GetawayWriter12
"I was told not to laugh too loudly-it didn't suit the family."
"Someone suggested I change the way I signed my name after marriage."
"They discussed my food preferences in a family meeting-without me in the room."
None of these moments ended a marriage.
None of them caused a scene.
And none of them were ever spoken about again.
This book begins in those moments.
Reasons Why Women Should Not Get Married in India is a non-fiction collection of real, short stories told by women across generations who encountered the strange, uncomfortable, and quietly disorienting realities of marriage. Their marriages were not disasters. Many were stable. Some were loving. But all of them came with small incidents that carried big meanings-moments that made these women pause and wonder when, exactly, they had begun disappearing.
Each chapter presents a "reason," not as an argument, but as a lived experience: the comments passed casually at family dinners, the expectations that arrive without discussion, the subtle reshaping of personality, preferences, body, colour, voice, and behaviour. These are not dramatic confessions. They are everyday truths-easy to dismiss, impossible to forget.
This is not a book against marriage. It acknowledges that many women build happy, fulfilling partnerships. But it also insists that the quieter discomforts the ones that don't look serious enough to protest deserve to be documented.
Intimate, unsettling, and deeply familiar, this book gives language to experiences women usually share only in whispers. It asks no one to reject marriage. It simply asks readers to notice what is usually overlooked.
Because sometimes, the strangest parts of marriage are also the most telling.