Ineligible Bachelors: Indian Men Living in U.S. Strike Out

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123896998996190775.html

by rglovejoy • 17 years ago

68 87 17 years ago

online.wsj.com

In contrast, in the U.S., "people have to even clean their own toilets,"

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.

patio11• 17 years ago

Partially a cultural thing, too. Americans don't do "servants", for certain values of "servant".

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?"

plinkplonk6• 17 years ago

"if you come to Japan and try to explain babysitting, you get looks of total horror."

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".

deepakjois5• 17 years ago

I find it shocking that some Indian men have such attitudes, despite having spent time in places like the US.

<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>

tomjen• 17 years ago

Maybe it is because they have spent time in the US that they want such women?

deepakjois5• 17 years ago

I dont know about that. Why is that?

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.

cglee• 17 years ago

Another explanation could be that the Indians in the US are mostly engineers, who skew towards being introverted. I'm guessing wildly here, but my point is that it could be more than cultural factors at play.

sethg2• 17 years ago

<cynicism> Maybe it's because they've spent time in the US, and absorbed the American idea that You Can Have It All, that some Indian men think it's perfectly reasonable to ask for a wife who is "smart, fluent in English" (i.e., has intelligence and skills enough that she isn't economically dependent on her husband) and "simultaneously, docile in the house" (i.e., willing to put up with her husband's bad behavior). </cynicism>

DannoHung• 17 years ago

India has some weird cultural aspects that I do not find appealing personally.

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?

atish• 17 years ago

Most people don't want to have kids with their maid. Indians in this scenario prefer to marry people at the same socioeconomic level

deepakjois5• 17 years ago

Please resist the temptation to generalize based on one experience. There are indeed cultural factors at play, but that is not enough to swipe a brush and paint all the Indians in the US in the same color.

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.

petercooper3• 17 years ago

I guess these attitudes come from being raised in a culture where it's the norm.

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.

deepakjois5• 17 years ago

It is an interesting point you raise. It is perfectly acceptable to agree on roles and settle into them.

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.

plinkplonk6• 17 years ago

"I had an Indian friend on a H1-B who talked a lot about getting a wife that cooked and cleaned and stuff "

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.

blizkreeg7• 17 years ago

Your comments are really quite naive and dumb. I'm an Indian and I don't expect you to even find these aspects appealing. Hell, even I don't find them appealing. But your language "I guess these attitudes come from being raised in a culture where it's the norm" is derogatory. Please refrain from such attacking comments. Many educated and progressive Indians are aware of these aspects and attitudes are changing. But it's a culture, a very ancient one at that, and deep-rooted aspects about cultures don't change overnight, simply by flicking a few switches on and off.

queensnake2• 17 years ago

Wait, so DannoHung says:

"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.

randomwalker• 17 years ago

Or, maybe, here's a radical thought--the next time one of these men meets someone he likes, he could ask her out.

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.

param• 17 years ago

I think you generalized a lot of things there. I personally am arranged married, and I couldn't be happier. I have a lot of friends who are in the same situation (even ones who are 10+ years into marriage). I also know people who married in 'love' that are not so happy today.

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.

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

A brief aside: One of my favorite features of the Internet is the disintermediation of anthropologists.

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.

Hexstream2• 17 years ago

"I think you generalized a lot of things there. I personally am arranged married, and I couldn't be happier. I have a lot of friends who are in the same situation (even ones who are 10+ years into marriage). I also know people who married in 'love' that are not so happy today."

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)

muon2• 17 years ago

Arranged marriages takes anywhere from two to six months to materialize and now, it has become customary for the both the parties to meet and asses each other.

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.

yters2• 17 years ago

That seems much more reliable than the modern, Western one on one method.

rsheridan62• 17 years ago

If it wasn't 4:30 in the morning, I'd dig up some info about the relative success of arranged marriage vs love marriage. Plenty of Western marriages end up loveless, and divorce is rampant here. It's not clear to me which system would seem more efficient to a hypothetical man from Mars (but as a not-so-hypothetical white American, people I know would think I'm insane for even entertaining the idea that there could be redeeming qualities of arranged marriage).

jibiki6• 17 years ago

Marriages in America frequently break up over money, i.e., one partner wants to spend more than the other. I wonder if the Indian system helps avoid this problem. (Of course, India is a massive and diverse country, and there is no singular "Indian system", but whatever...)

> 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.

markessien2• 17 years ago

How do you explain the very high divorce rate in societies with non-arranged marriages then? Should such societies not have a very high success rate, since the individuals make their own choices?

ahoyhere3• 17 years ago

You're joking, right? The logical flaw in that question isn't poking you in the eyeball as you type?

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.)

queensnake2• 17 years ago

It's my theory that in arranged-marriage lands, there's more social support; the husband and wife play slotted roles, more, in a larger social millieu. In the West, the couple is on their own more, they're each other's /everything/. The demand on each is higher, the fit has to be better.

statictype• 17 years ago

I'd have to disagree with this. The change of a marriage going sour would seem to be almost independent of whether it was arranged or not.

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.

blizkreeg7• 17 years ago

I don't quite understand this attitude I've often found here of people to dissect, "try to understand", and take a swipe at what's wrong about other cultures, point out how some attributes of other cultures are so deviant and then take a higher stand, a higher ground on those issues.

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?

jibiki6• 17 years ago

> 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.

A true statement, but not necessarily relevant. For instance, I cannot understand Aztec culture, because I have not experienced it. I condemn it nonetheless.

blizkreeg7• 17 years ago

Your condemnation does not really have any place in the scheme of things, history, or a bearing on that culture for that matter. I'm not trying to be harsh here. I hope you understand my fundamental point. A culture is a culture, it's a consequence of history, time, and innumerable subtle things and relationships. Just as the American culture is, many aspects of which people outside America condemn. But it doesn't matter.

