Modern with a traditional outlook.
“She’s a fiercely independent woman. She’s defied conventional choices to vicariously create and live her own dreams. She has lost so much in life yet she’s found the strength to grow an armour around her. She uses that armour to push people away. She pretends to not care about anyone or anything. But her eyes tell me a different story. I want to break that armour, pull her close, and hold her tight. Not because women are better vulnerable, because sometimes, we all need someone else to hold us. I want her to know that it’s okay to break, and that it’s safe to sob with me.”
I met her on a matrimonial website.
I was already at that point where I had started to lose faith in all these platforms, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever find love again. But out of nowhere, she came along - a breath of freshness.
There was so much chemistry. What I loved best about her was that she wasn’t afraid to be who she was or to speak her mind. We texted all-day for one whole week. We decided to meet in person, for dinner. We talked endlessly about art, movies, culture and history. It felt like we’d known each other forever.
Everything was going great, except I had this nagging question in my head. She had a strict salary filter on her matrimonial profile – 25 lakhs and over. So, I asked her about it half hoping that it probably meant nothing.
I used to be an engineer until I found my passion for cinema in my early 30s. I quit a high paying job in engineering to go a film school in LA. I recently moved back home to make films here.
I barely meet her salary cut off, and I am not quite sure when I will either. But someday, I will, and I will beat that 10 times over. But it doesn’t matter. Because if it did, I wouldn’t have given up my engineering career in the US.
I was hoping her parents managed her profile, and the salary cut off was their thing. Parents are like that. I remember my parents being like that when my sister was getting married. They wanted to ensure that they marry her into a family with the same economic status as themselves if not more. The problem is that Indian parents lack confidence that their daughters can outdo what they provide, on their own.
In fact, some of them don’t even believe that women are capable of anything. I remember conversations between my mum and my sister during the initial days of her marriage. Every time my sister expressed the slightest displeasure about settling in her new home, my mum would constantly say “Kshamaya dharitri” (being forgiving like the earth). According to them, patience and forgiveness are virtues of women, but turns out my sister needed to be “taught” even that.
Now, here I was, sitting with a woman, who I thought had scrubbed those biases clean. I thought she wanted an equal partnership. She said that the salary per se didn’t matter, but it was a great proxy for a person’s lifestyle. Just like the schools people went to are a proxy for their culture, values and worldview.
I felt a pit in my stomach, and it made me sick. I don’t know if it was my own insecurities, or if she represented everything I resented growing up.
I grew up middle class. Where I come from, a master’s degree and a job in America is more than what my family could’ve hoped for. However, my dreams have always been too large for my life. Or may be that’s how one makes peace with how little they were born with.
I find happiness in little things. But every failure also reminds me of where I come, rather than where I aspire to be.
It took a lot of letting go, when I chose to abandon a stable job to pursue cinema. I can’t really justify my current state of penury with confidence to anyone, not until I’ve reached my goals. Everything she said reminded me of how far I was from where I wanted to be, and how close I still was to where I came from.
I challenged her views because she hadn’t earned her privilege. She was born with it. She lived with her parents. She had the comfort of her parents’ funding her life while she pursued her passion. Whereas, I was living off my own savings. In fact, I was even running an entire household on it while I still chased my dreams.
Abandoning her engineering career to be an activist didn’t come at the same cost as it did in my case. I couldn’t see her as equal. This felt more like my parents’ relationship where a large part of my mother’s identity was closely tied to my father’s professional success/ failure.
While I remember my mother talking about her work troubles, and all of us pitching in to support, it was quite different in the case of my father. Any work troubles he had, became a reflection of his inabilities and poor decisions. After a while, I remember he barely spoke about work. There was a lot of implicit pressure for my father to be the alpha in the house.
As I watched her talk, I started to detest her. Her pretty smile started to grow uglier in my head. She started to sound more like my mum, and all the women I couldn’t ever imagine being with.
She said she was attracted to me, and the schools I went to or the money I made now didn’t really matter to her. She said she really believed in my dreams. But I wanted her to love me for who I am right now.
Growing up, I was made to believe that critical feedback is an important ingredient of success. My mum believes that my father wasn’t very good at taking feedback. My mum and dad would have huge fights about this. My mum would constantly ask my dad to let go of his male ego, so he could “improve” and reach his potential.
Ego, yes, that’s where I learnt that men have egos. I never wanted to be like my dad, not because he was egoistic but I didn’t want my partner’s respect for me, being contingent on who I could potentially be, someday.
We parted ways that evening, although I don’t think I did a good job of explaining to her why I didn’t want to see her anymore. I didn’t go to the schools she respects, I don’t make the money she needs and even though she believes in my dreams, I wasn’t sure she’d still love me if my dreams never came true.
I was afraid of being alone.
I wanted her to like me for who I am, and not who I could become, someday.
I wonder why.
I guess I’ll never understand.
Sneak peak into what I’m reading/ watching/ listening to:
The Last Girl by Nadia Murad: Nadia Murad is an Iraqi woman from the Yazidi community who won the Nobel Peace price winner in 2018. She was previously an ISIS sex slave, and today, she works with reintegrating women like her into the society. This book really put my life into perspective. I take so many things for granted. While this was a story about how much worse life can be, it was also a story of hope. I learnt that if you find yourself in the dumps, you mustn’t EVER doubt that you could be the one pulling up people like yourself a few years on.
A woman is no man by Etaf Rum: This was a book about three generations of Palestinian American women, and their married lives. The book was so utterly stifling. At first, I thought it may be the writing, because really, there was not much character for these women in the book but I realised it was actually what their lives were like - stifling.
Being a transhumanist evolutionary psychologist: This was such an enlightening podcast, my millennial vocabulary grew 10x after listening to this podcast.
Shapely Gal song of the month: Perfect strangers by Jonas Blue.