You are only nineteen. Your pre-university examination is just over and you expect very good result because you have worked hard. You have a dream. You want to be a doctor but you will not. Instead you will marry one. I mean you will marry a doctor who is two decades and five years older to you. You argue and place your reasons. Most tragically, your parents will not listen to you. They will listen to your aunties, I mean the matchmakers of the family. Why? Because you are still a child and you don’t know what is good and what is bad for you. You have not lived even a quarter of your life. You have no idea at all about the world. They are making this arrangement for your own good. And according to their wisest opinion, there can never be another suitor more suitable for you than this man. But he is so much older than you and you wonder. Yet you cannot help but be gullible. You become just another patch of color in their narrow scheme of things.
You protest. You cry. Your dreams shatter. And no one is bothered about your ambition in life. They insist, he is too gentle and too respectable to be refused. Moreover, which family refuses a proposal from such an affluent family. Reluctant and whimpering, you are compelled to abandon your dreams. The precious privilege of choosing who you want to share your life’s struggles with is taken away from you. The females in the family are avidly worried about your well being. They are proud of their matchmaking skills. Your father, one of the voiceless males in the family feels your pain but there is nothing much he can do. He is equally helpless as you are and most of the time, his decisions fall on deaf ears.
Your heartbreak feels more painful when you see the man you are supposed to marry. His effeminate mannerism and speech pattern disturbs you. His coiffed and oiled hair irritates you. You have never liked men who wear white formal shoes and he is wearing one. You know it is rude to judge people’s personal taste but you are only nineteen years old and the ideal man of your imagination still lived in your Mills & Boons novels. He is of average height though and seems like a nice person. He is very courteous to the experienced members present at the burial ceremony of your ambition. In a curious way, he is prim and proper but there is something missing in his eyes. There is no enthusiasm in them. You wonder why he is not excited to see you. His parents are more thrilled to see you than him. Sadly, the knowledgeable adults, the experts fail to see the emptiness you see in his eyes. Along with the Gulf War, your engagement is the talk of the town. You are the envy of many mothers and aunties who wish similar luck for their daughters and nieces.
Your big day happens in the grandest manner. You are not at all impressed. Yet, you repeat the wedding vows to be with this man in good times, in bad times, to remain faithful until death. You are taken to your new home, new world, new surrounding, new responsibilities and new surprises. You hardly know how to take care of yourself and here you are faced to look after another person, another family. You are showered with generous blessings and advices by the very experienced members of the family with an assurance that everything will fall in place once you learn to adjust. You are willing to learn. I mean you must learn. Brought up to be an obedient woman, you are extremely polite and helpful to your in-laws. You and the husband live in a separate house but being the only daughter-in-law, you are duty-bound to be present wherever, whenever the new family needs you. All of a sudden, your life’s purpose takes a different direction. You lose touch with your friends and you cannot visit your parents too often. Losing this life could have been easier if the marriage was as rosy as it appeared.
Days turn to weeks and to months and the marriage is already a year old. Ironically, “the wet cement year” of your marriage is nothing but a dry desert. Being taught to be a decent lady, you are too embarrassed to talk about this to anyone. How could you even explain this void in your marriage. Moreover, the little cramped world of your society viewed you and him as the happiest married couple enjoying the bliss of marriage to the fullest. You give your best to save this image. You try hard to create a space where the two of you could actually spend time together. You curtail all your self-interests and devote yourself totally to his needs. After all, the husband is a dedicated and sincere doctor. Materially and financially, you are never left in want.
You begin to hear murmurs which are no longer quiet. The parents, relatives, neighbors, church members, acquaintances…everyone’s anxious. But you cannot blame them either. Being in a close-knit society which places high priority on marriage and motherhood, everyone becomes curious if a wife is not pregnant in a few months of the marriage. And in your case, it is already two years. Your mother-in-law calls you and the husband for a heart-to-heart meeting. She sincerely tells you both that the family’s one and only desire is to see grandchildren running around the house and garden. She serves an ultimatum. You feel a painful cringe. You cannot tell her the truth. By now, there are people who assume you to be barren. Some console themselves saying there’s hope because you are still young. No one mentions any doubt on the part of the husband and your burden becomes heavier.
