Indian Divorcee/Widow Vs. Foreigner

So Y and I watched "Water" a few days back. It is a well made movie, and very disturbing to say the least. I guess what makes it worse is the knowledge that it is true, and it happens in India, so it is very close to the heart. The rendezvousing between John Abraham and Lisa Ray takes away from the seriousness of the movie. However, the 9 year old's predicament is shocking enough to make me believe that practice of any religion that prescribes such treatment should be deemed a criminal offense.

The optimist in me was happy that this was 60 years ago, and this does not happen in India anymore. However, the realist in me reminded me that while it may not happen on that scale, it still happens all the time in India. Throw out some circles in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and it is still a sad existence if you are widow in India. While Y knows that India is weird, she was obviously appalled at the sad state of women (being considered unlucky, shunned by the society in general, etc) simply because their husbands die.

I don't know how we got there, but Y asked what would my parents think of me marrying a widow. I had never thought of this before, but I was quite sure that my parents would not be thrilled with the idea. She then asked what if I were to marry a divorced woman. Equally bad would be my guess. My parents (like the rest of Indian parents) think that divorce is such a taboo. I can't imagine them ever wanting me to marry a divorced woman. Then Y threw out the curve ball - Would my parents prefer that I marry a Indian divorcee/widow or a foreigner?

To be honest, this was a question that had never crossed my mind. Yes, they would never want me to marry an Indian divorcee/widow, but then they would never want me to marry a foreigner either. But if they had to choose the lesser of two devils, what would they pick? I really had no idea - I did not even want to venture a guess.

So, I decided to do the obvious - just ask them. Obviously, I needed to caveat that this was just hypothetical. I did not want my mom losing her sleep thinking that I was romancing a divorcee or a widow. Since I was not expecting one way or the other, I can't really say that their answers surprised me. Without a moment's hesitation, they replied that they would prefer me marrying a foreigner over an Indian divorcee/widow.

I really don't know the reason behind their prejudice (to me this is prejudice against divorcees/widows). I am sure some of it has to do with social norms, and all that good stuff. My parents did however say something that would surprise many people. They added that between an Indian divorcee and an Indian widow, they would prefer that I marry the widow.

This, to me atleast, has some logic. Most people would not pick the widow, as they would say consider that a widow brings back luck (I don't say this, the retards in India do). However, since my parents are not superstitious at all, that makes no difference to them. But I can clearly see their aversion to a divorced woman. Lets assume a normal divorce here - atleast normal by American standards. Guy and girl get married, differences spring up in the marriage, they can't reconcile and decide to split up after a year or two. In such a case, my parents would say that the woman is logically partially responsible for the divorce. And their biggest concern (justified or not) would be that having gone down that road once, she may prefer another divorce rather than try and work on the marriage.

Either way, it was an interesting question that Y had thrown out. Even though I got my parents' answer, I am not sure there is a side that I can say that most Indian parents will take. I asked a friend of mine, and she said that her parents would take the Indian divorcee/widower over the foreigner anyday.

Thoughts?

Why I Hate Orkut

No, you guessed it wrong. It's not because of women posting "Hi I Priya. Wud you lik to do fransip with me?" on my scrap book. Though, I am sure that there are women out there who have stopped using Orkut precisely because of (male) morons like this. There are enough posts out there on the various kind of "fransip" offers, so I won't go into detail here.

I hate Orkut because it brings me face to face (or profile to profile) with people from my past life. Now don't get me wrong. There are certainly a few friends that I am glad to have found on Orkut. My best friend from boarding school from 16 years ago being one of them. Unfortunately, I can't think of any more at the time.

However, I can think of several people who I would have much rather not talked to for the rest of my life. Its not that I don't like these people. I will admit that it is kinda neat to see all your high school classmates from years ago, and see what they are upto. And at various points of life, I may even have wondered about some of them, and thought what they are upto. But now being in touch with some of these people, I am convinced that I would have been better off without Orkut. Let me give you a few examples.

A classmate from school that I did not get alongwith. He found me on Orkut, and scraps me like we have been best friends all our lives. To take it a step further, he suggested that I meet up with him when I was in India. I fail to understand the logic behind it. He knows he is wasting his time (and mine), and I know it too. Yet, he continues to ask me about what is new in my life. Nothing dude - don't you get it?

Another classmate from school who found me one day and was a little "too friendly". I don't remember her, have no recollection of her, and I told her this. She insists that we were great friends in school, and continues to scrap me with abandon. She recently told me that she got a new belly button ring, and it looks great. Er...too much information, don't you think?

