"Shaadi Kab?" Getting Through the Festive Season's Questions

You know the moment. The sweets are out, the house smells of ghee and marigold, someone has finally got the lights working on the balcony — and an aunt you see twice a year settles in next to you, smiles, and asks the question.

Shaadi kab kar rahe ho? Package kitna hai? Kitne marks aaye? Abhi tak job nahi mili? Bachcha kab plan kar rahe ho?

It's asked warmly, usually. It's asked in front of people, often. And whatever you answer, it lands somewhere it's been landing all year — the part of you that was already worried about exactly this.

This is a piece about getting through that moment, and the dozen others like it between Dhanteras and Bhai Dooj, without either swallowing it whole or blowing up the family WhatsApp group.

Why one question can ruin an evening

On paper, it's just a question. In practice it's three things at once.

It's a comparison. The question almost never comes alone; it comes with a cousin's wedding, a neighbour's son in America, a colleague's daughter who cleared the exam on the first attempt. You're not being asked about your life. You're being measured against everyone else's.

It's public. In most Indian families, how you're doing isn't private information — it reflects on your parents, and your parents' standing with their siblings, and so on up the tree. That's where log kya kahenge comes from: not malice, but the sense that your choices are a family's shared reputation.

And it touches something real. If the question didn't hurt, you'd laugh it off. It hurts because you've probably asked yourself the same thing at two in the morning. The aunt isn't telling you anything new. She's just saying out loud the thing you've been trying not to think about.

Seeing it that way doesn't make the question pleasant. But it does explain why a single sentence over kaju katli can follow you home for three days.

Decide your answers before you arrive

The worst answers come out when you're caught off guard. The best defence is boring: know roughly what you'll say before anyone asks.

You're not preparing a speech. You're preparing a sentence — one that's true, short, and closes the topic without opening a debate. Something like:

"Not yet — I'll make sure you're the first to know." "Work's going well, I'm learning a lot." "Still preparing, the exam's in March." "We're happy as we are for now."

Then — and this is the important part — follow it immediately with a question back. "How's your knee, by the way?" "Did Rinku settle in at college?" Most relatives are not actually interested in your career plan; they're interested in conversation, and this is the conversational script they know. Hand them a different one and most will take it gratefully.

If someone pushes, you're allowed to repeat yourself. The same sentence, said calmly a second time, is far more effective than a better-argued answer. Arguments invite counter-arguments. Repetition just signals that the topic is closed.

What's happening in your body, and what to do with it

When the question lands, you'll probably notice it physically before you notice it as a thought. A tightening across the chest. Heat in the face. A sudden urge to be anywhere else.

That's your nervous system reacting to a social threat the same way it reacts to any other kind. It's fast and it isn't under your control. What is under your control is the next ten seconds.

Before you answer, take one slow breath — in through the nose, and a longer breath out. Nobody will notice; it looks like you're thinking, which you are. Feel your feet on the floor. Then answer. That tiny pause is often the difference between the sentence you planned and the one you'll replay all night.

And give yourself somewhere to go. Volunteer to help in the kitchen, take the children out to light phuljhadis, go and buy the ice nobody asked for. Small exits aren't rude. They're how sensible people have always survived large family gatherings.

Talking to your parents, separately

Often the real pressure isn't the aunt. It's that your mother looks embarrassed when the aunt asks, and you can feel your father wishing you had a better answer. That's the part that stays with you.

If that's the case, the conversation worth having is not with the relatives but with your parents — and not on Diwali night. Some quiet morning before or after, try telling them what it's like from your side. Not as an accusation, just as information: "When everyone asks about marriage, I feel like I'm letting you down, and I'm already worried about it myself."

Parents who have spent a lifetime protecting the family's image sometimes don't realise their child has been absorbing all of it. Many are relieved to be asked to stand beside you instead of slightly behind the relatives. Some won't be. Either way, you'll know where you stand, and that is easier to carry than guessing.

If you're the parent

It's worth saying, because many people reading this are on the other side of the room.

You may not be the one asking the questions, but you're the one your child is watching while they're asked. A simple "Arre, let them eat first" from you, said lightly, tells everyone the topic is closed — and tells your child, more clearly than any conversation, that you're on their side. It costs you almost nothing and they'll remember it for years.

Afterwards

Festivals end, the relatives leave, and the house goes quiet. That's often when it hits — the replaying, the comparison, the sense that everyone else is further ahead.

Treat yourself the way you'd treat a friend who'd just had the same evening. You wouldn't tell them they should be married by now or earning more. You'd tell them that the timeline in the aunt's head isn't the only timeline there is, and that a life measured only by the questions people ask at Diwali would be a very small life indeed.

If the questions are landing on something heavier — if you've been feeling low for weeks, or the gap between where you are and where you're 'supposed' to be has started to feel unbearable — please talk to someone. Tele-MANAS, the government's free mental health line, is open around the clock in many languages on 14416 or 1-800-891-4416.

And if you just want five minutes away from the noise, with someone who will never ask what your package is, Milo is around.