindness. And yes, we do not have to marry people to have sex with them! Condom ring or wedding ring, who is to tell us how to love?
Leela’s mind wandered to the party she had attended ages ago, when a gentleman had asked her that question, pertaining to why she was not married. A question that had the exact same answer to the question she had posed the gentleman in turn. Provoked by a glimpse of the wedding ring the man had not bothered taking off, before proceeding to flirt shamelessly with her.
Marriage does not extinguish the lights of our individual solitudes. When we marry someone, it is for the same reason we stay single. One word. Freedom. From the melancholy of being. After all, some walk the path of life with another in tow. Others, all alone.
Rohit Trilokekar is a novelist from Mumbai who flirts with the idea of what it means to love. His heart’s compass swerves ever so often towards Kolkata, the city he believes has the most discerning literary audience.
