Cloud 9 Minus One

Sushila Aunty was the talk of the family. She never married in the days when it was unfashionable to be single. Sushila Aunty is a doctor, and once I asked her, when she was in a mellow mood, why she remained unmarried. She looked at me strangely, as though I was being quaint, and said, “I didn’t have the time. There was too much else to do.”
I could appreciate that. A doctor’s life is a busy one. I know many male doctors who are single, particularly from the older generation, when doctors didn’t have secretaries and drivers and other menials to help them. They had to do their own dirty work, as well as look after patients, and there was never any time to devote to the family. Perfectly understandable. But not if one was a woman.
If one was a woman, one had a family, and one had a responsibility, not only to one’s own parents if there was no brother around, but also to one’s husband’s parents and grandparents, and nieces and nephews. And if one chose to have a career in spite of all that, well that was one’s own choice, perhaps a bad one, and nothing could be done about it. But one had to make sure that one didn’t let the family down by being absent from the dozens of ‘functions’ in a year that are part and parcel of married life.
Sushila Aunty chose to opt out of that situation in favour of pursuing her calling sincerely. She was free to find her own hobbies, one of which was trekking, something she did till she turned eighty. She also loved cooking, and maintained a well-appointed kitchen where she could conjure up exciting food from around the world. She entertained lavishly, and ensured that the conversation matched the excellent food. She was a great conversationalist, and had a delightful weakness for American pulp fiction. Judging by the procession of men in her life, she wasn’t wanting for male companionship of the romantic kind either.
And yet she was a curiosity. I envied her, but I know that other, more conservative women in the family pitied Sushila Aunty. She wasn’t married, you see.