The matchmaker steps into the house once again, adjusting her dupatta and letting out a tired breath, a small sign of how familiar this visit has become.

Insha knows what comes next. She reaches for clothes that signal tradition, aware that this visit, like so many before it, carries unspoken rules.

At 35, she finds herself caught in a system that measures her worth through narrow ideas of marriageability that still shape Kashmir’s social life.

The tension rises in her chest as the conversation begins. Insha’s frustration spills beyond the room and into a larger unease with customs that leave little space for choice.

Marriage here often arrives wrapped in authority, guided by elders, matchmakers and long-standing assumptions about how a woman should look, speak and live.

Four years ea

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