MADAM OVARY
Let me stop you right there! You’ve probably already pegged this to be an article that victimises women and preaches feminism…but you my friend are wrong! (Well, to some extent. I am going to be victimising us just a little bit, a really tiny bit I promise.)
Remember that biology diagram? The one where the fallopian tube connects to the ovary to carry the egg to the uterus. In the 9th standard that was my favourite diagram, reason being, you could walk up to people holding up your arms like the tube and look like a complete idiot blessed with the onset of puberty!
Anyways getting to the point.
Meet the ovary — every single woman/girl who has finally decided to #yolo by wanting her own space to go through life with a glass of wine, a pint of beer or any other ‘poison’. Now meet the Fallopian Tube — the poor brokers who break their backs to get “bachelor women” their perfect house. And finally, presenting to you, the Uterus — the beauteous societies that decide if a particular “bachelor woman” is the preferred candidate to join their house of lords! So, basically women who already harbour a reproductive system are part of yet another one where there isn’t even the luxury of enjoying pleasure.
[I don’t know why I wrote so much. I’m not even a biology nerd. I guess this is me connecting with my “inner” senses. Also, I could have put single boys in the picture too but relating them to the fallopian tube just seemed warped!]
I had never really thought the first step of being independent would be so excruciating. It’s not excruciating because you see house after house (the excitement to get your own space lasts till the very last moment), it is excruciating because as a single girl you face rejection on the basis of many parameters — single, media, Muslim, pets, short clothes, long nose…whatever they want.
It doesn’t matter if you can afford to pay the rent every month on time or if you’re a person who doesn’t disturb the society. Eventually societies and their esteemed committees equate women to a vagina and therefore men. A couple could be a serial killer for all you know or they could be their version of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman but they would easily get a house…because “woh toh couples hain.”
A Chewbacca would get a house easily but a bachelor, hell no!
Honestly, when I moved to Mumbai I really thought that getting a house would be as easy as the one Konkana gets in Wake Up Sid. I know the plot line is something else; but the movie is about an independent girl who meets a naïve boy. I love the movie, I really do but now, I feel like the naïve person. I finally got my reality check. I don’t have a Ranbir Kapoor coming to see a house with me (not like that was ever going to happen). But it’s not like I walk in, go see the terrace, decide I want it and the next day I’m shifting in. I don’t get to be a part of a cool montage. I know people have bigger problems to deal with and everyone to their own but the struggle for bachelors to have their own space is something that can’t be explained because that shit gets to them in a draining way.
“Your mother has to come to meet the society”, “No boys allowed after 10 pm”, “You can’t walk in at odd hours”, “Prove he is your brother”.
I don’t know how educated people see sense in such bullshit.
Sure, my mother can leave a conference in the other part of the country to meet you, because you apparently are more important than the Prime Minister. I’ll call my guy friends over and as the clock strikes 9.58, I’ll shoo them away and off they will go like Cinderella. Who decides what are odd hours? For people working in call centers or belonging from the media industry, corporate hours are odd hours! Not ours! And oh, I’ll tie a rakhi around my brother’s wrist in front of you or even better I’ll give you a proof of our DNA test — right after I’ve yanked a few hair off his head!
HOW DOES ANY OF THIS MAKE SENSE?
But yeh toh accept karna padhega na because “aap toh bachelor hain, yeh sab toh normal hai, aur upar se aap toh bachelor girl from media hai.”
For the first time I must be perfectly fitting some bill with all boxes ticked and its not at all emancipating.
3 months of house hunting has brought out the crazy in the already cuckoo me. I have joined twitter just to tweet to our Prime Minister about how fuckall it is to be a bachelor. That momentary lapse of judgment has been obviously followed by pressing backspace and deleting my account. I have gone full Inception in my head where there are societies that are only giving houses to bachelors and denying the right to live to couples. Only instead of Leonardo getting me out of this dream it was my annoying friend. The best yet, I have even recreated a scene from Kal Ho Na Ho. I have very religiously gone to the window, and looked up and said “Dear God, inn andhero mein thodi roshni bhar do”, but obviously mera angel nahin aaya!
47 houses, 18 idiots, a dozen of ridiculous questions and a zillion shades of hypocrisies later I’ve realised the only things keeping you sane are two things. First, finding the humour in the situation so that you don’t get riled up. Second, the very famous dialogue “jo hota hai ache ke liye hota hai”.
Choose whatever works for you. Look at the bigger picture…of you curled up on your bed with alcohol in your hand!
If not happiness you will definitely pass out because of being too drunk to move.
