Skip to main content

Desi Predilections

When I compare the quality of life for desi women home and abroad, its seems that that the grass could be greener on either side depending on their personal circumstances. This blog post has some interesting details. For a single woman in her thirties, the US may be preferable because it provides the much needed insulation and distance from inquisitive friends and relatives.

She can actually have a normal life instead of being stewed in a pressure cooker to get married. Likewise for single mothers - she does not have to live like a social pariah for not having a husband. If you happen to be a your twenties and make good money, India can be very fun these days. Career opportunities abound and travel is often part of the deal. In the twenties, you are not old enough to be classified as "old spinster with slim matrimonial prospects" Chances are that you have a romantic interest and/or your family is match-making.

These women are likely to have generous amounts of disposable income and freedom. Life is good. If however, they chose to come west for education or work the picture would turn suddenly grim. Money would be in short supply, matrimonial prospects with a desi guy would be bleaker because they have chosen to assert their independence in a way that fills the boys with much angst. Then there is the whole visa and immigration hoopla of which the less said the better.

A married women who is working can benefit equally from living home or in America and the preference for one over the other is an entirely individual consideration. There is no life more miserable than that of an H4 wife who wants to join the workforce but is not allowed to because of her visa status. Frequently they become victims of depression, domestic violence and emotional abuse in the marriage.


For a non-working married woman, India would be the better choice simply because she will not die of ennui like the H4 wives do. I guess there are some parameters that can determine if a desi guy will fare better home or abroad. When a desi dad in America finds himself distilling the essence of the Ramayan thusly to his son, he might seriously consider the R2I( Return To India) option. Though by then it may a little too late to make amends.

Reading this delightful post about ten most boring things that desis do abroad made me wonder if we end up this way when we come to and stay on in America for the wrong reasons

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more