...The Infinite Web of Darkness: Relations between the Genders
It's been precisely a month since my little pre-med epiphany, and coincidentally today is the day I was supposed to be up at some ungodly hour taking the MCATs....and so it only seemed right to celebrate this momentous occasion with another random blog entry... And for all you folks who are expecting another career-change rant...relax, none will be forthcoming. I don't think I could take another one...actually I know I can't (I'm currently still dealing with the parental backlash concerning my "selfish" pursuit of happiness). So yes, this will be random...
Here's a quote from a random overrated 80's movie:
“They’re either married or gay. And if they’re not gay, they’ve just broken up with the most wonderful woman in the world, or they’ve just broken up with a bitch who looks exactly like me. They’re in transition from a monogamous relationship and they need more space. Or they’re tired of space, but they just can’t commit. Or they want to commit, but they’re afraid to get close. They want to get close, you don’t want to get near them.”
This of course refers to men, in all their bizarreness...
I think this has all crossed my mind because of my mother....as inherently creepy as that statement is, let me clarify... I'd say until the age of 15, I've been you're average man-bashing Indian girl feeding off the film industry's representations of stereotypical oppressive males. Honestly, I don't know why every...single...indian movie portrays them like that, and being that I've only been to India twice, how the hell am I supposed to discern truth from fiction? So, the next logical source of insight a kid seeks concerning relationships comes from their parents. Ew. I don't claim to understand my parents' relationship, actually I'm still having trouble coming to grips that they actually had to....(insert least traumatizing euphemism for sex here) for me to exist. (This is of course discounting my brother's theories that I was plucked from a New York dumpster or was part of a Blue light special at Kmart.) But in any case, I still can't fully analyze it because it was an ARRANGED marriage...and as any first generation indian kid can tell you, that word strikes the fear of god into you. It makes you want to run into the night screaming... Why?
Actually, I don't have that instinctive visceral distaste for it as many of my American peers do, simply by the fact that I've had longer to try and understand it through the example of my parents. Well, their marriage isn't a disaster, and no more screwed up than any other...and so while I won't sell the idea of arranged marriage, I refuse to denounce it completely either. But it isn't right for me... because if I set aside for a moment the utterly horrifying prospect of letting my mom pick the "perfect" spouse (read: 90lb, diminutive indian software engineer with enormous bank account who has fond memories of cricket matches past in the motherland), there are still other things I can't reconcile. 1) Implicit in such an arrangement is that you are being asked to "try" and like/love someone...and I'm sorry, that just can't happen. My limited (okay, non-existent) experience tells me that I'd spend the rest of eternity wondering if I settled or he settled. 2) I would instantly lose respect for myself.. and my future spouse, for what I perceive to be a lack of backbone, wondering what kind of person lets their parents choose who they're supposed to be with, ostensibly, forever. 3) FOREVER...does anyone really fully comprehend how LONG that is?! Same person, day in, day out, 24/7...for all time. I'm not a committment phobe I swear! Its just...a really..long time.....And, uh, this is now turning into a list of why I'm not a big fan of the idea of marriage, instead of arranged marriage, specifically. So I'll stop here.
The point is, when I was in my little angsty pre-teen (hey, I can be condescending towards myself) days...I could ponder these little theories because it all seemed so unbelievably far off. But I'm turning 20 in less than 2 months....and entering your 20's is magical Indian parent code for "Oooh, time to look for suitable match!" And they won't admit it. And by "they" I really mean...my mom (because my dad wouldn't touch this subject with an 80 foot pole lest he kick off WWIII). The plan, I'm pretty sure, was to wait until I get into medical school and then magically let those old no-dating taboos fall away, now that I'd be swimming in a pool of eligible future (don't forget Indian) docs. Oh, excellent.
My mother is pretty paranoid...and I'm still only in undergrad. I think in her twisted world, any sort of normal interaction with men, indicates some "fishiness" going on. Right. Take tonight for instance, when I was telling her that I ought to sign up for a language class this summer before I leave for Costa Rica, since the only spanish I knew were stuff like "Gee, you're hot, I want you", compliments of my latin pop collection. And she AUTOMATICALLY, as if she were programmed went "You don't need to be saying that over there! You need to learn useful things!" I'd really like to live in the farcicle dreamworld my mother resides in..where throwing out a "Te quiero" and a "Te amo" here and there gets hordes of ridiculously good-looking smooth Latin men killing themselves to get to me. Either she overestimates my sex-appeal or she's convinced my ditching pre-med was a prelude to the new ... psycho Nina who does crazy, inconcievably bad things like...like DATING!
