An eerie tale of single, unmarried guy of 30
I am standing at the age of thirty, an age when almost all of my friends have two kids. Our culture was long reputed for being a place of premature marriage; the scenario, however, is gradually changing due, largely, to some random odd guys like me. While at 30, I can’t see forth my marriage coming even at the furthest point, most of the guys tie the knot at 25 or so. For girls? Subtract 3 or 4.
A decade in twenties is rather telling for everyone, mainly due to career perspectives, and major life developments are expected in this time window—marriage included. You shape your life here what you will become. I too framed my life during this time, with books, notebooks and theories—theories that never seem to matter much in life. I was a bookworm; I now have changed to a good reader instead. I read too much in the teens in the fear that someone would topple me in the academic ranks. Being valedictorian was my class, and that’s where I came from. During those days of yore, discomfiture engulfed me every time a girl accosted me. They would usually come to learn something from me, like math-works or stuffs. I grappled best to hedge them off thinking in this crowd of the people why they would come to me. I was shy, and I was reticent. In my whole school days, I only spoke two or three girls of my age. Later at home alone, Kafkaesque imagery of beauty would gratify me as Jolie or Britney in the glazed ‘wave’ magazine pages.
Rabindra Adhikary
I now live in the era of digital obsession of typing, tapping, panning, clicking and swiping. The world as oftentimes called as the global village, is pulled down to you on the screen at your arm’s range at the snap of a fingertip. The real-time conversation between people across the continent lets you get connected. This is the very time – a something that can be taken as a new normal pehaps – when a person can have multiple partners, unbeknownst to any one of them. Love now comes in the marque of time given and words typed, sent. I pronounce this, while there might be high chance of emotional copulation, the virtual relationship; because in my personal opinion, real relationship exacts physical proximity. Distant relationship sustains if the partners have occasional reunion in real, or else they end up seeking partners for corporeal satisfaction. Cyber-relationship is quite easy to earn since there is no responsibility part involved. Far too many youngsters are stuck in this landscape of virtual romance, pastime, and recreation. You can’t call it a date when a date is easily achievable, anytime, any point in a day. Single and after 25, is when a person is on the lookout for a virtual relationship—at least so had been the case of mine. As reserved and reticent as a person, it took me almost a year to open myself in the platform of one-to-one opposite sex communication. Once I felt easy, it was more fun to browse by different pages, different books even.
The popular online rendezvous slithered first in my life in the brand of two messengers—Hotmail and then Yahoo—later completely supplanted by Facebook. Well, Facebook was a great experience to meet people in comparison to Orkut which I was then using. Then arrived another contraption: smartphone, which deluged the trend of apps. Lately, Whatsapp and Viber had become the apps of choice to get connected. We, the people wielding technology, dated at time relevance, not at space propinquity. So what? I seemingly tend to believe I have been put back at behaving in social situations by this on-the-tap-and-go tech. You cannot really feel the environment at the other point in space where your text or voice input ends.
At the age of 30, and it’s the scariest moment if you are still single and unmarried. There are few selects, who are single and have no signs of getting partners quite too soon. And you realize they must be the netizens managing their online dating sites’ accounts. This is a level higher than using Facebook to get to know people. Because this time we are serious, in urge to know, meet and date a person in order to finally get married and live happily ever after. But, things don’t go as you think. It’s like a game and you go one level more to matrimonial sites. You have to resort to these sites because they appear to guarantee through their promotional taglines that you would find your partner. But nothing works at last when your actions of approach are profoundly steered by more-than-necessary thoughts—which are more mature, experience-bound and trepidation-filled intermixed with ego and insecurities.
Even in the years that bring you painful moments, the intensity of pain deepens rather dramatically when Valentine’s Day is coming. In this particular occasion, your disappointment boils up deep inside as you see a perfect couple necking in the park, oblivious of the surround. While still single, even a sight of a decent hug or a demure hand-holding upsets you.
(Adhikary is a consultant optometrist at Reiyukai Eiko Masunaga Eye Hospital, Banepa, and is 2010 graduate of Institute of Medicine; Maharajgunj, Kathmandu. He can be reached at ravinems@iom.edu.np)
