E-Paper
Double standards of Brit Indian males
After having fun with Indian girls for three years Brit Indian boys detest marrying them, writes Navta Vij in our regular series From the Varsity.
I bumped into an old school friend of mine who has just completed his last year of university. Far from being happy about this, he spent the best part of a twenty-minute conversation wallowing in self-pity about his failure to find the girl of his dreams. Where are all the good Indian girls, he asked me, wide-eyed and innocent. I looked at him in disbelief.
Welcome to the world of a hypocritical British Indian male student.
Having spent their entire pre-university life being waited on hand and foot by ‘ammi dearest’, university life is both a wake up call and a revelation for young Indian men here. The former because they suddenly realise that ‘ammi’ is the only lady alive to do anything for them without any inquisitive questions, and the latter because now that the opportunity to step out from her shadow has finally arrived, they are not sure how to react.
Confused designer clad boys can be found scampering around university like little kids in a sweet shop. There are two major issues they can’t get their heads around. The first is that there are Indian girls out there who - in contrast to their ‘ammi jaans’ - are forthcoming and willing to experiment for fun. The second is that many Indian girls no longer hide this part of their personality. And, at first, these are the very qualities that appeal to these hypocritical men who excitedly try to snap up every Indian lady in sight for a crazy Saturday night out on the town.
He stands with a group of friends, happily eyeing up the toned legs of ‘Jas’ (otherwise known as Jaswinder but shortened to fit in with her Brit Asian image) as she casually brushes past him in the corridor. Before long the group are taking bets over who will be lucky enough to take her to the most happening nightclub in London. When he realises that ‘Jas’ is not too keen, he turns his roving eye to the next Indian girl who accidentally glances in his direction. Little do these boys know (and when they do figure it out the symptoms are similar to those suffered by my friend) that, all along, us girls are busy playing our own little game. Whilst we let the testosterone pumped maniacs get away with whispering a few sweet nothings in our ear and even allow the occasional cuddle in the dark corner of a club, what they won’t get is the one thing they spend the first three years of university life waiting for. And we all know what that is!
After three years of moving frantically from aisle to aisle trying to sample all the sweets on offer (i.e us Indian girls) my friend (and many like him) will return defeatedly to the comfort of ‘ammi’. He will sit and talk of marrying a girl who cooks, cleans and is as reclusive as a three-year-old toddler. ‘Ammi’ will marvel at how well behaved her son is and ‘abbu jaan’ will pat him on the back and promise to find him the best ‘bahu’ in town. As this develops the good old Indian graduate sits there with his head held high, genuinely ashamed and bemused at the current ‘state’ of Indian women, conveniently forgetting his role in helping them get there.
Which begs the question. If British Indian men keep up with their double standards - which I’m sure they will - are they not digging their own grave because each Indian girl they take advantage of is slowly but surely knocked off the ‘potential marriage material’ list. Over to you boys...
