Day by day my addiction to singleton is getting intense. Not that I am impressed by celebrity singles or am under the influence of some saint but because it allows me the space and the unconfined freedom, I desire. Having crossed the quintessential mark of 30, it is but obvious to expect my well wishers to inquire about my marital status. And over the years, I have only mastered the skill of satisfying their queries innovatively. Thankfully my friends understand my psyche and have stood by me; Rock Solid.Right from my childhood being the only child, staying alone has never been challenging. In fact it has been a blessing in disguise. I have always been privy to confessions of sibling rivalries confided by some well known, some unknown; I desire to keep unnamed. So, I respect my childhood that I spent without any immediate blood relationship that could have earned itself a status of being a brother/sister. After a long gap of seven years, cousins did start arriving making me feel like the supreme sovereign but they were too young to acquaint themselves with the revolutionary within me. Gradually from adolescents, they stepped into the teenage years and now some of them have become adults while the others are grown up enough to not consider me some one supreme but some one who is elder to them. And at times tries, pretends and succeeds in towering over them. Over a period of time, I know this little bit of adulation that I have earned from them will fade away unannounced.
Sometimes a silly question like, “How do you feel staying single?” irritates me to bits. It is like asking water, how it feels to be like being wet. I don’t blame any body in particular but as Indians however influenced by foreign culture we are; one thing that still remains a mystery to most is the issue of ‘singleton’. Aunties in neighbourhood spend sleepless nights thinking why this guy has chosen to stay single. While some have this weird doubt in their mind over the sexual preferences of a single guy! At the first place, being a personal person, I hate such kind of irrelevant invasions. And secondly, every household with their own set of problems should concentrate less in complicating the lives of others.
Marriage as an institution is most precious. But an incident in 2003 made me lose my faith in it. Subsequently a series of unexplainable events went on taking me away from marriage. The fact that marriage unites two people of different genders and two families of different mindsets simply stood being misunderstood. I witnessed marriages collapse like a house of cards. Friends were filing for divorce. Foes were fleeing with their ex-flames. Closest of relationships were getting fragile and all that was visible were the ugly corridors of court. At this interesting place, which we refer to as court; I discovered brokers in black suits. Some of them championed the cause of staying stuck in a bad marriage, some advised an out-of-the-court settlement, some mispronounced alimony as ‘all money’ and some simply winked about burying the hatchet beneath a hefty bundle of notes.
Amidst all this, I discovered the gradual evolution of a breed, class apart! This breed is that of men and women, who hardly value the importance of permanent relationships. They have no inhibitions in discovering vital statistics in a bartered fashion. They follow the code of ‘I facilitate you, you facilitate me’. Speed dating is their mantra and hyper mating is their technique to drain their frustrations out in a world full of this breed. I could have never found a better reason to ignore all the proposals that had found their way in my inbox, mailbox and letterbox. More hilarious was a situation when I was meeting a potential bride and at that very moment I recollecting her moment of intimacy with her heartthrob in a first class compartment of a late night train. I can understand love demands intimacy supported by privacy. Train is the last best option to display being passionately in love with each other. Renowned writers call this practice as PDA (Public Display of Affection). So when I am informed of a proposal, my mind sinks in thoughts of encountering a thing of the past.
My mother is one of those who want to see her son settled with a bride of her or my choice. She has never argued over love or arranged marriages. Neither does she stay in a glass house. She is a normal mother who expects to be a mother-in-law. She is definitely eager to also be crowned as the grand mother of one/two tiny tots. But as a son, I don’t have the courage to tell her that I have simply enslaved myself to my newly found freedom of being ‘single’.
Singleton means freedom! No one can question your choice of television programmes. Sop operas involving a tough tussle between a bride and her in-laws never figure in my routine of channel surfing. I decide the colour of my own shirt and I am the one to take a call on the trouser to look good with it. Till now, I have only allowed my mother to give a second opinion because she knows what makes me look good. I have accustomed myself so much to the presence of just the two of us in our household that the advent of a third person in our personal lives would seem like a forced intrusion. Sometimes people are very entertaining in extending proposals. They have this habit of tagging me with the words ‘handsome’, ‘good looking’, ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘jovial’ at regular intervals to see to it that my mother blindly accepts one of the many proposals.
On a serious note, some are gravely concerned about the biological need. In the conservative society that we live in, talking about a subject that is considered taboo is an issue of high risk. People who burn all the midnight oil in developing such queries are themselves the sole practitioners of this tabooed concept. It is their insecurity that prompts them to double check, if they have been found caught in the act. And it is better for others to maintain calm on the preferences side. Section 377 only makes it simple for ideas to flourish untiringly in idle minds. I empathise with this current issue but don’t figure in this slightly different but respectable category, which means I am normal.
To put it simply, I am happy living a life with no strings attached to it. I see a movie of my choice, I converse with people I like to be in company of and I eat the food that tastes good without making me aware of my diet unconsciousness. I love my mother and am fine with her treating me like a little one. But I can never tolerate some one talking a thing against the womb I belong to. Having come to this world 32 years ago, I still feel I haven’t yet achieved my goals, objectives and dreams. If some one is still bothered about I being single, there are millions of innovative reasons to keep thinking about. Once again I am thankful to all my friends and my well wishers and my admirers who have stood by me and continue to do so. I am sure never in any other life of mine will I get these gifts of goodness, niceness and happiness.
So, here I am the free bird of a free nation. Spreading my wings, I chart the blue skies that seem like an umbrella. When I get stuck in the white clouds and am lost in the blackest of them, I ask for help and I realise, I am alone. But I am happy being single and am free to allow life take its own course.
- vociferous
