Ineligible Bachelors: Indian Men Living in U.S. Strike Out
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
I had a Canadian manager (tall handsome intelligent guy) who tried applying his knowledge of how "dating" worked when he was posted to Bangalore for a year and "struck out" all the time until one day, at a party, he got drunk and asked me "Dude, how the [expletive] do you get laid hereabouts? I've been trying to get a date for 6 months and every girl says "No Thanks". I am going crazy! ".
So I gave him a 20 minute crash lecture in how these things worked in India (and specifically Urban India) and the appropriate moves and counter moves and what they mean and how to interpret and act on them. Needless to say these "rules" are very different from the Western "dating". To his credit he picked up the 'rules of the game' very fast and soon managed to get what he wanted.
When any bunch of people get dumped into a new culture, it is fair to expect that a few of them never quite pick up these nuances. Whether that is worth an article in the wsj is a different matter ;-). I could conclude (if had never been in a Western country) "These Canadians strike out all the time hyuk hyuk",and it might even make a popular article in the local paper, but then I'd still be the idiot.
To summarize, the Indian "dating game" has very different rules, and they don't work in the USA (and vice versa). For Hackers an analogy that works is submitting perfectly valid Haskell code to the javac compiler ;-)
Due Disclosure: I am Indian, have lived in the USA and had no problems "decoding" how courtship, sex and marriage worked there.
One of my (Indian) friends just got engaged to an American (Caucasian) woman and we had discussed some of this over the phone a few days ago. Must have been on my mind I guess.
In any case you are right. My comment doesn't have much to do with the article.
When I have the time I'll probably write it up as a blog post (or a series of posts! 20 minutes of conversation is a lot of writing!) and submit the link here.
I've spent a bit of time in Kochi, Kerela, in the southwest, and while I spent most of my time working on our business, I couldn't help but notice how incredibly beautiful yet amazingly shy many girls were. We did hear a lot of rumors of decadent partying and dating going on, and had indian friends who seemed to hang out with different girls, but we failed miserably at locating these sweet spots.
Can't help but imagining that even indian youth needs to let of some steam sometimes and just party their asses off.
The ONE element that almost all arranged marriages I've seen do have in common is SOME strong referral or existing friendship between the two families. In that sense, they work a lot like VC referrals:)
The type of arranged marriage most common to my larger family is a love marriage. Oxymoron you say? Well, not really. What happens is the girl and guy meet(usually at school) and gradually word starts spreading. When the news makes its way to the parents, if the parents know the other family and approve of it, you are usually good to go. The "love marriage" is smoothly converted into an "arranged marriage". All my uncles(and my father) got married through this route.
I guess I am just not sure of how common the stereotype arranged marriage where a dude is forcefully dumped on a girl is. Notice all the negative connotation that is assumed by the stereotype.
All the while I have a few aunts who got married without having seen the guy until wedding day. This was may be 30 years ago. They are all still married and pretty happy. Lastly, with 50+ couples in my extended family in last 40 years, there have been fewer than five divorces(credit to Geni for handy stats).
So does this process seem weird? Hell yes. Could it result in happy marriages? Seems like it, at least for one family.
I think the statement is mathematically incorrect.
But the OP most likely meant "All my uncles AND my dad"
The word "and" instead of "including" is more appropriate.
The whole arranged marriage nonsense is a blight on the Indian community. Needless to say, it often leads to loveless marriages; further, the fact that you're making life decisions based on scant information results in bizarre situations like the consultant in the article who can't find a wife because they all think consultant means unemployed.
I can only welcome any development that forces people to change.
//Indian person. Fortunately distanced from the absurdity.
Additionally, arranged marriages need not be 'see someone for 10 mins and say yes or no'. There is a large variation in how the whole thing can potentially be set up. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arranged_marriage#Arguments_for... for a list of pros and cons that gives you both sides of the story.
Not that I dislike anthropology. But it's more fun as a game that you can play from home.
I learned what you're saying here from an anthropology anthology in college. But somehow it's a lot more credible coming from an unedited, contemporary person.
Of course. If you didn't have the choice of who to marry then you resign yourself to the notion. But if you made the decision yourself then you'll always wonder if maybe you could have chosen someone way better for you. There was a TED presentation about this some time ago...
(Not saying it's not possible that the particular arranged marriage may have matched you with the best person for you anyway)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_...
edit: Fixed the link, it wasn't the one I meant to link to.
