I am doing my PhD. I am studying the science behind ageing and cancer. I am the first one to pursue this kind of a degree in my family. It took me a long while to convince my parents about letting me do my PhD. All my relatives were against this. They wondered why my parents were allowing a girl to pursue her PhD. They said it would be difficult to find a guy who was as educated as me. They also said that despite my degree I would anyway be only cooking in the kitchen.

Thanks to my uncle who supported me, I was finally able to pursue my passion for science. Science really excites me and stimulates my thinking. I also love to travel. Sometimes I think of myself as a nomad.

Once I enrolled in my course, I couldn't take long breaks from my lab work. But I did take several short trips to places that interested me. I travelled to Rome first. It is a lonely place which is full of historical monuments. I have also been to San Diego lately. San Diego is considered to be the birthplace of California.

But soon enough, my parents started pressurizing me because they wanted me to get married. I tried putting things off for a while. But they kept pestering me because I was already in my late 20s. I was also their eldest child so they were keen on getting me married by the end of the year. They had already started looking out for me. They had even registered my name on a matrimonial website.

They then gave me a list of guys that they had screened and shortlisted for me. One of the guys, Mr.X, was an NRI. His parents got in touch with my parents. They exchanged horoscopes and things seemed to be quite okay.

But the biggest problem that they had with the whole thing was that it would take me two more years to finish my doctoral degree. I couldn’t move in with their son immediately after getting married because he worked in a different country.

So Mr X backed out of the proposal. One fine evening, since I had nothing else to do, I decided to skim through my emails. I noticed that my parents had sent me several emails with a list of potential grooms.

Out of sheer curiosity and because I really had nothing else to do that day, I started going through each profile carefully.

One particular guy’s profile caught my eye. Mr Y was in his late 20s like me. He was working as a software developer in a foreign country. I tried searching for him on Facebook and luckily found his profile within a few minutes. I hesitated for a while before sending him a friend request and then decided to just go ahead with it.

Mr Y accepted my request on the same day. He sent me a message which said, "Hey! I'm assuming you searched for me on Facebook after checking my profile on that matrimonial site.” We then exchanged our numbers and started texting each other.

We chatted quite a lot and discussed our interests with each other. We then debated about the things that we liked and disliked.

One day, he asked me whether I was seriously considering marriage. I could not suppress my inner voice at that time. I told him that I was doing my PhD and that it would take me another two years to finish my course.

I was surprised when he said, “That’s not a big problem for me.”

I knew he was not too concerned about this. But his parents seemed to have a problem with this. He somehow managed to convince them about me and arranged for them to meet my parents and me. We thought everything would be fine. We continued chatting with each other. Most of the time we talked about the things we normally did. Sometimes we would even discuss our future. Finally, it was time for his parents to visit us. We welcomed them with broad smiles and sweets. Our parents greeted one another. They discussed the duration of my course for a long while.

Then his mom walked towards me and gave me some advice about how to dress. She told me how to drape my shawl around my shoulders. I was awestruck. I gave her my sweetest and broadest smile and said, "OK auntie. I will drape my shawl like this from now on." I was burning with rage from within because I was mentally screaming at her.

I could sense that she did not like me as a person at all.

They said, “We will get back to you after discussing things with our son” and left our house after a while. After a while, he sent me a text message saying that his mother had not liked me. I had already sent him a text saying this. So his message did not really come to me as a shock.

He then said that he would like to give the current situation some thought and see what he could do about it. He was texting me normally even after his parents visited me.

And here I was wondering what WE could do about this.

I guess it’s time for me to take a short break from meeting all those other guys on the list. Right now my work gives me a lot of satisfaction and that is enough for me.

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