Dissecting the Dating prohibition in Indian culture

A number of my readers asked me to write about this topic. I’ve often referred to anecdotes about dating as an Indian woman and indeed prior dating blog-posts are written from my perspective as an Indian woman, but you wanted me to address it head-on. Here it is!

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The prohibition 

When I was growing up (the 90s and 00s), dating was a taboo in large tracts of Indian society. I wasn’t allowed to date when I was a teenager, and even into my 20s, there were rules and principles governing dating, some unsaid and some explicitly expressed.

Many Indian parents’ prohibitive attitudes towards dating were/are based on several factors:

1. The taboo of pre-marital sex and the value placed on virginity
2. The fear of losing one’s culture and becoming fully “westernized”
3. The fear of unwanted pregnancy or STIs
4. The fear of going “off track” academically or in your career because romance is a distraction
5. The belief that engaging in any form of romantic/sexual activity should be geared towards marriage and is a waste of time if not
6. What relatives, family friends and  “society” at large will say if they catch whiff of dating — essentially that they will insinuate that you have failed as parent by exposing your child to all the hazards 1-5 above

The challenger’s perspective

When I dug deep into why I so opposed each reason, I uncovered philosophical and deep rifts between the average Indian parent’s mindset and my own. Here’s my challenge to all the reasons above.

The Pre-marital sex ban: a way of owning women 

As my boyfriend put it “In every other field, more experience is considered better. And yet when it comes to sex, some people reverse the logic. It doesn’t make sense”.

I went through the dilemma during my early 20s on what decisions to make, and ultimately I concluded that I was not someone who was going to be judged by narrow-minded men. The ban on pre-marital sex is very asymmetrically applied across genders. Needless to say, the rule is more for women than men.

The desire of men to be the “first” has a lot of negative connotations: the desire to control a woman; to desire to deny a woman a reference point (or several); the desire to be able to get away with being not that great in bed as a result; the desire to get a woman to be attached to you because she hasn’t had the experience to realize that sex is just sex, and sex is not love. Furthermore, given that the average age of marriage creeps up every year and many marriages are now happening when people are in their mid-30s, it’s absurd to deny people their basic biological needs for so long.

Yet parents somehow are attached to the idea of sending their daughter into a marriage with no dating or sexual experience – which surely can’t serve you well, but then they’re not prioritizing you, are they? The ban on pre-marital sex is deeply patriarchal and misogynist.

Now, it would be equally unprogressive of me to say that people should be engaging in pre-marital sex. What I’m against here is the “should” and “should not” language and moral weight Indian society has put on sex. My belief is it’s a personal choice, based on the logic that each person owns their own body. To argue that it is not a personal choice and add moral weight to it is to imply that each person’s body is owned by not just that person but also society. This may sound absurd, but a lot of Indian cultural rules are based on joint ownership of people’s bodies, minds and lives.

Fear of “westernization”: a way to put blockers on adopting new ideas

I believe people should be free to adopt whatever practices and rituals make them happier, and “losing culture” should be a secondary concern. Ultimately, though we are very distracted by success, money, prestige, status etc., life is about the pursuit of happiness. All those things are supposed to make you happy. No one’s getting brownie points for keeping impractical aspects of various cultures alive if they have no modern relevance and compromise your happiness. But the rift here between parents and children comes down to philosophy again – as you’ll see further in this article.

Fear of STIs and unwanted pregnancies: a lack of understanding of risk management

Firstly, heard of contraception anyone? Thankfully, we were taught about it in school, because there was no way we were learning about it from our parents on time. I really want to do a skit where an Indian parent decides to talk about contraception when someone is 35, finally declaring they might be ready.

By neglecting to talk about contraception and instead harping on the unrealistic abstinence bandwagon, most Indian parents are actually putting their children more at risk of a negative outcome.

Fear of going “off track” : what is the “track” anyway?

