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What is the story about?
An increasing number of urbane women prioritise social and economic independence, a particularly hard-won luxury that comes with a quiet cost. Modern independence has made solitude easier to inhabit, but it has done little to loosen the cultural seduction of coupledom.
It is a paradox: the accumulation of money, mobility, professional, and social capital can expand a woman’s choices without necessarily increasing her sense of connection. The gains are tangible. The deficit is harder to quantify—a theme that comedian Prashasti Singh explores deeply in her new special ‘Divine Feminine’.
The single woman is expected to be accomplished without being intimidating, independent without appearing lonely, and open to love without ever seeming needy. The performance can get exhausting. Over time, independence can become armour, making vulnerability feel less like intimacy and more like exposure.
Beneath that self-sufficiency, an unsettling question may surface from time to time: am I alone because I chose this life or because nobody chose me? The salary, the apartment, the passport full of stamps, and a packed social calendar don’t always offset the unsettling silence at home.
“Perhaps the most difficult moment is not when a woman is sitting alone at a restaurant or travelling alone. It is when she closes the door of her home after a long day, puts down her bag, and realises that there is no one waiting to hear about the life she has spent the entire day building,” says Mumbai-based psychotherapist Padma Rewari.
The void is personal and yet pervasive. “I meet women who are thriving in the boardroom but collapsing at home. They are caught in a cycle of high-stress workdays, severe insomnia and increasing dependence on medication simply to function. We are sometimes trying to soothe what is actually a systemic crisis of loneliness chemically,” Rewari adds.
One can argue that the dilemma is gender neutral, but it isn’t
“There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying, 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'," Beverly Clarke (played by actor Susan Sarandon) in the 2004 Hollywood rom-com ‘Shall We Dance’.
Many men experience the same loneliness once they’ve chosen to walk alone. The emotional void may also be as old as the first person who chose independence as their measure of success.
Yet, the parity at the start and the end hides a crucial detail: regardless of the choice, a woman's journey is more fraught with risks, judgements, labels and their current connotations that straight single men don’t have to contend with.
Indeed, anyone can have a relatively comfortable life and yet be lonely in their 40s. But when the alternative comes with a high risk of losing agency to a social structure that’s reluctant to reform, is there really a choice for a thinking woman?
Prashasti had two role models. The first was her mother, who chose a more conventional path of bearing a child at 23 and managing a home while her father brought in the money. The second was an aunt who started as a civil servant, and that was only the first in a long list of accomplishments. The choice seemed obvious, and yet the result wasn’t as exciting as Singh had hoped.
In fact, even choosing a successful career with no one to share it with doesn’t guarantee the dignity that modern women like Prashasti demand and work towards. In fact, the final piece of her act puts the spotlight on this very inevitability.
When both roads lead to the same sunken feeling, the question is not whether women should yearn for marriage, but whether they can achieve financial freedom without letting their self-sufficiency become a fortress devoid of care, companionship, and human vulnerability.
Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, the founder of Status Single, a community for single women, offers a solution: celebrate every little thing you can. “Growing up, I had always imagined a very simple wedding for myself because I never believed in patriarchal rituals like kanyadaan. So, when forty came along, I decided to celebrate the milestone on my own terms. Women are so often conditioned to hide their age in this country that my decision to celebrate it publicly attracted quite a bit of press attention. But for me, it was never about making a statement. It was simply about celebrating a landmark birthday with the same joy we so readily reserve for marriage,” she says.
It may be relatively easier today for single women to find or form their own tribe and share their joys and anxieties. Yet, it may not fill the void for many. Just like the stigma around single women needs to go, there should be no shame in admitting that you long for touch, flirtation, tenderness, sex, conversation, and the electricity of being looked at and being wanted.
Prashasti, possibly, understands that loneliness and solitude are not opposites. They can inhabit the same woman, sometimes within the same hour. She can love the silence of her own bedroom and occasionally wish there were another body beside her. She can treasure her autonomy and still ache for intimacy.
Independence and intimacy need not be mutually exclusive. Career and personal development cannot always be treated as sequential investments. Emotional intelligence, relationships, confidence and wellbeing also require time to compound. “The message is not ‘groom yourself so that someone will choose you,’” Rewari says. “Take care of yourself because you are worth investing in!” That’s good advice, not just for single women.