But really, I realize my days are numbered...I can pat myself on the back sorta for making my first big piss-off-the-folks type decision at 19, but if I let them think it's an isolated freak occurence, then they'll slip right back into the "Okay, you had your fun...it's time for us to make the really important decision...meet Rajiv Singhanitukamundagandhicurry, make nice now...oh and we want grandkids," in five years time.
So do you people understand the mechanics of this strategic game I'm playing with my mom? Good, neither do I. But my hunch is that if I don't present a real or imaginary boyfriend in one year's time, my fate will be sealed. My parents are convinced that I wouldn't do anything "rash" (again, this means expressing interest in people of opposite gender..ooh., fucking sick i know), and hence they could relax till grad school. And frankly, I haven't done anything to prove them wrong. Now that I've dropped the one career that would ensure them their pool of rich, acceptable bachelors, my mom will be desperately wondering/plotting ways to hook me up, in a futile battle against my confirmed state of singlehood. She may even get so panicky that during vacation from lawschool, I'll come home to an Indian guy I've never seen before, probably flanked on both sides by parents who'll look eerily like mine. This will then lead to an excruciatingly awkward conversation where I'll kindly take him aside, and explain to him that my idea of cooking is pouring milk on cereal, and then throw in some little white lies to scare him off. You know, stuff like "I did have syphillis for awhile...but don't worry, the flesh-eating virus I caught during my time in a Columbian prison for smuggling cocaine, probably killed it. Probably."
And so, this is the next main obstacle to my ideal state of being: total independence from the folks. So either I need to stop this lame "oh my god I like someone!" thing and then proceed to demonstrate how my emotional development seems to have halted at 12, or start growing up before I'm forced to concoct weird schemes to evade my mom's maniacal matchmaking schemes. Again, time is of the essence. I must set a firm precedent, one that she cannot uproot... Although any non-weather related discussion with my folks is guaranteed to descend into an argument (which I try to avoid at all costs), I would find it amusing as hell to throw in little "You know, latin guys really ARE appealing" just to freak them out...but again, have to be careful, or next thing you know they'll bribe the pilot to drive me to some convent in India.
Okay this post had no point, and it's all so hypothetical I don't know why I dedicated this much time to it...but conversations with my mother have the tendency to make me slightly paranoid. Alright, very paranoid. I can admit that. I can also admit that right now I'm f-ing tired. I'm out.
Here's a quote from a random overrated 80's movie:
“They’re either married or gay. And if they’re not gay, they’ve just broken up with the most wonderful woman in the world, or they’ve just broken up with a bitch who looks exactly like me. They’re in transition from a monogamous relationship and they need more space. Or they’re tired of space, but they just can’t commit. Or they want to commit, but they’re afraid to get close. They want to get close, you don’t want to get near them.”
This of course refers to men, in all their bizarreness...
I think this has all crossed my mind because of my mother....as inherently creepy as that statement is, let me clarify... I'd say until the age of 15, I've been you're average man-bashing Indian girl feeding off the film industry's representations of stereotypical oppressive males. Honestly, I don't know why every...single...indian movie portrays them like that, and being that I've only been to India twice, how the hell am I supposed to discern truth from fiction? So, the next logical source of insight a kid seeks concerning relationships comes from their parents. Ew. I don't claim to understand my parents' relationship, actually I'm still having trouble coming to grips that they actually had to....(insert least traumatizing euphemism for sex here) for me to exist. (This is of course discounting my brother's theories that I was plucked from a New York dumpster or was part of a Blue light special at Kmart.) But in any case, I still can't fully analyze it because it was an ARRANGED marriage...and as any first generation indian kid can tell you, that word strikes the fear of god into you. It makes you want to run into the night screaming... Why?
Actually, I don't have that instinctive visceral distaste for it as many of my American peers do, simply by the fact that I've had longer to try and understand it through the example of my parents. Well, their marriage isn't a disaster, and no more screwed up than any other...and so while I won't sell the idea of arranged marriage, I refuse to denounce it completely either. But it isn't right for me... because if I set aside for a moment the utterly horrifying prospect of letting my mom pick the "perfect" spouse (read: 90lb, diminutive indian software engineer with enormous bank account who has fond memories of cricket matches past in the motherland), there are still other things I can't reconcile. 1) Implicit in such an arrangement is that you are being asked to "try" and like/love someone...and I'm sorry, that just can't happen. My limited (okay, non-existent) experience tells me that I'd spend the rest of eternity wondering if I settled or he settled. 2) I would instantly lose respect for myself.. and my future spouse, for what I perceive to be a lack of backbone, wondering what kind of person lets their parents choose who they're supposed to be with, ostensibly, forever. 3) FOREVER...does anyone really fully comprehend how LONG that is?! Same person, day in, day out, 24/7...for all time. I'm not a committment phobe I swear! Its just...a really..long time.....And, uh, this is now turning into a list of why I'm not a big fan of the idea of marriage, instead of arranged marriage, specifically. So I'll stop here.
