Pati Patni Aur Main

An Indian woman in her twenties is always judged based on her marital status. The prospect of being 27 and unmarried at the same time is equal to eating buffalo wings in a temple, that astoundingly shocking and inappropriate, I mean. This fact has annoyed me to such an extent in the past that it actually stopped affecting me for a while as I stepped back smelling the fragrance of my freedom. Until today.

Over the past two years, I have seen my group of single friends dwindling at a fast pace. It appeared to me that a higher number of the human population started to believe that the world was coming to an end in 2012 and all women in their twenties had to be married away so that they could at least die honorably. Well, if the 2012 myth was really true, what is the whole point in getting married now anyways?

When asked to define ‘husband’, I have always said, “Those mean men who steal from you, your favorite girlfriends.”

Think of a few girls with whom you grew up since you were six years old, girls who you saw naked during group-baths, girls from whose plate you flicked tasty paneer and dumped gross upma into, girls whose pencils and erasers you borrowed, lost and never returned, girls whose Chyawanprash you stole, girls with whom you learnt addition in Math, traffic rules in Social Studies and the difference between living and non-living things in Science, girls from whom you borrowed the sanitary napkin when you got your first period, and girls who actually saw you with no make-up and eyebrows like Kroor Singh from Chandrakantha. To these girls, add those girls whose frightened faces you remember on the first day of your college, girls you ran to, to discuss your first crush paranoia, girls with whom you shared all your xerox notes, and girls who lovingly lent you their Nokia phone to play the brick game and secretly text your crush.  Mix them together. Top this off with those girls who were there with you through more mature and major phases in your life, say during your joblessness, through your heart-breaks and hangovers, girls who helped you do silly yet meaningful things such as aimless conversations into the night, unnecessary shopping and gave you the right kind of advice when you were totally confused.

Marriage changes them, each one of these girls. You are then conveniently shoved into the back of their heads. And if you are lucky enough, they probably will think of you once in a year, when it’s your birthday. I have tried to understand and reason with them but I just don’t get it. Why does the whole wide world revolve around their husband? Actually, the most weird thing is that when a man remains a boy friend, the girl is all normal. The trouble begins only when the boyfriend turns into a husband. What is it? Is it the sex? Is it the responsibility? Is it the whole “Bharatiya Nari” deal? I wonder!

Although this is directed to every married girl in general and no one in particular, I am just in the mood to do some random rambling.

• You cannot call her after 6 PM. That’s because her husband’s with her. Oh, you also cannot call her over the weekend, that is total privacy encroachment.
• Don’t ever plan a trip with her. No, not even if you ask her 6 months ahead. She already has the next decade planned out.
• Stop looking for her single pictures on Facebook. You are never going to find any.
• Yeah! Deal with all the lovey-dovey updates, her husband is the best man on earth, and NO, you cannot actually flirt with him.
• Face it! You cannot have a conversation without the husband being mentioned.
• She hasn’t had the time to call you in 5 months? Consider yourself lucky, there is a mutual friend she hasn’t called for about 8 months now.
• You tell her that you are still lying lazily in bed at 2 PM on Maha Shivratri. She will sound like you are an atheist of the highest order.
• Learn this clause; Determined against consuming alcohol in the absence of their husbands.
• Don’t bother buying her any gifts. Your little piece of love will seem like David in front of Goliath. The mean guy, her husband, would have already purchased the city for her.
• In her world, you are like Pratibha Patil, spending 204 crores and valuable time globe trotting, while she is like Barack Obama, focused and already geared up for his presidential campaign.
• You no longer get to hear any juicy details. “Yes, we did it, no big deal”, is all that you get from the same girl who described to you, her first kiss for about an hour.
• You will be warned about loans, credit cards, mortgages, and insurance policies. If you are very unlucky, you will also be discoursed on the benefits of being married and chided for being so aimlessly unmarried at such an “old” age.
• You have to get used to their new found interest in cooking.
• “BFFs? Are you kidding me? We are no more in college.Yeah! Grow up.”
• Pati is Parameshwar.
• Learn the language of a 2 year old. She will make you talk to them quite often.
• If she posted tons of messages on your Facebook wall earlier, drop your hopes now. She will seem super busy with her life and absolutely dead on networking sites, but hey, she has the time to ‘like’ all the posts by her husband. She will console you by asking you to go and look at her old messages. “Facebook has Timeline now, what for?”
•  Texting equals hours of conversations on the phone.
• Oh! She had a favorite hero? Her husband is her life-time hero now.
• She will tell you that she was engaged in April, to be married in December, sometime in May. It really doesn’t matter to her that you weren’t informed. Look out for the excuses! Horoscopes, elders-ka-mamla, and a butt load of crap. (This is specifically targeted to the crazy woman who actually did this to me. Yes, she has subscribed to this blog but will be too lazy to read the whole thing anyways)

And, last but not the least, the couple knows your are the “woh” in their relationship and with pitiful eyes, they pray that you realize this fact sooner than later.