There comes a time in every 30-year-old Indian woman’s life when many conversations take the form of explanations. The important issue to address is: “What is a talented girl like you doing alone?”
The 30s, a cemetery
You would think that the legal recognition of homosexuality, the newly thriving fields of polyamory and open relationships, the variability in gender and sexuality and self-expression, would reduce the thinking that prompts people to ask such questions. But even young and supposedly open-minded people sometimes give in to their notion that 30 is a kind of graveyard, after which life either ends or is not as meaningful as before. A young man was recently telling our mutual friend about “a very old woman” he had the good fortune of having sex with. “She was, like, 31 or something, man,” he boasted, before realizing his mistake.
Another Gen-Z woman told me “I’ll never be Gen-Z, no matter how hard I try”. I wondered if this meant I was too old to be online, or that I wasn’t as good at it as she was, or that instead of being so up to date with memes and popular discussions, I should do something more appropriate for my age. After all, the internet is full of girls’ and boys’ math—not women’s math.
But when you’re satisfied with your life and its discontents, you don’t want to be associated with someone who doesn’t understand it. Especially when you can write a column about it.
young, sweet love
So, let me tell you (almost) everything: At 29, I was in probably the best relationship of my life, with a calm, caring, and emotionally stable man I had known for years, who had a family I would have been honored to enter. Within a few weeks of our relationship, I knew I should marry him, but by our two-year anniversary, when we were at a crossroads about what to do next, I felt I had changed a lot. “Settling down” suddenly seemed very far from who I felt I was becoming, even though I had been looking forward to getting married in my late twenties. Maybe it was the dislike of chasing something externally imposed that made me want to end it, or maybe it was something deeper (it was definitely something deeper. My parents are divorced and my family is chaotic, and I have long been subject to my own creative, destructive self-destruction).
Somehow, I was trying to discard the imposed and honour the internal. My twenties had been driven by the need to succeed at everything that came my way, despite family troubles, all in order to somehow survive as a courtesy. But now I intended to live the most incomplete of my many lives: I moved from our shared apartment to a one-bedroom flat – a real ‘room with a view’ – in which I began to write more, paint for the first time, think and work fully without interruption. I loved my solitude, which I had never allowed myself, because even outside of my gender, living and working alone, and enjoying them, was considered ‘weird’ at best. I wanted to date freely and widely, figure out what really suited me, devote more time to my many friendships, without romance or marriage becoming the basis for the rest of their lives. I have seen a lot of damage done by people doing something simply because other people were doing it.
In short, I wanted to be a sovereign person.
Now I understand Carrie Bradshaw
Adaptable or not, it was honest work to do. From Virginia Woolf to Carrie Bradshaw—whose room was in expensive New York City (even in Bangalore, I do a lot of non-writing work to maintain my mostly modest lifestyle)—writers especially crave this kind of secluded freedom. When I first watched Sex and the City last year, though, as I turned 30, my reaction to Carrie’s life wasn’t “I’m just like her friend.” I was much more critical. Despite her initial crazy fling with Big, I thought her clothes were too slutty and her columns simple and her attitude too carefree—not deep and reflective and real like me—and her activities were too pointless. Going out every night, meeting new people, buying more shoes than she could afford… what 30-year-old woman does that? She was such a… girl… I realized with horror.
She was exactly what I could never be at home, being the eldest daughter of perfectionist Tamil Brahmin parents: carefree, independent, sensual, sweet, silly, often stupid, at least financially, if not romantically as well. She was exactly what I find hard to be even today, due to both internal and external obstacles. Unlike New York City, a Bangalore landlady might still tell you things like “don’t let boys in for your own safety”. When I told this woman that I had male friends, she asked me if I was “really Brahmin”. Another landlady flatly refused to rent to a single woman because “if something happened to me”, she would be responsible.
There is no right way to live
So, when you move away from such well-trodden paths, the pressure to demonstrate contentment and success increases. Carrie was one of the first female TV protagonists to portray women as creatures of desire rather than mere objects of desire. She doesn’t just take what she gets – not always; she at least tries to be a discerning customer. And like her, despite choosing authenticity over safety, I too experience doubt. I find myself thinking like the ‘uncles and aunties of society’, who wonder how much money I’m making or how big my house is or how many followers I have or how likely I am to get married in the next few years. After all, what do I have to show for my deviance?
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Robert Frost era, it’s to discourage the kind of habitual comparative evaluation that has been normalized by the hyper-competitive Indian adulthood experience. I have to keep reminding myself, but the only lesson is this: there is no right way to live.
On love and lovers
Over the last few weeks, as I travelled to Goa and Kerala, I often wondered what it would be like for someone like me to “settle down”. I met people from “all walks of life”, according to ChatGPT. It started with a call from an old friend who told me he was back in town, on a vacation of sorts, an unimaginable luxury for Indian kids of the 90s who were repeatedly told to move on.
We chatted all day — if I may be so bold, my Gen-Z readers — and then met some of her friends. Single people talked about how romance in our 30s is completely different than it is in our 20s. It’s less about chemistry and more about overcoming attachment styles and subconscious patterns that lead to exciting but otherwise unsuitable partners. Another had been in an open relationship with her main partner for almost a decade, with girlfriends and boyfriends in other countries as well. Another lamented her inability to fall in love again after her most serious relationship ended badly. Another old friend messaged me about the end of her marriage after years of being together.
From this colorful scene, my friend and I moved on to meet two other friends, a married couple who might be the poster child of the ‘New-Indian-Happily-Married-Hindu’ family. Like other couples I’ve been hanging out with recently, they too made me yearn for the traditional monogamous marriage arrangement. We talked until 3 a.m., and I woke up the next day to meet a friend I’d made in Goa. He had moved there to be “more quaint,” after realizing that more cosmopolitan cities wouldn’t give him the life he wanted. We considered the idea of dating, but my now familiar commitment-phobia reared its head again. I had barely gotten out of a situation with an ex who was once my favorite, but was now completely wrong for me, with chemistry causing painful ups and downs.
Talking about being romantically foolish, it’s too old for that now.
Who doesn’t have ‘problems’?
Luckily, it didn’t take me long to forget him, because I met interesting and desirable people on the many apps you can go on now — from Bumble and Hinge and Field to, yes, even… Shaadi.com. Many people find these platforms to be hellish, and I probably will eventually, too, but if you’re an anthropologist, as I sometimes become, it’s easy to trade results for observations and stories. I’m still not sure what I want, but I’ve met a wildlife researcher whose first conversation with me involved an image of a bear standing on its scales. I’ve also met lawyers and designers and writers and artists and technology bros, and couples and divorcees and singles and weird and non-weird people — some constantly online and others not — and what I’m learning is something no relationship coach or matchmaker will ever tell me, but what’s most important to know: There is no right way to live.
No one seems happier than the other. No one seems to have no problems. Some of these problems are in spite of following a well-trodden path. Some of them are in consequence of straying away from it, which is understandable. A lot of the problems come from wondering whether the problems are valid, and whether others can, will, or should have these problems.
For now, I’m here to confirm that they have problems too, and they’re the same as yours, and you’re okay.
And I am fine too, I think so.
,Sanjana Ramachandran (The author is founder of marketing agency Storified.in)
Disclaimer: These are the personal views of the author