It is a paradox: the accumulation of money, mobility, professional, and social capital can expand a woman’s choices without necessarily increasing her sense of connection. The gains are tangible. The deficit is harder to quantify—a theme that comedian Prashasti Singh explores deeply in her new special ‘Divine Feminine’.
The single woman is expected to be accomplished without being intimidating, independent without appearing lonely, and open to love without ever seeming needy. The performance can get exhausting. Over time, independence can become armour, making vulnerability feel less like intimacy and more like exposure.
Beneath that self-sufficiency, an unsettling question may surface from time to time: am I alone because I chose this life or because nobody chose me? The salary, the apartment, the passport full of stamps, and a packed social calendar don’t always offset the unsettling silence at home.
“Perhaps the most difficult moment is not when a woman is sitting alone at a restaurant or travelling alone. It is when she closes the door of her home after a long day, puts down her bag, and realises that there is no one waiting to hear about the life she has spent the entire day building,” says Mumbai-based psychotherapist Padma Rewari.
The void is personal and yet pervasive. “I meet women who are thriving in the boardroom but collapsing at home. They are caught in a cycle of high-stress workdays, severe insomnia and increasing dependence on medication simply to function. We are sometimes trying to soothe what is actually a systemic crisis of loneliness chemically,” Rewari adds.
One can argue that the dilemma is gender neutral, but it isn’t
“There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying, 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'," Beverly Clarke (played by actor Susan Sarandon) in the 2004 Hollywood rom-com ‘Shall We Dance’.
Many men experience the same loneliness once they’ve chosen to walk alone. The emotional void may also be as old as the first person who chose independence as their measure of success.
Yet, the parity at the start and the end hides a crucial detail: regardless of the choice, a woman's journey is more fraught with risks, judgements, labels and their current connotations that straight single men don’t have to contend with.
Indeed, anyone can have a relatively comfortable life and yet be lonely in their 40s. But when the alternative comes with a high risk of losing agency to a social structure that’s reluctant to reform, is there really a choice for a thinking woman?
Prashasti had two role models. The first was her mother, who chose a more conventional path of bearing a child at 23 and managing a home while her father brought in the money. The second was an aunt who started as a civil servant, and that was only the first in a long list of accomplishments. The choice seemed obvious, and yet the result wasn’t as exciting as Singh had hoped.
In fact, even choosing a successful career with no one to share it with doesn’t guarantee the dignity that modern women like Prashasti demand and work towards. In fact, the final piece of her act puts the spotlight on this very inevitability.
When both roads lead to the same sunken feeling, the question is not whether women should yearn for marriage, but whether they can achieve financial freedom without letting their self-sufficiency become a fortress devoid of care, companionship, and human vulnerability.
Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, the founder of Status Single, a community for single women, offers a solution: celebrate every little thing you can. “Growing up, I had always imagined a very simple wedding for myself because I never believed in patriarchal rituals like kanyadaan. So, when forty came along, I decided to celebrate the milestone on my own terms. Women are so often conditioned to hide their age in this country that my decision to celebrate it publicly attracted quite a bit of press attention. But for me, it was never about making a statement. It was simply about celebrating a landmark birthday with the same joy we so readily reserve for marriage,” she says.
It may be relatively easier today for single women to find or form their own tribe and share their joys and anxieties. Yet, it may not fill the void for many. Just like the stigma around single women needs to go, there should be no shame in admitting that you long for touch, flirtation, tenderness, sex, conversation, and the electricity of being looked at and being wanted.
Prashasti, possibly, understands that loneliness and solitude are not opposites. They can inhabit the same woman, sometimes within the same hour. She can love the silence of her own bedroom and occasionally wish there were another body beside her. She can treasure her autonomy and still ache for intimacy.
Independence and intimacy need not be mutually exclusive. Career and personal development cannot always be treated as sequential investments. Emotional intelligence, relationships, confidence and wellbeing also require time to compound. “The message is not ‘groom yourself so that someone will choose you,’” Rewari says. “Take care of yourself because you are worth investing in!” That’s good advice, not just for single women.