Few months ago, this girl from school scrapped me that she had a crush on me in school. Great - I am flattered, but er....what can I do about it? She then proceeded to tell me that she has been in love with me ever since and she broke up with her last boyfriend because of me. Considering that we last saw each other in about 10 years ago when we were both 15, a little weird, right? She then proceeds to tell me that I wouldn't understand her. She has a point there...I only understand normal people.

The icing on the cake was when my girlfriend from school found me a few weeks ago. It had been a bad break up, and I had a guilty conscience (won't go into details here). So, when she found me, it was the perfect opportunity to apologize and get it over with. Except that she replied to my apology with - "You have changed a lot. You have put on sooo much weight". Now just because I am no longer the scrawny severly underweight kid I was 6 years ago, there is no reason to go talk about my weight. I am finally at the point where people don't ask me if I am sick every time they see me. And here is my ex telling me that I have become fat. I am sure that all of you (wait, there is someone reading this besides me, right?) would suggest that I write the same thing back to her. I will not lie - the thought did cross me my mind. But my parents raised me the right way (or so they told me).

These are a few people that I certainly could have done without talking to. The saving grace is that I live far enough where I won't ever have to meet these people again. There are several people who have added me, or scrapped me once, but past that, we have nothing to talk about. Dude - we didn't have anything in common when we were in the same class. Now, after 10 years, when we work in different fields, live in different countries, what can I talk to you about? And yet people scrap me - "Dude - you don't ever scrap me. You don't even have time to talk to friends??"

WTF?

P.S. While not yet, I will have the same problem with facebook in a few years.

About a Friend

This is about my friend. My best friend from college. Lets call him A. The friend that Y says that I would marry if I were a girl. She is wrong, but that is not the point here.

A was one of the first people I met in college. A was on the golf team, and my golf coach introduced me to him on my second or third day in the US. And he was arguably one of the most annoying people I had ever met. He hated everyone and everything, and made sure that everyone around him knew about it all the time.

I roomed with him on my first golf trip, and it was terrible. We disagreed on every single thing. It was only the beginning. Over the next year, I saw A at his worst. His wild temper, his complete disrespect for everything, and his constant jeering at his teammates. Over that year, I also learned about A's past. A had gotten involved with drugs in his final year of high school. After high school, he did not want to go to college, and he delivered chinese food for two years. Ironice, as A was the son of two very successful people - both with doctoral degrees from top universities in the world. When he got tired of lazing around, he finally enrolled in college, but he could not let go of his drugs. His grades were pathetic, and he was on academic probation. And then it happened.

One Friday night, he overdosed, and the lethal combination of alcohol and drugs nearly killed him. He found himself in the hospital surrounded by his concerned parents. As he lay on the hospital bed, he decided that this had gone on enough. He needed to change himself. And so he did.

I met A a few months after this. He had stopped taking drugs, and he was pulling his grades up. He was more focused on life. And while he still was far from a pleasant person, people told me that he was trying.

Over the next few years, I saw the most amazing transition in a person. By the end of his sophomore year, A had clearly established himself as a stellar student. And although his people skills took time, he was getting there. He was much nicer, more tolerant and a thoughtful person. We had a few classes together, and we started to bond. We stopped ignoring each other on the golf course.

We studied together for some classes, and bounced ideas off each other our future plans. I urged him to take some Economics classes, and he added to my interest in Computer Science.

A graduated from college, and got accepted for a Masters degree at the top school in the nation in his field. He got a boatload of scholarships, and won some big international competitions. He graduated and went to work at a highly specialized boutique in Silicon Valley.

Though we now live on opposite coasts, we remain in close touch. I valued his perspective on my essays, and we often talk about quitting our jobs and purusing a dream. The dream of building a golf course. I am not a person who trusts easily, and hence always think about doing things on my own. However, I can see myself working with A.

I recently came to know that A helped out a guy we went to college with money for books. It may seem small, but it was a meaningful gesture. It is A's way of helping those less privileged than him.

I have often shared A's story with people. It is a story of strength, and determination. A story of change. Of bouncing back. Of learning from mistakes. It is not just about becoming better student or worker.

It is about becoming a better person!

If I could be anything...

I would be a surgeon. Yes, a doctor who operates on people. No, I am not going to withdraw my b-school applications, and take the MCAT. But if I could truly do anything I wanted, I would want to be a surgeon.

Being a doctor is one of those things that you want to do when you are a kid. You read about a doctor saving lives, and helping people, and you say to yourself that that is what you want to do when you grow up. However, growing up, all I wanted to do was to play golf for a living. And when I realized that I could not do that, I just found something that I was somewhat interested in, and where I would make solid money, a.ka. Wall Street.

