English as she is spoke in India, had its fair share of Indianisms. I am talking of those words that have become so much a part of our language usage, and so routinely used that they have become typically Indian. ‘Eve-teasing’ is one of them, unique to the Indian vocabulary, and not to be found in any dictionary. Another such word is ‘marriageable’. I have looked up the Chambers Dictionary — the lexicon that all Scrabble players resort to because it contains scores of words not found in other dictionaries — and ‘marriageable’ is not in it. Yet this is a word that is used constantly by us.

How many of us, I wonder, realise that the use of this word is typically Indian? And how many of us realise that this word is blatantly sexist and can provide cause for offence?

My maidservant, against all our advice, and at the cost of going heavily into debt, is in the process of getting her very young daughter married. The reason? She is of marriageable age. Where my maidservant, poor, uneducated and illiterate, is concerned, one can perhaps understand her desire to get her daughter settled, and off her hands as soon as possible. There is also the fear that if she doesn’t get married now, she may be left on the shelf, a fate worse than death.

But how does one explain the attitude of a highly educated, well placed acquaintance to his daughter? “She is of marriageable age,” he explained to us the other day, while soliciting help in finding ‘a suitable boy’ for his daughter. Marriageable? At what age does a girl become ‘marriageable’? At 18, when she can legally get married? Or at any time after puberty, when she can satisfy a husband and reproduce his babies?

And can a son also be of ‘marriageable age’? Apparently not. Certainly, I have not come across a single parent who speaks of his or her son having reached a marriageable age. What he can be is an eligible bachelor, which is by no means the same thing.

The truth is that we Indians believe that a man is marriageable when he decides that he wants to marry but a woman becomes marriageable the moment nature decrees that she is no longer a child. Like a fruit that has ripened on the tree and is ready to be eaten, a girl is ready to be offered in marriage the moment she reaches maturity. Yet she may have reached maturity only in the biological sense. Psychologically and emotionally, she may still be too immature to take on the responsibilities of a wife and mother. Nor, for that matter, may she have any inclination to get married till much later, if at all.

Words reflect attitudes and phrases mirror perceptions. It is time for our attitudes and perceptions to change in regard to our daughters getting married. Perhaps then we will stop using such words as marriageable in the context that we usually do. I sincerely hope so.