Indian parents must be very romantic in some sense, because many believe that romance is so all-encompassing that you might forget to go to class, to study, to eat even. You may end up being a drunk poet like Devdas, unemployed, and obsessed with your one love, chasing it like a moth to the flame. If your learnings about love are from Bollywood movies, you may believe this to be the case. If you get some real-life experience (my recommended option), you may discover the following:

i. Your romantic life is one out of many aspects of your life – your attention will never be 100% on it, because you are a complete human with friends, hobbies, a career etc. Balancing all these things effectively can definitely be challenging at times and sometimes one aspect looms larger than others and causes you to neglect others. Effective balance is a learned skill, a muscle. The more practice you get, the better you get as you learn your own priorities and about yourself. By being forbidden to date earlier, you put off developing this muscle until later.

ii. It’s totally possible to work effectively through break-ups and in fact break-ups can trigger immense personal growth. I had a break-up in April 2019, and knocked my work project out of the park at that time – getting glowing reviews and a promotion a few months later.

Remember that time when you couldn’t do anything for months but lie around because of your crush? And then you became an alcoholic, and lost all your ambitions and would just sing Bollywood songs whilst longing for your love. No? Oh, that’s right – because it didn’t happen. You still brushed your teeth, did your assignments and crushed it in the debate competitions. Because you are a Badass. And Badasses can handle a full life which includes a break-up or few.

Fear of wasting time: Is fun and being happy a waste of time?!

There is a pervasive belief that dating should only be marriage-oriented. To some extent, I understand. Casual dating is no utopia, it can be a real mine-field. But to some extent, dating only for marriage excludes a lot of fun and learning. As I mentioned earlier, the point of life is to have a good time as much as circumstances permit. There is a philosophical divide between Indian parents and their children on this very issue. Many Indian parents would not agree that the primary purpose of life is having a good time and being happy – they view life as a duty to the community, a duty that involves “timely” achievement of milestones such as a stable job, marriage, children and as much as possible a life that is “mistake-free”. This comes into conflict with a lot of us who will not necessarily become happy by hitting those milestones at those times.

“Love is waste of time”  – Tongue-in-cheek song from PK

We are different, we scream. We need to discover and build upon our differences through experimentation in all areas of our life, including dating. Most dates teach you something about yourself or about the human condition – even if they are boring or don’t go anywhere and even if they are mean.

Concerns around what others will think: the timeless problem

Anxiety around ‘what society thinks’ is a problem that afflicts older and modern generations alike. Our parents cared what Auntie down the road would think, we care what our Instagram followers think. Different flavor, same core problem. For evolutionary reasons, we’re hard-wired to care what other people think. All we can do is i) consciously try to care less what others think and ii) to try to shift society to a new equilibrium of lower judgment and more love and acceptance of differences. Within reason, the ideal society would simply think “Each to their own”.

The consequences of not being allowed to date

Indian parents are often stunting the development of women. The dating prohibition prevents girls from becoming women who are comfortable with their sexuality, know how to flirt, and know how to date. A number of my Indian women friends, now in their late 20s or early 30s often tell me they still feel nervous going on dates and understanding the dynamics of the modern dating world because they got so late to the game.

The prohibition distances girls and women from their parents: they feel like they can’t be themselves and have to be secretive about dating. And in some cases, it actually puts them in more dangerous situations as a result of having to be secretive.

Mean things exist in the world and being sheltered from them doesn’t make them go away. By holding back women from experiencing the full world, warts and all, Indian parents are compromising the development of women into confident, worldly adults.

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What a mess: where do we go from here?

I believe Indian parents really do love and want their children to be happy. The more broken step is that they don’t really understand what makes their children happy. They believe the key to happiness is a safe life and a dutiful life that has the stamp of approval from “society”. We know it is the life that is truest to ourselves that makes us happy  – and yes, we’re constantly changing – we want the freedom to grow, learn and express our true selves. And dating is a key field where we grow, learn and express our true selves.

We need more honest conversations with our parents – ones that take us to the deeper philosophical rifts and surface them, laying them bare so we can examine if this is how we want to live, ones that call to test our love for each other – hopefully it is stronger than our fear of what Auntie will think. I believe it is – and that we have made and will continue to make ever more progress, but this post is dedicated to all you girls out there, who have been pushing the boundaries and fighting the good fight – you are tired but you are winning, keep it up.