You try harder. You buy more soft pillows and more soft blankets. You think of every possible way to bring some romance into your home. You buy scented candles and warm rugs. You give your best to create a cozy home where the two of you can escape from the rest of the world and whatever is taking his heart away from you. You learn to cook the most delicious meals. When he eats and drink, you try to read his expression to understand which taste he prefers more, but all your efforts fail to ignite the romantic fire in him. His mother’s nagging becomes extremely severe. He gives in and starts inquiring about your periods. He comes to you only on certain nights and the action is nothing passionate as you see in movies. You can feel his discomfort. You see only guilt and pain in his face every time he performs the act and you cannot respond to his reluctant lovemaking, I mean babymaking. You are certain there is definitely something wrong, terribly wrong. Sometimes your body aches in want of real love and intimacy. But it is sinful for a woman to have physical desires, that’s what you always hear. You will be called a whore, an immoral woman if you make sensual moves forward. You die a little every day. And you are only twenty three.
Fortunately or unfortunately, you miss your period by the end of the third year. You and your dog, your only faithful companion gets pregnant in the same month. This time, the dates of your ovulation period matched the doctor’s calculated move. He is happy to fulfill the earnest wish of his parents. A son is born. He is a proud father and a caring husband in the eyes of the world. When your son is two years old, he announces that the family needs another child. He matches the dates again to find the right time to breed. You get another set of gold ornaments. It’s a baby boy again. The family is at ease. The man’s place in society elevates higher while your self esteem falls to the lowest low. You are simply a baby producing machine, incapable of being loved in a normal way.
Motherhood somehow takes away the awkward feelings you have about your marriage. The husband is a happy father but that doesn’t bring him any closer to you. You wish for a daughter but the family’s quest is already fulfilled with two heirs to inherit their name and wealth. They do not miss the absence of a daughter. Your husband is relieved. The ideal family picture is beautifully framed for the world to see and no one can see the missing patches of color in the picture. And somehow, because of all the awe, admiration and respect that your perfect family receive from the society and the church, you try to ignore the absence of passion in your most private life. It is easy to hide behind the mask of social hypocrisy, religion and pretension, so well used by the husband. Everything is adjusted until it all crashes down in the most unexpected manner.
One Saturday, you take your kids to your old home for a sleepover. Your father’s in the village to attend a wedding and your mother’s alone. After reaching, you find important items of the children missing.You rush back home to get them. The front door is locked. You enter through the back door. The door of the room next to your living room is left ajar. You take a peek. You witness the most unbelievable sight. You see your husband in an unacceptable position with a man. There are no words to describe your personal trauma and shock. What do you name this kind of affair? Who would you talk to? What about the beautiful picture in the frame? What about your boys? You go silent.
For several weeks, there is not a single exchange of words between you and the husband. The everyday things continue as usual. Finally, one night, the husband enters your bedroom and succumbs to the mental and emotional stress of being caught that way. He breaks down and cries like a baby. He begs for forgiveness and understanding. You feel extremely cheated into this fake marriage. There is nothing you can do, except to call up relatives and tell them everything. You are only waiting for a proper state of mind to announce this mess. You are broken into several pieces that can never be picked up again.
Suddenly, one question escape involuntarily from your mouth, “Why a man?” Had it been a woman, it could have been easier for you to tell the family. And you wouldn’t be so broken. There is only silence in the room with two broken souls sitting on the opposite edges of the bed. You fail to remember how you fell asleep that night. You wake up to the alarm at 6 in the morning. You continue the usual chores. All these years, you did not feel the need of a helper in the house. You love doing everything on your own. Moreover, the husband always chips in whenever possible. You take your laughing boys to the bus stand. Poor kids, they have no idea how bad the situation is. Back home, you find the husband in the verandah, asleep with the newspaper in hand. In his face, you see the same guilt and pain you saw earlier when you made babies. He is awakened by your footsteps. He follows you inside. He wants to explain, that’s what he said. You think in silence for some time. Suddenly, you remember the lack of enthusiasm in his eyes when he first saw you. You realize he’s been forced into this marriage by his parents in order to get heirs. You feel he deserves a chance to explain.
He tells you many things, most of which are so new to you. You come to know about his homosexuality, that some people are born different. And that he is also born that way but is afraid to let the world know. Moreover, being the only male child in the family, he was compelled to bear the responsibility of continuing the blood line. You are speechless. You only wish he had the courage to be who he really is, instead of fulfilling other people’s wishes. That would have saved us both from being entrapped in the mismatched patches of the universe. Life is strange. You find yourself in a reality that is more fictitious than fiction. You understand the husband’s plea but you must think of a way to forget this new surprise.
You are already thirty one but you decide to join college. You hope to find solace in education. You want to prove to the world that it is never too late to dream another dream. The husband makes necessary arrangements to relocate the wife and the sons to another city far away from home. During holidays, you and your sons fly back home to the husband and a happy family. After a long night’s journey, today you are pursuing your PhD in Psychology, your sons are excelling in their studies and the husband, happily funding. You are forty and you agree, “forty is the new twenty.”
