My progression into singlehood happened, perhaps, because I had started enjoying my independence a little too much. Some relationships had not culminated in marriage. I had consented to 'seeing' a few prospective matches more to assuage my mother's guilt than from any inclination of mine. I confess I always returned from the meetings with a sense of quiet relief that it had not worked out.

Perhaps it also helped that Parsis have late marriages. Pressures to get married are far less than in other communities, and being single is not an anomaly. Today, I am appalled at the way community attitudes have hardened and calcified, and I am disturbed by some aspects of the Jiyo Parsi campaign. Some of the initial approaches of the Jiyo Parsi scheme, like offering treatment for infertility and financial help for struggling families to have more than one child, cannot be faulted in any way. But to me, what is disconcerting is the way an outreach programme has been tacked on to address attitudinal change. A publicity campaign with advertisements was conceived to create 'awareness among the younger generation of marriageable age' and to put the onus on young Parsi men, and particularly on women, to marry young and procreate.