I don't know when it is that I thought about being a surgeon. Not even sure why. My guess is that part of it has to do with the God complex. To me saving a person's life is as close as you can come to playing God. Not that I have any intention to be God. But to save a person's life would be pretty kool. Think about it - right now, when I look back at my day, I say, I sold ABC structured product to XYZ company, and made some $$. This certainly pales in comparison to to looking back, and thinking that I saved a guy's life. I saved someone's son, someone's husband, someone's father, someone's friend.

Come to think of it, how many of us live the dream that we envisioned as kids? I don't think anyone at the age of 12 wants to be a banker, or a trader. Or a C++ coder for that matter. Or work as a strategy consultant. Or manage a project. Or develop a trading system. Or sell one. Heck, as a 12 year old, I couldn't tell the difference between Wall Street and Ball Street. And yet, so many of us today do things that we never even wanted to do. We do jobs that we don't care about, but they get us the $$$. I read the most ironic article few months back - highly qualified doctors that end up working in healthcare banking or consulting - talk about the lure of money.

I have asked myself this a few times - why can I not be a suregon? It is not impossible, but there are several obstacles ahead. I would have to take pre-med classes, take the MCAT, go to med school, and study for 10+ years. I am not sure I have what it takes to be a surgeon - the commitment and the intelligence. Plus, leaving the $$ of Wall Street will certainly not be easy.

Maybe I should be thankful I have a job. And plus, the grass is always greener on the other side. I have a friend in med school, and he is constantly upset about the fact that he has ages to go before he will make anymore than than the minimum wage. He tells me that I should be happy to be making $$$.

Maybe he is right....

My Kellogg Interview

I had my Kellogg interview yesterday at a Starbucks not too far from my place. The interviewer got back to me a week after I contacted him, as he had been traveling, so I was pretty happy to just get it done at some point.

I hate interviewing at a Starbucks, but I guess once I get into the "zone" I forget where I am sitting. He showed up 20 minutes late, as his conference call went over, and apologized profusely. We talked for about 30 minutes, and the interview was very standard. He was Indian as well, and worked on Wall Street, so we had quite a fair bit in common.

The questions:

1) Tell me about yourself
2) Tell me about your current job and responsibilities - a couple of follow up questions on this
3) My long-term and short-term goals
4) Can you not reach your goals without a MBA?
5) Why Kellogg
6) My GMAT and GPA
7) Two questions about my extra curricular and volunteer activities

While I had sent him a copy of my resume, he did not have it on him. He had written down some information from my resume on a piece of paper, and wrote furiously all the time that I spoke.

I then asked him a few questions, and he gave candid answers. He graduated from Kellogg in 2003, when the economy was not doing so great, and he had been lucky to get the job that he did.

All in all, it was a pleasant experience. He told me to enjoy school, and we bid goodbye. Kellogg has already started releasing admit decisions, so it would be nice to hear from them sooner rather than later!

Such is Life!

Disclaimer: A long post.

I have been meaning to write this story for a while. It has been over a year that this happened, but I can still recall it well. I may not remember the details, but those details will not change the overall message.

I was going home after almost 2 years. However, it had not been long enough to make me forget the curse - that of sitting next to babies who cry the entire 20 hour flight back home. Hence, as I found myself sitting next to a young woman, I thanked my stars. However, it seems that I had thanked too soon, as I soon discovered that this young woman was also sobbing away to glory.

Not wanting to pry, I said nothing and began to read my book. She continued crying quietly, facing toward the window, in an attempt to conceal her despair. A good 30 minutes or so after we had been in the air, she wiped her tears, composed herself and said hello. As I saw her face, I saw nothing extraordinary. She was normal looking - there was nothing striking about her. Just another face in a sea of people. A face that I would forget as soon as I departed the plane.

We started talking about nothing in particular. Learned that she lived in Connecticut with her hubby and was going home to Calcutta. I was reading "The KiteRunner", and she said that she had been wanting to read it as well.

Soon they brought out drinks, and I asked for a beer, while she went for some white wine. As we got some more alcohol in our system, the conversation became a little more interesting. I learned that she used to work in the media industry in Delhi, and was recently married. I, as always, kept the discussion focused on her, revealing little besides frivolous details about myself.
As I jested with her that she could not even leave her husband for a few weeks without crying a bucket, she suddenly fell silent. Aware that I had touched a sensitive nerve, I apologized quickly. She said nothing, but I could see tears forming in her jet black eyes.