 

 

 

 

Self-esteem in Indian families

In my last blog-post, I wrote about independent thinking for Indian women. Today I want to dive into the topic of self-esteem in Indian families. This is an issue that touches many aspects that I’ll be exploring in greater detail over this series such as guilt and self-blame, friendship with parents, skills gaps and risk aversion.

The problem

In immigrant Indian culture there are a number of factors that act against people developing healthy self-esteem. Some of these factors act against the clear formulation of “self” and some lead to low “esteem”.

Taboo around the concept of the self and the virtue of sacrifice 

First and foremost is the taboo around the concept of the self. Eastern cultures are famously more “community-oriented” implying putting the group before the self. Sacrifice is extolled as virtuous. How many of us have grown up with reminders every now and again about the sacrifices made by our grandparents and parents so that we could have a better life?

There’s nothing wrong with a chosen sacrifice per se – if it’s a conscious choice by the sacrificer because it gives them a greater sense of meaning or satisfaction in their life to do something for their child rather than themselves – it’s like parental instinct put on steroids. However, two issues arise often with sacrifice:

1. It may not really be the sacrificer’s true desire but may be because of cultural taboo against putting yourself first

2. It’s often not as selfless as portrayed – because it comes with expectations of what will be done in return. Here are a few expectations I have come across in my conversations with brown friends: I cared for you exceptionally when you were a child, so I expect you to care for me as diligently in my old age. You better not put me in a retirement home. I did so much for you, the least you can do is marry a person that I would prefer etc.

A healthy sense of self-esteem and self-love are needed to know when you are making a sacrifice for the right reason — out of love, and when you are making it for the wrong two reasons above.

How does that healthy self-esteem form? That’s a million-dollar question that Universities should be spending a lot of money on but aren’t. Let me tackle the easier question of what hinders formulation of healthy self-esteem instead. Two main factors loom large in Indian upbringings:

• A lack of conversation around what you want when you are growing up. This hinders the full formulation of a “self”. You need a concept of “self” to have self-esteem and many people are stuck not even having a clear identity of their own – their identities are blurred blobs that encompass children, parents, relatives and cultural norms.
• Reprimanding/ being labelled “selfish” when you do express what you want when it deviates from cultural norms. Being “selfish” is considered one of the worst insults in Indian culture. Over time, this fear of being labelled “selfish” crushes thinking about yourself clearly

Despite this neglect of the self, the self still exists. It just fades further and further away from consciousness. It still experiences dissatisfaction, resentment and anger, which can manifest in a host of ways such as having a bad temper, being easily irritable or physical illnesses (read The Mind Body prescription for a look into how emotional traumas and repression can manifest physically).

My generation may have been luckier in the “formulation of a self” regard: the ugly bright pink carpet in my bedroom in my parent’s house is a testament to my parents honoring my 11 year old intentions against good aesthetic (sighs, I really wish I’d gone with beige). However, when my parents were growing up, there was very little emphasis put by their parents on allowing them to discover what they wanted — from careers to life partners. My father had to hold the line really hard on having a small wedding against his parents’ wishes, for example. And when he did make decisions, they were always accompanied by a detailed pros-cons analysis and regard for what his parents wanted.

It’s hard now for parents who have grown up with very little sense of a “self” and awareness around their true desires, personalities and beliefs to understand our push to be ourselves. We think we should be front and center in our own lives. We take this to be a “self-evident truth” –  but they do not. They were never allowed to put themselves front and center, they were told that that was bad. For some parents, “fun” is a foreign concept. Now here we are in the West demanding that we, the children of immigrants, get unconditional support for that gap year of travelling around the world or for the belly piercing or for our ice cream-as-a-service business idea and they think we are being so selfish.

The hostile Immigrant experience erodes esteem

The second set of forces that work on destroying self-esteem are more focused on the esteem part of self-esteem – the respect and love you have for yourselves. When our parents’ generation immigrated to western countries, racism was even worse. One of my Punjabi Sikh friends tells of her father not being able to get a job or a mortgage because of this turban. He had to get rid of his turban eventually to get a job in a factory, but still couldn’t get a mortgage.

My father left India as an Assistant Professor of Surgery and a very well-regarded surgeon at the age of 32, and had to start as a surgical resident (the bottom of the ladder) again when he moved to the UK. Students that he would have been mentoring and coaching in India were now his peers.

