Revenge Is Best Served Cold
When I was 22, my extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, and everyone else began asking me why I wasn’t married yet. I spent my childhood and early 20s in a fairly conservative North Indian state. People in those areas tend to be deeply misogynistic and the only way a woman has any value in their eyes is if she’s attached to a man as his wife.
Her own accomplishments, talents, etc., are of no consequence. So it wasn’t all that surprising when I began getting these ridiculous questions about marriage while I was still in college. I had also recently lost a lot of weight and for the first time I actually looked good in jeans. My weight loss seemed to cause their queries to reach whole new levels of idiocy.
You see, they all assumed that the only reason I had lost weight was so I could land a husband. Surely I hadn’t done it for the sake of my own health and well-being, or because I wanted to look good for myself. That would be preposterous! This is where my troubles truly began. My aunt was friends with a busybody “matchmaker”.
Matchmakers in India are these middle-aged women who have nothing better to do than to go around carrying photographs and information about “eligible” bachelors and bachelorettes. They then share them with the families of young men and women who are looking to marry them off. My aunt’s friend was no different. She showed my aunt a picture some guy in his late 20s.
He also “had a great job and was from a respectable family”. Let’s call this guy Ajay. My aunt shared the picture and the information with my grandmother, who is also an awful person. Between the two of them, they decided that Ajay, whom I had never met before, would be the perfect match for me. Keep in mind that neither I nor my dad had any inkling of what was going on.
One afternoon, I think it was a Sunday, total chaos broke out. My aunt came over when I wasn’t home. She told my dad to “get his daughter dressed up and pretty” because she had promised me to a guy and his parents were coming over to see me that very evening. The tone in which she spoke made it sound like she had done me and my dad a big favor.
My dad was shocked and asked what the heck she was talking about. She told him she had taken it upon herself to find a groom for me (without my knowledge or consent) and “taken some of the burden off his shoulders”. She said that their mother (my grandmother) had approved of the match, too. My dad told her he would have to speak to me first.
He also made it clear that whether the guy’s parents can come over or not depends on what I have to say about this. The little witch actually tried to convince my dad that my consent wasn’t necessary and that as elders, they had every right to make this decision for me. But my dad wasn’t having it. When I came home a few hours later, my aunt greeted me with a hug.
This was enough to send red flags flying everywhere. I asked her what was going on and she gleefully told me what she had done and how her proposition had my grandmother’s blessings. I told her to shove it and that I was in no mood to have an arranged marriage—not then, not ever. She looked shocked and asked how I could say such a thing after all the trouble she’s been through in order to find “such a wonderful young man” for me. So I decided to get dirty.
I told her if the “wonderful young man” is making her so happy, why doesn’t she go marry him? My dad heard this and told me to watch myself. I told him I would if this witch knew her place and knew not to poke her nose where it doesn’t belong. Meanwhile, my grandmother had heard the commotion from her room and called out to my dad.
She began telling him about how she had seen the guy’s picture and the matchmaker had told them all about his family. She said how a match like this may not come along again. My dad told her that he would never force his daughter to marry if she doesn’t want to. My stepmom said the same. I merely told her she was insane and belongs in a lunatic asylum.
This of course, caused both my grandmother and my crazy aunt to fake cry and go on and on about how my dad doesn’t trust them to make the right decision for his daughter, and that they were family and family has the right to make decisions for each other. I wasn’t going to budge, however. I told them I wasn’t going to meet the guy or his parents and that my aunt better cancel the meeting if she knows what’s good for her.
My aunt left our house grumbling. But the drama was far from over. My grandmother, in order to emotionally blackmail my dad into agreeing to the match, stopped eating. Anytime food was brought to her, she would break into crocodile tears and whine about how my dad was dishonoring her wishes. As she was diabetic, her health began to deteriorate.
My dad was scared. One evening, he and my stepmom sat me down and asked if I would consider the proposal and just have a meeting with Ajay’s family. I was still adamant and said no. My aunt came over again and said she had great news, as Ajay’s parents were still interested in meeting me and they would allow me to study and have a career after I married their son.
I asked her what part of the word “NO” did she not understand the last time we spoke and who the heck do Ajay’s parents think they are to “allow” me to do anything? My aunt once again flew into an impotent rage and asked how I could be so selfish. How I could disobey my family like this and some other garbage about how marriage is a union between families and not just individuals.
She also talked about how in her days, girls were married off as soon as they reached adulthood whether they liked it or not. I let her go on for some time as her little hissy fit was quite amusing to me. After she and exhausted herself, I told her that if she, grandmother, or even my parents try to force me into this marriage, I was going to harm myself.
And if I survived, officers would know that I did it because I was being forced to marry against my will and all involved would be in a world of trouble. Even if I perished, I would leave behind enough evidence in the form of emails to all my friends and college professors detailing how I was being mentally tormented so I could be forced into this marriage.
Both outcomes would result in all of them in deep trouble. But I was just getting warmed up. I even showed them the email I had already written, all I had to do was send it. And if any of them even think of locking me up and taking away my phone, laptop, etc, they should remember that my vocal cords still work and I would gather the entire neighborhood with my screams.
As I spoke, my aunt’s eyes kept getting wider and wider. She was in shock, but she knew me well enough to know that I was very capable of doing all of this. She left quietly. Grandmother must have heard every word, because her hunger strike came to an end. My aunt never tried to look for a match for me again. Later, my dad told me that he was only asking me to think about the match and that he would never force me to do something I didn’t want to do.
I told him I knew that and assured him that my threats were only meant to scare my aunt. And they worked.