Marriage. A life time of misery if you don’t find the right one. Will shatter if you don’t
handle with care. And for Indian parents with a girl child, it is a way to get rid of a burden.
“I just want to get my daughter married early, its one less burden,” “I am waiting for my
daughter’s marriage so that I and my husband can finally live our lives,” “Oh, you daughter is
25? Why isn’t she married yet”, “Get her married early, don’t delay it, men prefer younger
women”.
Trust me the list goes on and on. I know it is 2023, and the times are changing, but I still hear
such comments all the time. And honestly it hurts. IT HURTS. I don’t get the point, like how
can parents call their own child a burden, how can they believe that she would be safe in
someone else’s house.
Hear me out, getting married after falling in love is far different from marrying due to the
excessive pressure by the family and the society. It is not like forcing someone to eat the food
they don’t want to; this is forcing a person to live and breathe with a goddamn stranger for
the rest of their life.
As a 20-year-old, I am given the permission to study whatever I want, get whatever job I like,
but I am also given a deadline of 23 years, cause after that I will have to get married. The rest
of my life, after I am 23 years, lies in the hand of a man who I would have barely known for
months. What if they are abusive? What if he is a murderer? What if he is a drunkard like my
dad? And what if I get to know all of this after having a child at 25 years, without a proper
job.
Forcing a woman to get married at 23years is really bad, but marriage before 18 is worse. The
National Family Health Survey that was conducted between the years of 2019 and 2021,
concluded that 23.3 percent of women between the ages of 20 to 24 were married off before
18. Underage marriages in rural India accounted for 27 per cent while in urban India, it is
14.7 per cent. Underage marriage is illegal, the minimum age for a female to get married in
India is 18 years. But do parents care? NO. Hopefully the minimum age changes to 21, but it
is still India that we are living in, even child marriages keep happening here till date.
The whole concept of giving dowry and the pressure of the society about the age of the
woman, would obviously stress out the parents. I get it. But it is also “your own child.” And
as Kahlil Gibran said in his poem:
“They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls’ dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your
dreams.”
Marriage. Ask her if she wants it, ask her if she is mentally ready for it, make sure she is
financially stable and independent enough to walk out if something bad happens, and most
importantly stop calling her a “burden.”
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