DOTSIM stands for The Life of the Single Indian Male.
My Dear Friends,
Happy Holi and Happy Good Friday.
I hope everyone must have enjoyed and are still enjoying their holidays that subsequently got clubbed with the weekend.
I would like to share my feelings on how one fine day i just decided to live a single life. You may call it weird for a young person like me deciding to life alone at such an early age but there are reasons.
Men, especially Indian men decide to live a single life only after going through bitter experiences of marriage and subsequent divorce, some make sacrifices in order to serve their disabled aging parents and some do it as they have family responsibilities of getting their siblings settled down in life and in doing so, they decide to make sacrifices.
I don't belong to any of the above categories. My previous blog posts and my introduction has clearly stated that i am an orphan, though not by birth but by destiny. Having lost my parents at a young age and having no relatives to take care of me, i hard to work the hard way in life and rise. At present I am happy and content at the position i have reached and the academic credentials i have achieved.
But then why does a man like me decide to remain single?????? Good Question, but the answer remains to be complicated. I now summarize the reasons on making the decision of living alone.
Living the life of an Orphan especially in an upward mobile Indian Society has never been easy. Though i kept myself engaged and busy all those years , single handedly focusing on my career and professional development, i did miss a lot on my personal front. The loss of my parents made it difficult for me to accept the reality. During those times i had no one to console me or emotionally support me. Those years were a challenge. Not having had emotional support or any form of love or affection left a vacuum in my heart. It also made me emotionally dysfunctional. All my emotions got bottled up and stored in my heart.
Today i find it difficult to attach myself with someone because of the very fear of loosing that person and again going through and emotional tragedy. I have gone through it once , subsequently came out of it and i cannot go through it again.
My developmental years were spent in loneliness and solitude, which clearly meant no summer vacations, no festival celebrations and no family get together. I even forgot celebrating my birthday.
This made me quite an individual personality. I have hardly attended any social functions.
Once I completed my education and started my professional career, i thought that things might improve, but they did not.I thought of finding someone who could relate to me/understand me. But people of the Indian Society live is a world of fantasy, majority of the fantasies being borrowed from Bollywood movies and Gothic Television soaps, they had no sense of reality. To discuss pragmatism with them was utterly useless.
I had no one to represent me or speak on my behalf for an alliance of arranged marriage. After all everyone wants a Groom who belongs to a DECENT INDIAN FAMILY, people like me who don't have parents are considered to be anti social elements. The concept of a self made man, the concept of hard work, dedication, single handed achievements all on your own without the help and support of anyone looks good in some novel or in a movie, in reality it does not make any sense. The truth is that it is your family, your caste, your creed, your religion, your community, your home, your near and dear relatives, your family's social standing in the society and god knows what else takes the very definition of the Decent Indian family.
Online social matrimonial sites were no better. I made a profile and wrote all the true facts about myself , thinking that i would meet people with a modern cosmopolitan mindset only to be proven wrong other wise. I did get interests all from the dejected and the rejected girls of the Indian Society, those women whom no one would even care to marry, the category of these woman was varied but i choose not to mention what they were or else i will be labelled as a misogynist. It was strange, just strange to see women, just desperate to get married, to get a marital status in order to escape the backlash and the stigma of the Indian society. Fathers who were so miserable at their own condition that they just wanted to wash of their hands of responsibility and dump their daughters on someone.
The humiliating thing was that i was considered to be a last resort of the category of such dejected and rejected women, some form of garbage can where you can dump a waste that no other person was willing to take, some form of scrape dealer who would be given obsolete and used items. Here i was exposed to the double standards and the poisonous hypocrisy of the Indian Society. All that talk that we only want a good person for our daughter and that we won't pay dowry was bullshit. The reality was that in this country every girls father " BRIBES" his way to get his daughter married, the reality is that this very father will reject good people like myself who will take good care of his daughter and will go for some uncouth man just because he happens to be from a good decent Indian family and he has a well paying job. In this country the dowry seeking criminals are not the one who only demand dowry but equally the ones who give. Such fathers don't mind ruining the lives of their daughters by marrying them into families who will mentally and physically torture her but they will not even think once before considering people like me.
No, I am not complaining, why should i complain, who am i to complain???? Just like the marginalized members of the Indian society i happen to be an Orphan, who listens to the voice of orphans other that the almighty god.
During my search for that special someone, I have been subjected to the worst form of interrogation, the same that Intelligence personnel subject hardened terrorists to. I have been looked upon by every eye and every angle of suspicion. This is the price one has to pay of being truthful, this the price one has to pay for being an orphan. And what about those people, what about those people who fake about themselves, what about those who project their disabled sons as normal, who fake their undereducated sons as over educated, those who project their jobless sons as corporates earning 6 figure salaries, so that they can fraud a girl' family knowing the fact that once the marriage has been solemnized and consummated there is no going back, the girl and her family will have to accept the guy, whether they like him or not. Indian families have silently suffered such betrayals not telling people the reality otherwise they would be mocked and laughed at. Bitter marriages have been fought in court rooms and ended into acrimonious divorces and nothing but a bleak future. This is the reality, and yet people like me who go with all the facts and evidences stating our salary slips, our educational certificates, our bank accounts, our references etc are looked upon by nothing but suspicion, contempt and disgust.
Every meeting forces me to open the graveyard of my bitter past, something that i have tried to forget and leave behind. People question my integrity, morals and character. People question the background of my late parents. I am looked upon to be an Anti social element.
The pain resonating from the loss of my parents has been subsided , though it has left a vacuum in my heart, however the stigma of being an Orphan in this society has branded me for life.
After going through all the trials and tribulations one fine day i just deiced to stay single all my life. I gave up on the thought of getting married, i chose that i would not go though humiliating interrogations. That i would not be looked upon as a desperate person trying to get back into the Indian society. i just created a parallel and opposite life that was totally averse of the Indian Society.
Because in living single i have found and am still finding personal redemption, because in living single i discovered my talents skills and abilities. I found a sister with whom i share strong bonds, i won't deny that i see my mother in her. I found the strength and conviction to fight battles of my life alone. I learned the joys of reading, the passion i had for English Language and teaching the same. I discovered the talent inside me, that of being a content writer. My entry into the area of Human Resources and Training and Development and further growth and rise in my career. The joys of traveling to different places. The fitness freak withing me got active again i started running marathons and lifting weights. The joy of going to cinemas and watching my favorite movies, of going to coffee shops and reading books. I still feel that there is lot more i can do.
Yes life does become routine, but it becomes interesting when i set new goals for myself in order to achieve them . I do try my best to live a Happy life.
Do i still seek that special one??? My answer is yes, because i don't loose hope. The years gone by have made me a wiser person bestowing much needed wisdom for a person of my age. What i do seek is a friend for life , the companion ship of which can be nurtured everyday. But i am not desperate, because desperation only leads to frustration. I won't mind if i remain single for my entire life because i know that the greatest relation that one can have is the one with his/her own self. I see my life with adventures and visits to distant lands.
And with this i complete my blog post "One day i just deiced to life a Single Life" , yes I am an Orphan but I am not a beggar and because even death is a honorable option than to fold your hands and beg in front of the India Society.
This is Bhaveen Sheth signing off for the day, i will be back with plenty more.
Regards,
Bhaveen Sheth
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