A Bangalore-based novelist makes a case for singlehood.

Relax, ladies. I’m not getting married anytime soon. I’m still single.

I was having a very interesting conversation with my business partner the other day in KFC over Zingers, Fries, Coke and Mojitos. We discussed business for about 20 seconds and the remainder of our “meeting” we spent in discussing the pros and cons of marriage. We studied and grew up together, along with a few other weirdoes, and now when we looked back, most of those weirdoes are either married or engaged to someone. We wondered if we were in the process of missing the wedding bus, figuratively speaking, and realised that we are not.

Nowadays, I don’t think it’s a wise idea to get married. There are so many things that can go wrong and so many people that can get killed, that it’s definitely not a good idea. Let me tick the reasons off one by one.

1. Show Me The Money: Women these days are not marrying for love. No sir. Gone are the days where women would fall for a guy head over heels and say, “I’ll be with you through thick and thin. I don’t care if we are poor, we’ll have each other.” Laughable thought, isn’t it? Men need to submit a resume, a statement of purpose, financial statements and visa status to the potential in-laws before getting shortlisted for a stress-test interview. If he passes these levels, then he gets to meet the girl and woo her. If she doesn’t like him, then the whole exercise would have been in vain.

2. Show Me A Good Time: A qualifying criteria for a man to be given the green light for marriage these days is his idea of a “good honeymoon”. If he is planning to take her abroad, then he’s suitable. If he says Ooty, Kerala or Darjeeling, then he can go there himself, thank you very much.

3. Flexible Auspicious Times: More often than not, the booking of a marriage hall becomes more a pragmatic thing than anything. These days, marriage halls in the country follow the 12-noon check-in and check-out times, and it becomes impossible for people to get an auspicious time to tie the knot in the evenings. Palms are greased and pundits are coerced into finding a right time in accordance with the marriage hall timings. If you’re a pundit/astrologer, then your reputation depends on your ability to provide flexible timings.

4. The Ex-Factor: Men and women are required to completely disassociate themselves from their ex-lovers. If, for any reason, men or women are found fraternizing with their ex-es in the run-up to the wedding, then the whole thing has a high probability of ending up in someone’s death.

These and a lot of other factors (which are for the over-18s and which I can’t mention here for the benefit of those readers who aren’t mature enough), contribute to a highly volatile situation where people are not advised to get married. If you’re lucky enough to find a girl who’s got no hang-ups about a live-in, then go for it. Or else, make sure you have a gravesite marked out for you before you enter wedlock.

All the best.

 

This post was originally published on MirrorCracked in March 2011.