Men and Women in India
I had a lot of thoughts and observations about men, women, and relationships during my time in India, so I guess I’ll stick them in this random entry.
I found that I was surprised at how well-defined the male / female roles were here. This country, for all its global success, enlightened philosophy, and being the home of the Kama Sutra, is more traditional than I expected. But I guess every country is traditional compared to the independent streak most Americans are born with, all with their own set of traditions from wherever they came from.
Arranged Marriages
Even though arranged marriages did not sound palatable to me originally, the idea is growing on me as a pretty good solution! (I don’t mean for me personally, but culturally, there are a lot of advantages.)
If your marriage doesn’t start out about being about passion and love, then you wouldn’t have to count on that love to keep the marriage strong. You work from the beginning at building a relationship, compromising when necessary, and prioritizing the family regardless of how much attraction you feel. I think that makes for a strong, devoted marriage. I still think it would be a little odd to move in with a man/woman you barely know and then have pressure to be intimate. (I mean… what if he smells?) But maybe knowing you will go into it awkwardly makes it more honest? At any rate, there are fewer expectations I’d imagine.
The process of arranged marriages also goes a bit faster. If you want to get married in the western world, you’d have to date and date to find someone you like and are compatible with, then date seriously (or live together) for a few years and see if you both still want to marry each other. Even then, you might not get around to it until you decide to have children. In India, when you’re ready to marry, you have your family find some candidates. Meet some potential partners. And mutually decide. Lots of ceremonies. Done!
It only becomes problematic, in my opinion, when there is too much pressure to do something you don’t want. What if you don’t want to get married? What if you want to wait a few years? What if you prefer a same sex partner? What if you don’t want children? What if you want to marry for love? What if you want to marry outside of your caste?
What? Did I say caste? No way! Actually, though, the caste system (with apparently *hundreds* of castes) is alive and well in India. I have no idea how important it really is when choosing a partner, I didn’t ask a lot of people that, but at least a few I talked to could tell me which last names belonged in which groupings. Caste or not, marrying across religions is extremely rare, especially for a Muslim to marry a Hindu. I think these concerns, though, are not all that uncommon and most parents take their son and daughter’s desires into serious consideration. Nothing is against anyone’s will.
Most Indian weddings, in which the average guest list pushes 1,000, cost a fortune. (And the concept of dowry is alive and well.) Some statistics I saw showed the price tag to be on par with the $25K or so American wedding range. Though $25K is a lot more in India than it is in the U.S. That being said, there are trends toward simpler weddings, as evidenced by the “My Big Fat Indian Wedding” episode of Satyamev Jayete.
There is also the convention that a woman will become part of, often move in with, her husband’s family. I have mixed feelings about that part of it. A lot of marriage happiness seems to depend on how well the new bride gets along with her new family. There is a common stereotype of a bride’s unaccepting mother-in-law here. Though a lot of couples, especially in the city, are out on their own so it is less of an issue.
Relationships
“99% of couples that live together are married,” and Indian guy once told me. “And the few that aren’t are in Mumbai”
Another Indian male friend of mine made the half-joking comparison between Indian and American relationships: “In America, first you sleep together, then you get to know each other, then you move in together, then you get married. It’s the exact opposite in India.”
So I naively thought that, since there is so much emphasis put on marriage and family, that few young men and women would date. WRONG. Men and women date just as much as they do anywhere else. They are just a little more mum about it to their families. I knew a guy who lived with a woman two years and his parents (who are hoping to find a girl for him to marry in a couple years) had no idea. I knew another guy whose girlfriend gracefully bowed out so he could marry another. Find a private spot (usually inside a monument since it can be hard to find a private spot) and you’ll find couples. So even though the maxim above might be true in some senses, there is plenty of romance in India!
Though then there is the problem of divorce. India apparently has some of the lowest divorce rates in the world. (Reportedly close to 1%.) Although some of that might be due to the culturally-built-in attitudes about marriage being a connection of families, not individuals, and all the work that goes into the relationship, I have to also believe that many women and men are trapped in abusive relationships with no easy way out. Especially for women, who are more likely to be dependent on the husband and husband’s family. Marriage to a near stranger can be a scary prospect! You won’t know that person’s “real” nature until months or years after the ceremony. And by then, there is little you can do about it.
Guys vs. Gals
I found the guys here (i.e. my co-workers) to generally be laid back, easy to talk to, polite, and chivalrous. I never seemed to have trouble holding a comfortable, long conversation with any of them. Women were kind and helpful to me but were a little tougher around the edges. I had trouble building a rapport. Perhaps because they had to be stronger to get to the same place and held more family responsibilities, they came off sharper. The ones that did not have that strong attitude instead looked exhausted. I think it is just harder work being a woman in India. I met few Indian women I would describe as “laid back”. In India, anyway; the Indian women I know in the U.S. are pretty chill.
India has a billion people. Therefore, it is VERY competitive. And, although women do have opportunities in many fields (this is a country that has had a female prime minister after all), it is still a “man’s world.” I definitely saw way more men than women during my time in India, whether at my office complex, on the street, at the stores, anywhere. Way more than the 92 females per 100 males ratio suggests. At least working-class ladies are reserved the jobs as female security checkers, maids, and ladies restroom attendants. (Though, oddly not women’s clothing. Nearly every women’s clothing store I ever walked into was attended by men.) But I think a woman trying to have a successful career, whether upper or lower class, has to work harder for it.
Getting a job abroad is often the goal because you can make a lot more and send it home. Most every upper class Indian I met either had lived overseas or had family overseas. My neighbor, who I never met, was in the U.S. the whole time I lived next to him.
Women are more likely to dress in traditional clothing than men, who wear almost exclusively western styles. I get it, though. Indian women’s clothes are beautiful and practical (well, the ladies suits at least). Why not dress up a little! The long scarves can get cumbersome, though. I closed a car door on one multiple times. I also noticed (in stark contrast to Japan) that women wear their hair long here, almost universally. My waist-length hair, which impresses my peers back home, isn’t all that special here. When I lived in Japan, short hair was the norm among women, young and old, so my hair was shockingly long to them. Also, young Japanese love to dye their hair, so I would often get fooled by the red or blonde back of someone’s head. Not so in India. I don’t believe I ever saw dyed hair here.
Affection and Homosexuality
India is an affectionate country. Lots of hugging and holding hands (though rarely kissing in public.) I constantly saw guys holding hands or sitting three to a one-man motorbike, so there is not the stigma against male affection that you might find in the U.S. If there were a gay couple on the streets, I don’t know how you would tell solely by looking. There is a (very gradually rising but) still low tolerance of homosexuality in India (I think it recently became Not a Crime!?) Yet there are gay-friendly popular Bollywood movies like Dostana so I think the conventional wisdom of the average city dweller is that it is cool. A female co-worker who came to visit the office was a little nervous about mentioning to the local employees that she was meeting her female partner later, but no one batted an eye. Having a same-sex relationship would go against tradition and the well-defined roles, but a same-sex couple can still have a family (perhaps adopt one of the many unwanted baby girls) so that very important piece of the marriage process is still intact.
In general, maybe partially due to necessity for a densely populated country, close contact is regular and encouraged. That is one great adaptation and probably makes for closer friendships. I, on the other hand, love my space. Even more than the average American I think, I need privacy and alone time. I wonder how long it would take me to get used to the same level of physical closeness, if ever.