The point is, when I was in my little angsty pre-teen (hey, I can be condescending towards myself) days...I could ponder these little theories because it all seemed so unbelievably far off. But I'm turning 20 in less than 2 months....and entering your 20's is magical Indian parent code for "Oooh, time to look for suitable match!" And they won't admit it. And by "they" I really mean...my mom (because my dad wouldn't touch this subject with an 80 foot pole lest he kick off WWIII). The plan, I'm pretty sure, was to wait until I get into medical school and then magically let those old no-dating taboos fall away, now that I'd be swimming in a pool of eligible future (don't forget Indian) docs. Oh, excellent.
My mother is pretty paranoid...and I'm still only in undergrad. I think in her twisted world, any sort of normal interaction with men, indicates some "fishiness" going on. Right. Take tonight for instance, when I was telling her that I ought to sign up for a language class this summer before I leave for Costa Rica, since the only spanish I knew were stuff like "Gee, you're hot, I want you", compliments of my latin pop collection. And she AUTOMATICALLY, as if she were programmed went "You don't need to be saying that over there! You need to learn useful things!" I'd really like to live in the farcicle dreamworld my mother resides in..where throwing out a "Te quiero" and a "Te amo" here and there gets hordes of ridiculously good-looking smooth Latin men killing themselves to get to me. Either she overestimates my sex-appeal or she's convinced my ditching pre-med was a prelude to the new ... psycho Nina who does crazy, inconcievably bad things like...like DATING!
But really, I realize my days are numbered...I can pat myself on the back sorta for making my first big piss-off-the-folks type decision at 19, but if I let them think it's an isolated freak occurence, then they'll slip right back into the "Okay, you had your fun...it's time for us to make the really important decision...meet Rajiv Singhanitukamundagandhicurry, make nice now...oh and we want grandkids," in five years time.
So do you people understand the mechanics of this strategic game I'm playing with my mom? Good, neither do I. But my hunch is that if I don't present a real or imaginary boyfriend in one year's time, my fate will be sealed. My parents are convinced that I wouldn't do anything "rash" (again, this means expressing interest in people of opposite gender..ooh., fucking sick i know), and hence they could relax till grad school. And frankly, I haven't done anything to prove them wrong. Now that I've dropped the one career that would ensure them their pool of rich, acceptable bachelors, my mom will be desperately wondering/plotting ways to hook me up, in a futile battle against my confirmed state of singlehood. She may even get so panicky that during vacation from lawschool, I'll come home to an Indian guy I've never seen before, probably flanked on both sides by parents who'll look eerily like mine. This will then lead to an excruciatingly awkward conversation where I'll kindly take him aside, and explain to him that my idea of cooking is pouring milk on cereal, and then throw in some little white lies to scare him off. You know, stuff like "I did have syphillis for awhile...but don't worry, the flesh-eating virus I caught during my time in a Columbian prison for smuggling cocaine, probably killed it. Probably."
And so, this is the next main obstacle to my ideal state of being: total independence from the folks. So either I need to stop this lame "oh my god I like someone!" thing and then proceed to demonstrate how my emotional development seems to have halted at 12, or start growing up before I'm forced to concoct weird schemes to evade my mom's maniacal matchmaking schemes. Again, time is of the essence. I must set a firm precedent, one that she cannot uproot... Although any non-weather related discussion with my folks is guaranteed to descend into an argument (which I try to avoid at all costs), I would find it amusing as hell to throw in little "You know, latin guys really ARE appealing" just to freak them out...but again, have to be careful, or next thing you know they'll bribe the pilot to drive me to some convent in India.
Okay this post had no point, and it's all so hypothetical I don't know why I dedicated this much time to it...but conversations with my mother have the tendency to make me slightly paranoid. Alright, very paranoid. I can admit that. I can also admit that right now I'm f-ing tired. I'm out.
