While most of north India goes a little berserk around Karwa Chauth with salons offering special packages, stores offering discount coupons and restaurants offering couple treats, it’s all targeted at the married Indian woman who plans to keep a fast for her husband.
Understandably, the collective obsession with married women becomes rather nausea-inducing for those who are single and looking, all the more so if they are in their 30s and there’s tremendous social pressure for them to be married too.
We talked to a few women who married late to get cues on how to attract a good husband (since that seems to be very important to the single ladies), and how to make this day of fasting something less blah.
First, what must a 30-something Indian woman do to get the right guy, for heaven’s sake? Aren’t the good ones all taken by now? Listen up.
1. Stop looking. That’s when you’ll start finding. Women who married late say Mr Right turned up in their life when they got busy being happy, pursuing their passions, and generally investing time and energy on themselves, rather than on scouring matrimonial websites and newspaper classifieds.
2. Change the bar. Some people tell you to lower your bar when it comes to finding the right guy once you hit the big 3-0 or 3-5 or 4-0. Others tell you to keep the bar high and pray hard, do all that Law of Attraction stuff. But women who marry late say they ended up changing the bar completely. They opened their minds to new kinds of ideas, they let in new kinds of people in their lives, and the right guy actually popped up in the unlikeliest of places. What they thought of ‘boring’ earlier, actually turned out pretty deep; someone they thought of as ‘immoral’ earlier, actually turned out to be a real gentleman when it came to the important things in life.
3. Loosen up about sex. A lot of single 30-somethings, especially in India, have huge amounts of sexuality issues. On one hand, they’re highly moralistic about pre-marital sex (one woman told us she didn’t want to be ‘used’ if he wasn’t the guy she would marry). On the other hand, they’re really frustrated, sexually speaking, and that spills over into all other aspects of their lives, adding a certain strain to their interactions with men. They end up repelling instead of attracting the right people.
First thing is to stop looking at sex as a one-sided proposition — the man takes, the woman gives. That’s not true. Women can and do enjoy sex as much as men (if you need proof, read up on the only organ in the human body that has no other function besides sexual pleasure, and it’s only available on the woman: the clitoris), and no one need feel ‘used’ if the interaction is based on consent, understanding and mutual attraction.
Secondly, research says men are subconsciously able to tell when a woman enjoys her orgasm simply by looking at her gait. So perhaps the answer to seeking mindblowing sex with the right guy is to have mindblowing sex first. The right guy will turn up once he sees you strut by. (And if a man judges you for your past, he’s not the right guy for you anyway.)
4. Stop falling for douchebags. While lust is as important as love, avoid flings with men who are just plain WRONG for you. That may mean avoiding married men or those in committed relationships, maybe addicts, definitely those who ask you if you are a virgin. Some men aren’t worth it, and you don’t want to end up feeling hollow at the end of what is supposed to be a pleasurable adventure.
Now let’s look at 10 things you can do on Karwa Chauth 2014 so that you don’t feel lonely and miserable watching married women be hungry and miserable all day, fasting for their beaming husbands who get a huge kick from the fact that there’s one woman in the world who’d give up a day’s nutrition every year so that he may live longer.
1. Find out what bar is serving free drinks for women and head there with your girlfriends.
2. Watch a movie that has nothing to do whatsoever with finding the right guy. How about Haider or Mary Kom, in cinemas now?
3. Take a road trip out of town.
4. Have sex.
5. Cook your favourite meal, have a hot scented bath, and curl up with yourself reading a great book or watching a great movie on TV.
6. Indulge in your favourite sport — swimming, rafting, golfing — with a single friend or a parent or a sibling.
7. Take up something new — join a yoga class, a dance workshop, a laughter club.
8. Contribute your time to a social cause and make people smile.
9. Outperform every single colleague at work and come home feeling like a star.
10. Send up a little prayer — not of yearning for the man in your life, but for gratitude that you are here, healthy, single and free, with access to the Internet and so much to offer the world.
Happy Karwa Chauth, all ya single ladies.
Photo credit: Unsplash
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