When it comes to arranged marriage, people don't rely on scant information, they have a network of people to cross verify all the cited credentials.
> people I know would think I'm insane for even entertaining the idea that there could be redeeming qualities of arranged marriage
It's a sad state of affairs when people condemn you just for being willing to look at the evidence.
I don't know about the Indian system, but I know in some East Asian cultures it is normal for the wife to run the household finances. That means the primary spender is financially literate, has a feeling of responsibility, and knows the couple's financial status. Contrast that with the US, where wives often have a very vague grasp of the couple's finances, yet are in charge of most of the spending. American wives can run a man into the ground and then blame him; East Asian wives take pride in maintaining healthy household finances. The downside is that a man can become financially irresponsible if his wife's level of control makes him feel emasculated. The ideal is a true feeling of joint responsibility, and neither system ensures that. It has to emerge from the trust and good faith of both spouses.
Whenever a society is permissive of divorce, the divorce rate rises.
When a society strongly disapproves of divorce (or makes it legally tough), well, that's another matter.
There's a high correlation between societies with arranged marriage traditions and a disapproval of divorce. (A->B not necessarily B->A.)
What the question really boils down to is this: Are people happier in general in societies with predominantly arranged marriages or in societies with love marriages. It would be great if we had this dataset directly, but without the data, we can say that about 1/2 of every marriage in non-arranged cultures end up so unhappy that they break up. We do not have corresponding data for societies with arranged marriages if what you say is taken into account.
But in general, if so many of these non-arranged marriages are dissolving, it seems to show to me that simply letting the young people choose without any vetting process is not leading to good results. A 50% failure rate is not acceptable.
Your argumentation bypasses the fundamental issue.
I will say, very frankly, that I believe arranged marriages have the ability to make marriages, on average, more happy. Before any of the free-choice fanatics decry this, here is why that does not work here: happiness is purely perception. If you change the parameters of the environment, the equation for happiness does not remain the same, as in, more freedom does NOT imply more happiness as many people would like to believe.
If you are starving, anything edible tastes good. If you are a slave since birth, any reward is enjoyable. If you are resigned to an arranged marriage, you are less aware of the pains of opportunity costs, therefore it is very plausible that you try to make the best of the marriage.
Since those exact same societies had a low divorce rate not too long ago, it's unreasonable to blame the high divorce rate on what didn't change between then and now (love-based) and ignore what did change (ease of getting a divorce and stigma).
Yes, US divorce is expensive and can be long, but it is also socially accepted and easy to start. The latter is more relevant than the length and expense of the process because said process keeps itself moving. (The expense and length is also a choice - the choice to fight, which has nothing to do with "ease of divorce" or love vs arranged.)
This is actually a statistical fallacy. The divorce rate is not that high in the United States.
If you want to avoid divorce, don't marry a divorcee.
Incidentally, while divorce == FAIL, unhappy marriage == EPIC FAIL. But I guess the latter is hard to measure, so lets just focus on the former.
Based on whose criteria?
In any case, what you see as a "failure rate" I see as a correction. Defining every marriage that ends before death as a "failure" is a statement full of personal bias.
Does the person who after a year of marriage discovers that the institution isn't for him fail because he gets divorced? Has the wife who gets divorced because her husband beats her nightly failed in some way?
Applying engineering terms and analysis techniques to human relationships is a horse that's lost before he even got out of the gate. We're people, not robots!
That depends strongly on jurisdiction and the particulars of the divorce. I had a mutually-agreed divorce last year, and it only took a coupla months, and was less than $1K. The legal and financial part of the divorce were by far the easiest parts of it.
Divorce is only one possible indicator of unhappiness, there are lots of people who are unhappy and do not or cannot divorce.
You also assume that divorce leads to decreased happiness overall and I'm not convinced that's true either.
Moreover, I think it's pretty remarkable that almost 50% of people make a "successful" choice of a life partner. (Exclusively in the sense that they do not divorce.)
Considering how horrible people are at decisionmaking in general, and how vague and slippery the idea of "happiness" is, (see Stumbling on Happiness, and/or Mistakes Were Made for a great layman's overview), it's pretty remarkable... or merely a great indicator of how much people are willing to withstand/fool themselves/constrain their nature.
Yeah, sure, to Americans and Europeans.
