One of the questions I hate the most, and right now it’s becoming the number 1 question, is the question that a lot of people seem to want to ask me out of curiosity : how come you are not married yet?

Now, it’s not because I’m a great catch or really cute or established financially & socially. It’s obviously due to my age – I’m 36 and over here most people my age are already married and possibly with 1 or 2 little monsters as well. By that I mean kids! Look at it this way – last year I got in touch with a bunch of my old school friends, most of whom I haven’t seen in over 10-15 years atleast and all of them are married and with the exception of 2, are parents as well. Now we were like 60 classmates and I have not been in contact with all of them but the ones I have are the ones I was very close with. So I’m the odd one out. The same goes for most of the friends I have made since then who are in my age group.

In my family oddly enough there seems to be the sad company of two of my male cousins – both of who are older than me by 3 years. So I’m not really alone there. I know one of them has been looking quite desperately with his family through the arranged marriage route but after about 6 years or so years of hard searching (finding a girl from a similar family background, age, caste, religion & matching horoscope or “jadhagam” ) he remains single at the age of 39. The other cousin lives in the States and barring a failed love affair (if I remember correctly) I think he hasn’t really looked. I know for a while his parents were also looking for a suitable bride for him but I don’t know why they stopped (probably he told them to stop). I think his case is similar to one of my reasons as to why I’m still single – and that is being overweight!

Ok so back to me. Whenever I get asked that question I sigh and try and explain but in a lot of cases I am not that close to the person who is asking it to me and therefore I am not comfortable in answering it in the right sense. I make up stuff and have several answers which seem to give them some satisfaction to these people (some of who are my relatives and colleagues). Keep in mind that people over here think a lot of things, none of them good, about you if you reach my age and are not hitched. I have my reasons and I’ll list them here :

• financial
• the above mentioned overweight factor
• finding the right woman – no arranged stuff with astrology bullshit for me!

It’s short and simple as can be. So until atleast 2 of these factors can be fixed I don’t see it happening soon. Might be a year or two down the line or even further. Am I lonely? You bet I am but will I just settle for anything? We’ll see how it goes. For now, I sleep alone and I share my life with no one.