What is chosen freely carries meaning. What is imposed carries weight.
What is chosen freely carries meaning. What is imposed carries weight.
It’s something that has been nagging at my brain for quite some time. The idea of marriage. When chosen on your own, it’s something that holds the utmost meaning in your life. But when it is imposed, it becomes a burden to carry. Yes, the matter has settled quite comfortably in my mind. Perhaps because I have turned twenty-two, and according to the people around me, I’m very much ready to be married off.
But the question is, what makes one ‘ready’ to be married off?
What is chosen freely carries meaning. What is imposed carries weight.
As the last child of six children, I had watched all my siblings get married off, and in every single one of them, there was a lesson I learnt. They all married men from different families, different backgrounds, different jobs, and certainly different personalities. But they all had one thing in common. Not the men they married, but ‘how’ they married.
They were all told that the time to be wed had come before they were even ready. Where they considered too old? No. They were but in the early twenties. Were there nasty rumors circulating about them? No. They were clean as a slate. Were the awfully poor? Not really. They had food on the table three times.
So why?
Was it because women often tend to have less chances at marriage when they are older? Or that she was to be wed off to a respectable man before her name was somehow tainted? Maybe, those were all the reasons.
But what if she is still studying and wants to study higher?
Oh, no need for that. The education she had is enough. Women need only study to be worthy of their husband, not worthy for a career.
What if she doesn’t like the husband we chose?
That is alright. Love blooms after marriage anyway. She will eventually fall for him.
What if he doesn’t like her?
Not necessary. So long as she fulfills her duties as a wife and gives him children, he will be satisfied with her. Love is not important.
How often have we heard these sentences?
A girl is old enough to marry, but too young to decide who to marry. How old is too old, and how young is too young?
How often, was a girl rushed to the folds of marriage before she even knew what was going on? And mainly, why?
For the society? Family pressure? That having a daughter unmarried for too long can be considered scandalous? That she’s unwanted? Undesired?
What is chosen freely carries meaning. What is imposed carries weight.
Society often brings that up, when the said girl’s own family has these worries. When public opinion is all they can think of, and the happiness and stability of their daughter’s future falls in the hands of outsiders. When public validation starts meaning more than the dreams and hopes a girl has to bury under the ground.
And when a girl does end up marrying late, well… that’s a whole different story.
Desire becomes secondary.
Refusal becomes rebellion.
Delay becomes deviance.
The scandalous daughter. The abomination of a child.
Be it today, yesterday, in the 21st century, or a thousand years ago. The story of south Asian women does not change.
“What is chosen freely carries meaning. What is imposed carries weight.”
Always the daughter, never the son.
The pressure of being the woman of a South Asian household.
Marriage is considered a choice. But if it becomes socially mandatory, is it still considered a choice?
