The Marriage Clock
If you have ever run into parents of an unmarried 30 years old, you know how exasperated and inconsolable they are. Indian parents suddenly morph from mentors to matchmakers as soon as a girl hits the age of 20.
There is an unmentioned age deadline that has been set by parents and perhaps by girls themselves by which one is supposed to get married.
It is very easy to assume that the marriage clock doesn’t apply to you, it is too far down the line and you will handle it with your new grownup skills when you get there. I certainly thought so and, unfortunately, too often I meet girls who have suddenly started hearing the clock tick louder than ever.
I met Astha (name changed) on a research trip to India. She was an intelligent young woman and, from the way she dressed and spoke, she gave an impression of a modern person. I could tell that she came from wealth and had access to many opportunities that are not available to everyone.Then, she told me that she lived with her extended family, and was waiting to be married off to a wealthy man. As a result, she had not held a job for the past two years and had instead spent most of that time meeting potential suitors picked out by her family.
She had already met somewhere between 15 to 20 men, and I could feel that her confidence had reached a breaking point. This caught me completely off guard. While I understood some of what she was going through, as I had been through the process as well — meeting potential suitors, listening to their mothers — I could not imagine doing just that for two years!
Even worse, she had no motivation to work, because there was no need financially. Her family had made their mind up, and she had accepted her fate. I could not bring myself to accept that this was the limit of her ambitions. I did my best to help her. I told her that she could put her energy into work and stop listening to her relatives; that she didn’t need to do this.
However, it quickly became clear to me that nothing I said was getting through to her and that was when I realized that I was discussing my dreams not hers. We had traveled very different paths to get where we were. Astha needed a mentor to snap out of the hypnotic tick tock of marriage clock but she needed someone she could relate to and I wasn’t the one.
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