- Bonus points to you if you guessed that title is also a song by country songbird Paula Cole.
My folks would currently have me believe that my Cowboy is somewhere in Chicago.
Let me explain - I'm female, single, and approaching the big dreaded 30. And those three facts have my parents worried. They're Indian (Tamil) and programmed to worry. Never mind that I am happy and healthy (OK, slightly underweight but I'm working on it), have a great job, friends to call my own and mostly mentally sane (Starting this blog however is making me question my own sanity!). My angst-ridden folks are for now preferring to focus on the three things I do not have - boyfriend, fiance or husband.
My parents were born and brought up in Tamil Nadu and although we moved around a lot as kids, we eventually settled down in the one of the leafy suburbs of London when I was around 13yrs old. Unlike other Indian parents, me and my bro grew up with a lot of freedom. Sure we had curfews but we were never banned from going out or drinking. We weren't actively encouraged to take up a medical degree (this seems to be a rarity in my family's circle of friends) or barred from dating. While my parents have over the years, come round to the idea that this is a very real possibility and even (shock horror) date a non-Indian, they don't seem to have come round to the idea that equally I may end up thirty and single!
Of course during my twenties while I fell in love and duly classified a few failed relationships under 'Life Lessons' (my last relationship was 18 months ago), they have intermittently brought up the idea of an arranged marriage. I'm not entirely averse to the idea of being introduced to someone and yet I also confusingly find the idea a little, for lack of a better word, icky. For the past five years, I have somehow managed to wriggle out of these situations, sometimes after having met the guy, sometimes before. But the looming of the big Thirty is starting to affect not just my sanity. While I wonder like the song 'Where is my happy ending?, Where have all the Cowboys gone?', my parents are back on the hunt in the meat (sorry marriage) market.
Recently they have found a 'nice Tamil guy' in Chicago who has just emigrated from Canada, previously emigrated from India after achieving some high flying degree. Don't ask me for any more details, that's about as much as I have. His parents apparently insisted I visit them in Chennai first before having any contact with said guy because their choice is acceptable for son, without question. My reaction - 'Seriously?? What century are they living in??.. and this has a snowball's chance in hell of working out!'
But things must be getting desperate because:
Folks: Why don't you fly there for a weekend? Fly out on Friday and come back by Monday.
Me: This isn't like catching a train from Madurai to Madras. This is actually a ten hour flight with in-flight movies so boring I could pull my hair out, hours of security checks, all for what?? Not even a holiday at the end of it!
Folks: You don't have to answer now, just think about it.
Me: sure OK.
I then duly spent the next two days thinking of a polite way to say no. In the end all I could come up with was a big, fat, NO. Of course this being the equivalent of a super-long Indian soap opera, the matter just doesn't end there. His parents duly change tack and then broach the idea of me visiting him in Chicago. I don't know why but flying West for a weekend is understood to be totally doable. It's like flying out for a conference or a business trip. This rules out the flat-out-no response. This means that I actually have to seriously consider doing this, if for the only reason of having run out of 'Get out of jail free' cards. i.e. I have said 'no' too many times over too many years.
So maybe I should fly over? I have the added benefit of friends in Chicago, so at the very least we would hit a couple of bars and have a good time. What's in a meeting right? Part of me thinks I should go and part of me worries that this may become that proverbial snowball that snowballs out of control. So dear readers (if indeed there are any..), in the words of that other famous song 'Should I stay or Should I go?'
CC
