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Sreemoyee Piu Kundu is author and founder of Status Single, a community for urban single women in India

By Geeta Pandey

BBC News, Delhi

In India, girls have traditionally been raised to be good wives and mothers and the most important life goal for them has been marriage.

But a large number of women are now charting their independent solitary path by choosing to remain single.

On Sunday, I attended a lunch gathering of two dozen women at a Caribbean lounge in south Delhi. The room was filled with excited chatter and laughter.

The women were all members of Status Single - a Facebook community for urban single women in India.

"Let's stop describing ourselves as widows, divorcees or unmarried," Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, author and founder of the community, told the gathering. "Let's just call ourselves proudly single."

The women clapped and cheered.

In a country that's often described as being "obsessed with marriage", a lot of stigma still surrounds singlehood.

In rural India, single women are often seen as a burden by their families - the never married have little agency and thousands of widows are banished to holy towns such as Vrindavan and Varanasi.