When I got enrolled in a medical degree, time and again I heard this line from my non-medical friends and sometimes their mothers: ‘Rishte to bade ayen ge ab/proposals will come more frequently now’ from those women whose daughters-in-law didn’t do medicine; ‘Humen bhi doctor bahu hi lani thi/we also wanted a daughter-in-law who was a doctor’; and ‘Hamare bete k lye hum doctor dhoondh rahe hain/we are searching for a doctor wife for our son’ from those women who were still searching for a wife for their sons who haven’t even started to earn separately from their father’s business. My social circle isn’t huge, so you can imagine the actual rate and frequencies of such beliefs.
Demanding a Doctor Daughter-in-Law
In Pakistan, female doctors have to go through a lot of stigmas. If we start from the beginning, some parents enrol their daughters into this field because eventually it will be easier for them to find a ‘good match’ for her. Then once these girls get into the real deal, the medical education, they are simultaneously prepared for marriage proposals. Suddenly, they see their phuphos taking interest in them, the long-lost aunty whom they never heard of, coming to meet her family; attending a wedding ceremony becomes her invitation to much more attention and scrutiny since she has now become a product in demand. Don’t get me wrong; being in demand is a great feeling, and if you are a doctor who wants to get married, well, this just might be your golden ticket, but every once in a while, let’s be honest with ourselves. Are they really liking me for me, or are they just in love with my medical degree?
Marriage: A Deal between Two Accomplished Partners
I knew of a girl, very pretty, smart, and deadly sarcastic, with a quirky sense of humour, who knew nothing about cooking or home management, who ‘also’ studied medicine. In the last year of her degree, a family outside of her own family started to persuade her father that they want to see her for their son. Her father was reluctant at first, but for one and a half years, the boy’s father didn’t budge and kept pushing for the meetup. Here, let me be clear: till now, they haven’t seen the girl; their golden boy hasn’t met her; the girl doesn’t know that a family has been chasing after her for at least a year, based upon her degree only. To cut this sad story short, the boy’s family ends up meeting the girl’s family. The girl’s father liked everything about them, and their wedding was arranged within a week; post-marriage, she was made to sit and be a housewife because the boy’s father didn’t ‘prefer’ his daughter-in-law to work, and her husband didn’t have a mind of his own, so he also agreed. Of course, they separated after some months.
In my unpopular opinion, medicine is a profession like any other. Yes, it may require more hours of work and dedication, and you try to save lives, but it still is just a profession. For the minor part, the problem has come from the doctors too, who take their Dr titles so seriously that they can no longer separate themselves from their professional role. They have allowed their professional life to permeate their personal lives so tightly that other people cannot see them as humans but only as doctors. However, it doesn’t make sense to judge a person based on the degree he earned. Especially, compatibility doesn’t come with a degree, be it from Harvard or Stanford or Government College. It comes with understanding the personality that is standing in front of you and, most importantly, understanding the person that you are – minds, values, religious beliefs, how I wish my life to look like, and what my dreams, ambitions, and expectations from my partner are. Sadly, marriage is no longer a union between two compatible people but rather a deal between two in-demand products with certain specifications. This is how we get two sad people living together in a well-furnished house.