So not only did our parents’ generation face hostility from their parents who were stymieing the formation of a self, but the new western environments they found themselves in were also sending them these messages: You are not allowed to be yourself here. You must change your dress, culture, way of speaking to make a living. You’ll still never really be welcome here. You’re not as good as the others here. Quite simply, the theme of the messages all around was: You are inferior.

The massive walls that our parents often have around themselves and wanting to preserve their culture are in part due to the constant attacks they have faced in new environments that were hostile to diversity either subtly or overtly.

The solutions

With years of conditioning like this, there’s obviously no silver bullet. But here’s what I believe we can do to help our parents and our own self-esteem:

Have compassion for your parents. This is very, very hard for most of us so we must practice every day and make a conscious effort. Some of us jumped into the camp of making fun of our parents because that’s what our friends were doing. You’re not exactly harboring a strong identity if you replace what your parents think with what your friends think. The famous Canadian-Punjabi poet Rupi Kaur wrote a beautiful poem called “Broken English” which I’ve pasted at the bottom. I recommend her poetry for my readers.

Encourage your parents self-esteem: Ask them what they want, why they want it. Try to help them get to their true desires. Compliment them, appreciate them. When they run into something negative outside, contextualize it for them, e.g. “They are only holding you back because they’re angry that you can do the job better”.

Have strength to formulate your own self: If your parents try to do some of what their parents did to them, realize what they are doing and stand your ground even if you are unpopular at first. Of course, you might make a mistake. In my experience, regrets about your own choices are far superior to regrets about letting someone else run your life. 

Build your own self-esteem: because it’s good for you but also because it can be contagious. When your family and friends see how you treat yourself with love and respect, it can inspire them to do the same.

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In the next set of blog-posts I’ll dive deeper into related areas of the Indian immigrant experience: guilt and self-blame, friendship with parents, skill gaps and risk aversion. Please comment with reactions, thoughts and ideas for future blog-posts!

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Broken English – by Rupi Kaur

I think about the way my father pulled the family out of poverty
without knowing what a vowel was.
And my mother raised 4 children
without being able to construct a perfect sentence in English
A discombobulated couple that landed in the new world
with hopes that left the bitter taste of rejection in their mouth.
No family no friends, just man and wife,
Two university degrees that meant nothing,
one mother tongue that was broken now,
one swollen belly with a baby inside.
A father worried about jobs and rent
coz no matter what this baby was coming.

And they thought to themselves for a split second
was it worth it to put all of our money
into the dream of a country that is swallowing us whole.
And papa looks at his woman’s eyes
and sees the loneliness living where the iris was.
Wants to give her a home in a country
that looks at her with the word visitor wrapped around their tongue.
On their wedding day she left an entire village to be his wife
and now she left an entire country to be a warrior.
And when the winter came they had nothing,
but the heat of their own bodies to keep the coldness out.
And like 2 brackets they face one another
to hold the dearest parts of them,
their children close.

They turned a suitcase full of clothes
into a life and regular paychecks
to make sure that children of immigrants
wouldn’t hate them for being the children of immigrants
They worked too hard – you can tell by their hands,
their eyes are begging for sleep
but our mouths were begging to be fed
and that is the most artistic thing I have ever seen.
It is poetry to these ears that has never heard
what passion sounds like
and my mouth is full of likes and uhms
when I look at their masterpiece
‘coz there are no words in the English language
that can articulate that kind of beauty.

I can’t compact their existence into 26 letters and call it a description
I tried once but the adjectives needed to describe them don’t even exist
so I ended up with pages and pages full of words
followed with commas and more words and more comas
only to realize that there are some things in the world
so infinite that they can never use a full stop.

