A response to “Why White Women Marry Indian Men” ... from the perspective of a White Woman married to an Indian Man

Dear Denise Baptiste,

I read your recent article, captivatingly entitled “Why White Women Marry Indian Men” with some interest. I am, after all, a white woman living in India, married to an Indian man, and I expected to find something in the article which resonated with me. Even if it had been written by an Indian woman, and therefore more likely to be supposition than fact.

I started reading it, and immediately assumed that it was a lighthearted piece written with tongue firmly in cheek. A brilliantly ironic, and witty piece about the current “craze” of “our men” to marry those “lovely ladies from abroad”. Unfortunately, it turns out that there’s no hint of satire in this piece, which actually reeks of racism and stereotyping.

Let me offer a counter view to all of your reasons why we white chicks love your “tall dark and handsome” Indian guys. And please do bear in mind that my opinions are more likely to be correct given that I am actually one of those white women you write so freely about.

1. “White women love the concept of running around trees, romancing in the park and playing on beaches”.
Running around trees is not a concept which generally makes us white women horny. We find it a little odd, but hey, who are we to judge. Our half white kids do love playing on beaches but I don’t think their colour has anything to do with it.

2. “Indian men are highly educated and they earn a lot more than a foreigner. The thought of being financially secure is always present in her mind!”
Many Indian men (and women) are highly educated, because India is a country where people literally collect degrees. Your assumption that all of India’s 620 million men earn more than their foreign counterparts is bizarre. Did you know that the average annual income in India is 1 lakh rupees ($1600)? Compared to 29 lakh rupees in the UK ($44,000) and 35 lakh rupees ($54,000) in the US? Don’t be misled by the Mittals and the Ambanis of the world. There are only a very few of us greedy white women lucky enough to meet those types.

3. “There is no fear of commitment when it comes to Indian men. They are easy to fall in love with and if you treat them well, they will stick to you like a leech”
No fear of commitment? Do you realise what kinds of hurdles we white girls have to overcome when it comes to getting our man (and more pertinently his family) to commit to us. We’re most likely the wrong religion, we’re way too independent, and we’re probably not virgins.

4. “Women, who want to be loved by only one man for the rest of their lives, believe they can have that with an Indian man”.
I’m not sure whether or not you are married, Denise, and I am sure that you’d like to think that your man would never stray, but the fact is that the divorce rate in India has shot through the roof in recent years. Sadly, I know an awful lot of “happily married” Indian men who have had or are having affairs. And even more tragically, I’ve been propositioned by a few.

5. “Indians are obsessed with white skin. Therefore, the need to marry a white woman is at times a 'must' for Indian men”
Now this is where you start getting really offensive, Denise. I agree that India has an unhealthy obsession with fair skin, not helped by the propagation of skin lightening products and a colonial hangover. Not only have you managed to legitimise this, but you’ve managed to insult every Indian woman with your sweeping generalisation.

6. “White women marry Indian men because India is an affordable place to make a living compared to abroad”
Now this theme is beginning to get repetitive. Have you ever actually tried to buy a property, run a household, educate and feed your kids on an Indian salary? If I were to go back to the UK, I’d be able to actually afford a mortgage given the lower interest rates, my kids would be educated for free, I’d never see a hospital bill and I’d even get child benefit (ie free money) for each of my kids.

7. “India is the land of kamasutra. It is believed that white women marry Indian men for the pleasure of lovemaking”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Which Indian man told you that?

8. “The rich Indian values and traditions are some of the things that make a white woman fall head over heels with an Indian man”
I talked to some of my other friends married to Indian men. Those rich Indian values and traditions are actually often what makes life particularly difficult for us. We struggle with the demands of trying to do the “right thing” and invariably end up offending someone by getting it wrong.

9. “Sometimes, it is just the urge to have an Indian wedding! A lot of white women are crazy about the many rituals and traditions that go with an Indian wedding”
Again with the rituals and traditions. Trust me, no woman will commit to a partner for life just for a week of wedding events, however much of a bridezilla she is. Especially when the actual wedding is mindlessly boring for the bride and groom – who really wants to spend hours standing on a stage greeting 5000 strangers? What we white women really want to do is get rip roaringly drunk and dance the night away.

10. “Do you think Indian men are easy to please? White women like being around Indian men as they love to spend time with their lady and give their full attention to them”
Is this kind of a weird reversal of the racist belief that white women are “easy”? This lady’s (Indian) husband has high standards. That’s why he married her.

11. “White women are fond of Indian men as they are great cooks”
Another ROFL. My husband can’t boil an egg without burning it. In the 7 years we’ve been married, he has cooked once. Not every Indian man is a Sanjeev Kapoor, Denise.