Lots of women (and thus men) live in countries where they are unable to divorce, or able to divorce in only a few very specific and constrainted circumstances... otherwise, tough shit.
And if you want to think about "tough," think about Syria, where apparently the man has legal guardianship of children post-divorce no matter what, even if the kids live with their mother, she cannot make any decision about their lives (such as which doctor to see).
I'm not speaking from experience here, but I would guess any marriage requires a lot of compromise and understanding, regardless of how they came together.
Frankly, if you haven't been born and/or brought up in a certain culture, you simply will not be able to understand some peculiar aspects about it. Yes, there are good and the not-so-good aspects and takeaways about every culture on this planet. But I sometimes find the tone of such articles and some of the comments in this discussion not only mildly condescending but also biased. I was born and brought up in India by fairly open-minded and unorthodox parents. And so were many of my friends.
Correct me if I'm wrong. This is not an intelligent article, or discussion. It's in fact a very superficial look at the best. This is just an informative article and in no way representative of the large group of "Indian Men" living in the states. It beats me how the writer takes a few examples and on a respected daily as the WSJ blatantly labels it as "Indian Men Living in US Strike Out.
Why are we even discussing this here?
A true statement, but not necessarily relevant. For instance, I cannot understand Aztec culture, because I have not experienced it. I condemn it nonetheless.
Outsiders attempting to generalize, analyze, dissect, and fix things about cultures they barely understand more often than not cause historical and irreversible damage.
Maybe it can also cause progress? For instance, the condemnation of Apartheid by the western world probably helped end it.
(I don't mean to say arranged marriage is the same as Apartheid, obviously.)
What I just wrote may be controversial, but it does not make it false.
The difference is to what degree does another agent, external to the system in question (here, the system that has apartheid), feels they have the right to intervene and accelerate the change in a direction they judge is fit.
Sometimes you can argue that everybody is better off -- people inside the system and outside (on the outside, I would argue it is mostly a psychological benefit, at least immediately after the change is induced) -- but the arguments are never perfect. And to think that there is a "correct" side to it is (usually) a fallacy.
Is this actually a valid use of "Reductio Ad Hitlerum"? Surely such a thing is rare and beautiful.
I think that's nonsense.
Non-controversial statement: Humans manage to use the power of reason to understand all sorts of things which are far outside our own experience such as quantum mechanics, the dynamics of stars, high dimensional geometry, neural networks, etc.
Regardless of all that, a different human experience is beyond the reach of reason?
(Note: not defending the article, just criticizing the idea that only club insiders can understand a club.)
The subjective understanding is merely the personal perception of something. It is a joint property of the observer and the thing being observed. Why elevate the subjective understanding of one observer over another (insiders over outsiders, in this case) assuming equal information/rationality on both their parts?
In short, its like dating with the fittest. All marriages in my family happened this way, and we dont have even a single case of divorce in my family.
for all those who don't speak Malayalam (the language of Kerala) translation => "get lost you son of a bitch"
"patti chetteh kazhidhe thendi"
translation => Dog, scum, donkey, beggar!
fwiw, I think such language is inappropriate on a public forum , particularly HN, but to flag or delete something one should know what is being said.
I find the device of slipping into a different language (here Malayalam)from the commonly understood one (English) to send a "private message" (in this case, abuse unfortunately) interesting, though (strictly imo) that is a violation of the commonly understood (unspoken) rules of discourse.
Sex at college is a different aspect. Its true that the social setup doesn't encourage sex while you are at college. But i think the reason is not just an 'orthodox view' of Keralaites. Males mostly stay with parents until they finish college(&& get a job) and are fully dependent on parents financially.'Work while you study' is almost non-existant here. Perhaps girls just dont want to take the risk of hanging out with someone who doesn't have any proven earning potential(yet). At the end of the day, getting a girl depends on how you approach the girl !
Sorry to hear that you had bad experiences with 'ragging' at college. I never had any such issues. Infact, my seniors were very helpful throughout my college life.
I see that you created an account just to make that comment with personal insults against me. Try sticking on to the guidelines and keep HN a nice place: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Earning potential = sex. No, seriously.
Helpful hint: presenting an attitude of "I hate you but want to sleep with you cause I'm so horny" is not a winning strategy. I've had better success with Kerala girls than you (and I'm not Indian), so I'm pretty sure your problem is attitude.