So how dare you mock your mother
when she opens her mouth
and broken English spills out.
Her accent is thick like honey,
hold it with your life,
it’s the only thing she has left from home.
Don’t stomp on that richness,
instead hang it up on the walls
of museums next to Dali and Van Gogh
Her life is brilliant and tragic.
Kiss the side of her tender cheek.
She already knows what it sounds like
to have an entire nation laugh when she speaks.
She’s more than our punctuation and language.
We might be able to take pictures and write stories,
but she made an entire world for herself.
How’s that for art

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All my independent immigrant Indian women, throw your minds up at me

Introducing a new series of observations on the Indian female immigrant experience

I want to give a shout-out to the millions of Indian women out there who have tirelessly been working on their parents’ education since they barely got out of childhood themselves. Indian immigrant parents have many reasons for being the way they are – we can empathize and sympathize because for a lot of them, their behavior stems from good intentions and love. But we’ve also paid the price. We deserve our stories to be heard too, and our pain to be recognized, and we deserve solutions.

This next series of blog-posts is about you, about me, about us – women of immigrant Indians. These blog-posts will talk about our problems. I will share anecdotes from my life and the lives of friends and acquaintances, and I will posit some solutions that I have found to be effective for myself and for friends.

A lot of what I write about is just the normal angst of growing up and finding yourself for anyone – including white males. I totally acknowledge growing up is hard in general and that no one’s parents are perfect, but growing up is made harder for Indian women and that’s the nuance here.

Another disclaimer upfront: I do not speak for all Indian women – we’re a diverse bunch. Some of you may not have some of these challenges or have altogether different ones. This is my perspective based on my own experience and research.

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Problem: The incapacity to think independently

“It’s been life-changing for me to move away from home for work [to another city]. Before then, I was following my mum’s advice almost constantly. I just couldn’t think for myself” – Indian girl-friend 1

Tight-knit families can be a double-edged sword. Sometimes each member loses their ability to form independent perspectives. You get locked into having the same opinions for better cohesion.

For the longest time, I had my mother’s opinions on several issues. When I was in high school, I remember saying something that sounded peculiar coming out of a 13 year old’s mouth: “Sarah and Joe don’t have the maturity to be in a relationship” I said to my friend about our classmate Sarah and her new boyfriend. It wasn’t my opinion. It was what my mother had said. I think if you’d have questioned me at that time on what “maturity” was required for a relationship, I wouldn’t have known.

Until I was 22 (yes, that old!), I was convinced no Indian guy wanted to marry a girl who wasn’t a virgin (who wants to even hang out with let alone marry such a guy is a valid question that various friends raised!). I thought boys were a distraction and a danger to good grades and a good career.

Many of these thoughts are what I call “cultural viruses” – they are generally negative and handed down generation to generation and enforced through fear and shame.

It has been a gradual process over the years to let go of thoughts, ideas and concepts from my heritage and formulate my own – many of which are totally different – and thankfully as a result of these different, more positive, more progressive thoughts, my life is way different from what it could have been.

You’d think by 30, I’d be all clear but every now and again I still catch a thought and have to question whether this is what I think or what someone else thinks or was some cultural thought that has been handed down generations.

Solution: Build the muscle to think for yourself

Observing your thoughts is a practice that has been recommended as part of meditation. Meditation is about observing, not judging though. Unfortunately for us, quiet observation is not enough – we need to do some analysis on our thoughts. Where are they from? What assumptions are we making? What evidence do we have to support our thought? This self-analysis can be an energy-intensive process but I have found it to be worth it – especially on important thoughts that are going to determine action. Once you dismantle destructive old thoughts, you can get to place where new thoughts that stem from your true personality and desires arise more naturally and effortlessly.

Another way to be a better independent thinker is to stress-test thoughts with friends. This may sound counter-intuitive at first blush as you are involving other people, but it isn’t when you think about it more deeply – the origin of thought is usually some cultural construct or cocktail of cultural constructs — you just need to pick which cultural construct/s work/s best for you. You consult many people who have different opinions and then you come to your own.

For Indian women who have grown up in a culture at home that can feel pretty monolithic and presents subjective opinions as objective truths, actively building diverse friendships is especially critical to your growth as a deep independent thinker. This can be hard for us, but we must go out of our way to do it. Find those people who will challenge you, see the world differently, have different beliefs and ultimately lend you the freedom that comes from acknowledging one truth: there are very few objective truths in the world.

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This is one blog-post in a series of problem-solution posts for Indian immigrant women. Please comment/message me for ideas of which other problems and solutions you want me to write about! The next one will be about guilt and blaming yourself.