I kicked myself. She turned to the window again, but after a few minutes said that leaving her husband was not why she was crying. She said that it was due to her son. Over the course of the next hour, downing a few bottles of wine, she told me why she was crying.

When she was 20 years old, her parents had gotten her married. It was an arranged marriage. She had barely met the guy once. Her parents had decided that it was the right time for her, the guy was from a good family, and that was all that mattered. Things had been bad from the start. He was clearly not ready to get married yet. He was still in that phase where his only purpose was to have a good time. He spent the majority of his time hanging out with his friends while she twiddled her thumbs at home. Then they had a son.

It was the turning point of her life. She forgot all her grievances toward her life, and spent all her time caring for him. However, the responsibility of a child broke the camel's back, and her husband filed for divorce. She was only happy to get out the stifling marriage.

A couple years of staying at her parents' house drove her to desperation. She just could not spend her life living at her parent's place. She made the very difficult decision to leave her son behind with her parents, and moved to Delhi for work.

The change did her good. Although she terribly missed her son, the sense of achievement - her own apartment, a new car - helped heal some of the scars. One night at a friend's birthday party, she met this guy and romance blossomed. He worked overseas, and was gone after two weeks, but their relationship continued on the phone. She knew that the next step, a.k.a marriage full of perils - not only was she a divorcee, she also had a son. A divorce is still a taboo in India, and a child from a previous marriage only adds to it.

However, her worries were unneeded as he proposed to her after a few months of meeting her. His parents had been against it, and still were, but he had decided to follow his heart. At last, it seemed that things were finally heading in the right direction.

However, life had another unpleasant surprise for her. Her ex-husband had filed a petition in the court preventing her from taking the boy out of the country. It was not out of love, as in the past two years, he had barely seen his son (who was still staying with her mother) two times. It was out of pure spite - she had moved on in life, and he had not. He wanted to hurt her, and he had decided to do it in the nastiest way possible.

She had moved to the US with her husband, and was now engaged in a court battle to get her son to his new family. She had been back to India three times in the past one year, and each time the case had gotten murkier and murkier. The only saving grace was her new husband, who was determined to stand by her through it all.

The money and the emotional pain aside, her life in the US had been at a standstill. She had not started working, as she did not know when the court would schedule a hearing and she would have to rush back home. She was going home for yet another court hearing, and the hopelessness of the situation had overwhelmed her.

On one hand, was her new husband, who had been patient and understanding through all this, and on the other, was the man in her life, who refused to let her be happy. Such is life.

I don't know why she shared that story with me. To me it was a very personal story, and not something you would share with someone you met on a plane. I took her number, but forgot all about her in the excitement of going home. I don't even remember her face, or her name. But I hope that things will turn out right for her.

What is wrong with Indian Men?

One of my friends demanded the explanation from me yesterday as she tried to hold back her tears. Let me explain. Megan is an American who had been dating this Indian guy, Amit, for about 2 years. She is pursuing a graduate degree in some medical related field in the city, and he, as usual, is a techie. She is 27, and he is 30.

2 weeks ago, Amit announced that he is going to India for a couple of months to sort out a few things. Primarily to assess what are his opportunities like in the booming city of Bangalore. She was fine with it, except that he also mentioned that Megan should not wait for him. Megan was not quite sure of what to make of it. When she pressed him, Amit admitted that his parents have been wanting him to get married for a while, and they have a few girls lined for him to see when he goes home. He also added that he had always thought that he would marry an Indian.

She was shocked. In their two years of going out, Amit had never once mentioned anything of this sort. While there had been no firm commitments on either side, she had always assumed that unless they broke up, he would propose in the next year or so. She was certainly upset over the breakup. However, her main gripe was that was she was cheated. Amit may not have lied to her, but he certainly did not tell her the entire truth either. She had just been a temporary arrangement for him, a white girlfriend that he could tell his friends about while it came "time" for him to get married.

As she demanded that I explain his actions to her, I recalled that this was not the first time I was put in such a situation. I can remember at least two instances. An Asian friend of mine had dated an Indian guy for over 4 years, and he had told her one day that he cannot go against his parents' wishes. And another American friend of mine had dated this Indian guy for a few months and he dumped her over e-mail. His reason - his grandparents were going to be living with him for the next six months.

Being an Indian male, I certainly understand the psyche of Indian men and the pressure of the family that we all live under. Family ties mean more than anything else in India, and to marry a non-Indian is perhaps the fastest route to ostracize yourself from the society. However, in this age, where we continuously harp about the Mittal's, Nooyi's and Tata's exploits, don't you think it is time to make some other changes too?

P.S. Would love to know if others have similar experiences to share.