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One of the worst regrets of my life was that my elder sister did not marry young. Unbeknownst to me, I think she had suitors at 15. She married late, very late for the time, after our parents started piling pressure on her. She must have been in her early thirties.
I would argue with my parents to leave her alone but to no avail. She had just joined ICI- MOD, one of the few who had bagged a job in the new organisation without an interview. I asked my parents to give her time to settle down and enjoy her new position. Of course, they would not listen. Thirty plus was a borderline age for marriage at the time. I assured my sister that she should ignore our parents and carry on with her life, which proved to be easier said than done.
Children's marriage was the ultimate pie for my parents. I was so defiant that we waited until the 11th hour to buy a ring. While driving to a jeweler's house at midnight for the ring, I assured her that we could still call off the whole thing. She sounded tired when she said: "I don't want our parents to suffer anymore because of me."
A couple of months after her marriage, she fell ill and never recovered. She finally died at AIIMS in Delhi. The day she died, I was at Swoyambhu marveling at the mountains glistening in glorious sunshine and thinking, "What a glorious day to leave the world." The following day, I received a telegram from my father: "Rita left for her heavenly abode yesterday."
What is the connection between the caption and the story? I wish my sister had married at 15 or thereabout when proposals came by the dozen. She could have enjoyed a blissful life for about 15 to 17 years.
Who knows, she would have lived longer if she had married early. One thing was sure she would have got a better groom at 15, much better than what she got at 31 or 32.
The legal age for marriage is 20 in the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. The age of consent for sex is 15 in France.
An informal marriage broker or counselor or fixer, if you like, has this to say: "It is not easy to find brides or grooms anymore as children are in love and physical relationships from a young age, from as early as eight or nine standards." It makes a mockery of the legal age.
Rod Stewart told his interviewer about 'death do us apart' thus: "Mate, that's a thing of the past when people did not live beyond 35 years. Marry and die young. Today, people live past 80!" The caption should not delude the readers into fantasising that we can wed at 5 or 10 or even 15 years. My sister was a child at 31. Left to herself, she would not have married before 35 or beyond. In the end, it's not about age. It is about mental and physical preparedness.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 10, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