Denise, I hope I have corrected some of your erroneous and racist views, and given you an alternative view of our reality. We white women marry “your” men because we fall in love with them, regardless of the challenges that intercultural marriages can bring with them. We don’t notice the colour of their skin (nope, we’re not as obsessed as you clearly are), we don’t fantasise about having brown babies and we certainly don’t think that Indian men are better than any other men in the world.

My Social Media detox

Every New Year, I balance the excesses of the festive season by giving up drinking for the month of January. Actually, I usually get 3 weeks into the month and then fall spectacularly off the wagon, but at least I take solace in the fact that I’ve given my liver a break for a while.

This year, I decided to add a one month Social Media detox into the mix.

Over time, I had come to realise that that cheeky Facebook app on my phone was devouring way too much of my time. From the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, to the time I closed them at night, I’d be scrolling through my newsfeed. In the car, waiting for my coffee at Starbucks, in the middle of meetings, while on the landline, in the ad breaks while watching TV - I was mesmerised by that damn app. Addicted to the minutae of my friends’ lives, and hooked on the minute by minute activity of people who I barely knew (how did all those people end up being my “friends”??!).

And so, a couple of hours past midnight on 1 January, I deleted the Facebook app from my phone and went social media cold turkey. I had actually intended to delete my account but figured that would create way too much potential drama with people wondering why I had gone overnight from posting hourly comments and status updates to a Facebook non entity, so I chose to go dark rather than disappear.

A month later, I’ve reinstalled the app, but I’m still rather reluctant to jump back in again. I’ve been Facebook free for a month, apart from posting links to a couple of pieces I wrote for websites and wanted to share, and it has been gloriously refreshing. So what I have I learned from my self imposed Facebook Intermission?

1. I will always fill my time with useless crap
The plan was to spend the cumulative seconds and minutes of “free time” gained from the Social Media hiatus to invest in my other New Year’s resolution – to learn Hindi (properly). I downloaded various Hindi tutorials and plugged myself diligently into the podcasts. The first couple of FB free days were great – I learned a few Hindi phrases and I finally learned to count to 50. However, a few days in and I started finding excuses to do other stuff. I started reading the Daily Mail online edition rather more often than I should have done (the column of trash on the right of the page, mainly). Now instead of checking my Facebook updates I read about who is doing who in Hollywood or who attended some random party showing nipples or booty or whatever. Its official, I am addicted to gossip, and I’ve decided that I’d rather know the gossip of my nearest and dearest, than some random Z list celebrity.

2. I have way too many Facebook “friends
If you’re reading this as a piece I uploaded on Facebook, then you made the cut. Before re-embracing the demon, I deleted around 300 random souls who I am sure are very nice people indeed, but who I have either never met or have no intention of meeting. There are a lot of people on my Facebook friend list who I haven’t actually seen for more than 20 years. Despite that, I still enjoy reading about their lives, because there was something about them that once upon a time I resonated with, even if it was decades ago. And I still relate to them, many years later. And then there are a whole bunch of newcomers whose names I barely recognise. I fell prey to the modern habit of friending everyone, and accepting requests from relatively random people (complete strangers and potential sleazeballs excepted). So I’ve cleared my newsfeed – and now you know I really have a thing for you, dear Facebook friend.

3. I am actually really really interested in the boring detritus of people’s lives.
Yep, I’m one of those people who really does want to know what everyone is thinking, feeling and doing, and I enjoy my smug/sympathetic/ affronted reactions. I love the fact that other people’s misfortune occasionally makes me feel better about the fact that I’m having a bad day, and I do shed the odd tear when I read that someone has had a baby / posted about how much they love their kids / shared some story about a child who is battling some terrible disease (although those tears are more often than not tears of laughter, depending on the time of the month).

4. Twitter is shit
I keep talking about Facebook, but actually I gave up Social Media in all its forms. I really hardly noticed the rest – I find Twitter unbearable and incredibly irritating (if you’re going to post something at least make it coherent) and Pinterest and Instagram are completely insignificant to me.

5. Facebook is really useful for a lot of stuff
Forget the fact that FB satisfies my endlessly twitching thumb, it is also super helpful in organising one’s life. I forgot a load of birthdays in January (including those of some close relatives) because I haven’t had my handy Facebook reminder. I’ve missed a couple of cool things happening, and I’ve stressed over organising my own event (something planned for mid Feb), as it is so easy to create something on Facebook and invite people. Somehow, I also believe that scrolling the timeline also fires weird synapses in my brain – I remember random stuff at odd hours of the day and I wake up every morning thinking of things I need to do, and people I need to reach out to thanks to comments I’ve read. I also find the curated news items and shares really insightful, and though I tried hard to replace these with some diligent reading of various “intelligent” news sites, I landed up more not less ignorant as a result.

In summary, I know its kind of uncool these days to be a Facebook Fan, but I plan to enjoy my return to it. I’m glad that I had this little break, and decluttered my friend list. Here’s to an awesome 2015!