(Maybe I'm taking the comment a little personally. My gf is from Kochi, cut me some slack. )
We can understand your 'Culture' from the language you use in public forums like this.
Being polite will not hurt you much.
You know, I could easily afford to have someone clean my toilet. In fact, our receptionist offered to be my housekeeper, at good terms. But...I don't know...I just don't want 3rd parties involved in the matter. I guess it's my lower-middle class heritage thing.
Similarly, if you come to Japan and try to explain babysitting, you get looks of total horror.
"Yes, I think its perfectly normal to talk to a mother I know, get the name of a 13 year old girl who lives in the neighborhood, pay her $20 so that I can have an evening out with my wife, and entrust my home and infant child to her within 5 minutes of meeting her. You find this odd?"
My (Indian) mother was horrified when an American woman told her she(the American) was paid by her daughter to babysit her grand kids. The idea of turning baby sitting grandchildren into a "commercial transaction" was a horrifying thought to her.
just another example of "different folks, different strokes".
That said, I'm really, really, really glad he put an end to this little tradition of ours.
<quote> Given the difficulty in finding matches for Indians abroad, some matchmakers are now charging them more. Mr. Dave of Klassic Match charges a minimum fee of $100, versus $50 for candidates living in India. He charges more for specific requirements. For instance, he says some overseas Indians want a bride who is smart, fluent in English, and "simultaneously, docile in the house." He says such women are now harder to find, so he bumps up his fees for some searches. </quote>
I would be willing to give the benefit of the doubt to somebody who has lived in a conservative, patriarchal, rural/small-town middle class environment in India.
If you are an Indian male in the US as described in the article, chances are you come from an urban background, went to college, and have had ample opportunity to be exposed to more liberal attitudes. In that case, this sort of expectation is downright shameful and disgusting.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/04/...
I had an Indian friend on a H1-B who talked a lot about getting a wife that cooked and cleaned and stuff and I always asked him, "Why not just hire a maid? Probably be cheaper." He could never come up with a good response.
I guess these attitudes come from being raised in a culture where it's the norm. I've got another few friends who are first generation and they never talked about anything like that at all. Makes me wonder what fundamental change in Indian society will disrupt those attitudes; will a simple increase in per capita income and an equalization of the labor pool do it, or is it at a more ingrained level?
I don't know where you live but the "woman as homekeeper" thing is the norm in most Western societies too. Women have, of course, worked throughout history but, culturally, it's been more the norm so far that women have taken housemaker and child raising roles. My mom left her job when she met my father and she has never been employed since. The same applies for about half, I'd say, of my friends' family situations.
It is not unrealistic or old fashioned for people who agree on their roles to settle into those roles. There is nothing wrong with anyone looking for someone who complements them as long as the intentions are good. Indeed, finding someone who doesn't complement you is more likely to result in disastrous relations.
But in this case, my guess is that these attitudes have more to do with holding onto a traditional belief in male-dominance than with any concerns for having different roles in marriage. And if I am guessing correct, such beliefs should not be encouraged and nor is it in the interest of any woman to seek out such a partner for herself.
All that said, I don't see a problem in people specifying a "docile" housewife as a preference, no more than someone might want a "blonde" wife, a "nymphomaniac", or any such thing. Just because you prefer something doesn't mean you have the right to get it but nor does it mean you're "wrong" for having that preference as long as you don't force it on anyone else.
I am an Indian living in the US myself. I married my (then) girlfriend because SHE got a job here and eventually it is me who is doing the "cooking and cleaning" because of being on a non-working visa :). I have plenty of Indian friends in the US who dont hold such narrow-minded views of getting a wife just to cook and clean for them.
you had one Indian friend who said something stupid and you generalized from that to "India has some weird cultural aspects "
Sure, that sounds like a good generalization :-)
PS: I am not disputing "India has some weird cultural aspects " only your process of inference. "X has some weird cultural aspects" for any country = X.
"I guess these attitudes come from being raised in a culture where it's the norm. "
You:
> Your comments are really quite naive and dumb.
and:
> ... aware of these aspects and attitudes are changing. But it's a culture ... and deep-rooted aspects about cultures don't change overnight...
Well which is it?
And you insult him no less.
As for, "... aware of these aspects and attitudes are changing. But it's a culture ... and deep-rooted aspects about cultures don't change overnight..."
No comments, it's a simple statement. And if you don't get it, well..