In less than a month I will turn 25.The age you are expected to step up, take full control of your life and have a plan for future. Unfortunately I have none. The more I try to figure it out, the messier it gets. As an average 25 years old Indian girl you are expected to be married by now or at least be in the process. In a very cliché style, all of us are in the same boat and have the following options:

Ø      Love Marriage: Be here and you are on cloud nine but more often than not your parents are on level one or minus one. Somehow either you make it or break it!

Ø      Arrange Marriage : Be here and your parents are happy, you are confused, you make their happiness your happiness, novelty factor strikes in and post marriage you either make it or break it !

Ø      Struggle between marriage and higher studies: Be here and you will be the most screwed of the lot. You will be constantly grilled, lectured and blackmailed into getting married by family and relatives because you just took a little more time to decide what you want and now your time is up!

Ø      No marriage at all: Naahhhh, you are an Indian girl, you are born to get married and no alternative course of life exists for you!

Who decides this for you, sometimes your parents and sometimes you yourself. But the real question is who decides that at 25 you should be married because 28 is too late. As soon the girl crosses 25 in number, she is eligible for getting married without even her knowing it. There is this sense of urgency in the entire family to find the perfect match for their beloved daughters before she gets out of the race. Eventually after so many discussions and debates, even the girl starts to believe that marriage is the most important aspect of her life (which of course has no denying) and this is the perfect time to decide on it. 

 Then comes the option of a love marriage or an arrange marriage. If you don’t fall in love by the time you are 26, your hope of having a fairytale love story (if they exist) before marriage is over. If you are in love at 20 you are taught in every possible way that you are wrong because you are too young to make decision for yourself. When you cross the “25” barrier, boom you are again wrong because now you are too old for it. You cannot enter a relationship at 25 unsure of want you want in life. Soon you will be forced to pop the marriage question to the guy and more often than not the guy will run away from you. The second option is arrange marriage, where you trust your parent’s choice, little bit of your own instinct and play the gamble. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. Here you make a checklist of whatever you always wanted in your guy, match it with whatever options you are currently getting and the voila! The guy with the maximum points wins.

A question which completely baffles me here is how you marry when you are not in love. Forget in love, you hardly even know the person. How do you leave your comfort zone for someone whom you have just met over 2 cups of coffees and of course why are your parents happy and proud to send you there. I am sure most of the answers here would be what if you never fall in love, will you never get married. Life doesn’t work that way. Well, my question is why can’t it if you don’t mind. Another question for which now I have a convincing answer (at least to convince myself) is what if you fall in love after marriage or you don’t ever fall in love. In that case as rightly said by Shahrukh in kank, you just have to stop searching and believe this guy is the right guy. I am not advocating love marriages here because no one knows us better than our parents, but I just feel it is lesser of two evils.

A step further into this thought process and you can’t help but think, Why the pressure of getting married at all? What if you are not meant for a marriage and the entire package of responsibilities which comes with it? This option is almost never given to you. This is a business philosophy but I wonder is it even true here “It’s better to be first at the risk of being wrong than it is to be 100 percent perfect two years too late”.

I have tried finding answers to these questions how does it all happen and people say it just does, no one can explain it to you but it just does. I am sure it will for most of us eventually but till the time it doesn’t, these questions will remain unanswered. But I wish everyone takes the leap when they are ready, when they meet someone and fall in love, when they are sure that he is the one, when they are happy in their own space and ready to share that space with someone else and not when their parents are ready, when their friends are ready and getting married, when the society says so, when they are becoming older, when they can’t find anything else to do or when they just can’t find someone else. My mantra Run free until you find someone just as wild to run along with .Till you find the right time and the right guy GO WILD, GO FREE!!