Outsiders attempting to generalize, analyze, dissect, and fix things about cultures they barely understand more often than not cause historical and irreversible damage.

petercooper3• 17 years ago

I agree. This discussion reminds me of that guy on HN the other day who was generalizing all women to be Sex In The City watching, sex mad hussies.

yummyfajitas4• 17 years ago

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.

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.)

blizkreeg7• 17 years ago

I agree partly with what you say, it is possible to understand another human experience, by reason, by analysis, by empathy - but only objectively. At least that's my belief. To truly understand it's subtle corners, in a more subjective manner requires being immersed in that experience. IMHO.

plinkplonk6• 17 years ago

A more sensible interpretation is that marriage and courtship rituals ("courtship" extended to include "casual" relationships) have a heavy culture specific component to them.

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.

falsestprophet• 17 years ago

Please share the rules you are talking about. I think a lot of us Westerners would be interested to read about this foreign world.

plinkplonk6• 17 years ago

"Please share the rules you are talking about."

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.

jonas_b• 17 years ago

I would too be very happy to hear a little about the indian dating game, particularly how it works in the bigger metropolises.

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.

yters2• 17 years ago

If you have money, the rules for getting laid are pretty much the same worldwide.

rsheridan62• 17 years ago

That may be true, but the article was about Indian families becoming reluctant to marry their daughters of to Indian expats living in the USA. I don't think there was any intention by the author ("Shefali Anand") to "hyuk hyuk" at Indians.

plinkplonk6• 17 years ago

heh! You are completely right. I was reacting to an article i read on the web a few days ago (damned if I can find it now) about how Indian men do poorly in the dating game in the United States. I saw the title of the submission and connected the two. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I was coding all night and am a little zonked. (It is the middle of the afternoon here and I've gone almost 38 hours without sleep.)

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.

Mgreen2• 17 years ago

I live in the South Indian state of Kerala. Here 'arranged marriage' means parents and relatives get a chance to background-check the future partner before you do. So for a girl, this means your parents check on the boy's character , his earning potential , the way his parents made money and other related aspects. If parents are happy, a meeting is arranged.If the girl and boy likes to go forward with a relationship, they can take time to know each other.If everything goes well, proceed to marriage.

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.

kurumban• 17 years ago

poda pulle nayinte mone. The sick orthodox views of the people of Kerala is debilitating to the modern man. One is expected to stay celibate till the age pf marriage which tends to be around age 25. Suppression of hormonal urges has a crippling effect on the mind. College life in Kerala is the worst all over India. Apart from the impossibility to have sex thanks to the conservative views of the mallu girls, there's also a phenomenon called ragging which makes life even worse. I for one hate Kerala and call it the Devil's own country.To MGreen, you need some introspection; the culuture of Kerala is one that I despise beyond all. patti chetteh kazhidhe thendi

plinkplonk6• 17 years ago

"poda pulle nayinte mone"

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.

Mgreen2• 17 years ago

I was just trying to explain how 'arranged marriages' work in my family and that the success rate of the system is pretty good in my experience.

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

niyazpk2• 17 years ago

"the culuture of Kerala is one that I despise beyond all"

We can understand your 'Culture' from the language you use in public forums like this.

Being polite will not hurt you much.

ShellDragon• 17 years ago

This gentleman is seriously sick!

yummyfajitas4• 17 years ago

Mallu girls have sex. Just not with you. That's a testament to their good taste.

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. )

muon2• 17 years ago

The article is full of typical stereotypes attributed to Indians.

zaidf2• 17 years ago

If I have learned one thing about arranged marriages from my close-knit extended family of 100+, it is that no two arranged marriages are same.

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.

niyazpk2• 17 years ago

"All my uncles(including my Dad)"

I think the statement is mathematically incorrect.

qw• 17 years ago

Not necessarily. If his parents were brother and sister, his dad would also be his uncle.

But the OP most likely meant "All my uncles AND my dad"

zaidf2• 17 years ago

Heh. Nice catch.

The word "and" instead of "including" is more appropriate.

colins_pride• 17 years ago

The term uncle means different things to people from different cultures

sethg2• 17 years ago

Coincidentally, the Boston Globe Magazine's "Coupling" feature just ran an essay by an Indian attorney living in DC, who has been ashamed to admit that her parents bought a newspaper ad and arranged an introduction to the man whom she will marry this summer.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/04/...

geebee• 17 years ago

A lot of people forget how recently westerns imported brides of their own. My family arrived in San Francisco from Quebec in the mid 1840s, but my grandfather (married in the late 1930s) was the first to stop importing french speaking brides. It went on for generations. Sheesh.

That said, I'm really, really, really glad he put an end to this little tradition of ours.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

The submitted article mentioned an ad describing one prospect as a "brahmin boy." How pervasive is caste as a selection criterion for arranged marriages?

whacked_new4• 17 years ago

Fascinating article. I read a report about Chinese brides recently that found a huge dip in interest of marrying overseas. Something like 20% or 40%. I'll dig up the article if anybody is interested.

whacked_new4• 17 years ago

Anybody have more stories to share about this? I am wondering how difficult a problem this is. Most of the Indians I have met in the US are all extremely competent with very good looks to match; this article was very surprising.

menloparkbum• 17 years ago

It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with a guy's looks or competence. In an arranged marriage the practical factors take precedence. Marrying a guy who is supposed to support you and your future family, but only makes $80K-$100K a year in the Bay Area simply isn't very practical.

Ineligible Bachelors: Indian Men Living in U.S. Strike Out

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