Dating Debacles of a Single Indian Mom Part- I

With My closest Indian friend in US a few years ago when she was single too-she and I had a lot of fun laughing at our complete ineptness in the dating scene

Once you have healed from the pain of a failed marriage and have transitioned to a good place in your life as a single parent, it is only natural to want to find a partner or at the very least someone to do things with. But putting yourself out there is a very scary proposition. It is especially more intimidating for women from the Asian subcontinent settled in the US. In a culture where arranged marriage is generally the way to enjoy holy matrimony, dating is not the norm in their socio-cultural universe. Let me share some humorous, but revealing episodes that show acclimatization over the years...

Get Back into Dating!!! We Were Never There
I recall with amusement some years ago at a previous job, when an American-born co-worker/friend also a single mom once commented that it would be tough for her to get back into the dating scene again. I exclaimed, “Get back”, I was never there to begin with! She found it a true anomaly because here she was looking at a well-educated woman, an ambitious and confident go-getter in the professional world, somewhat of a feminist, but totally clueless and inhibited when it came to the dating game. However this is not just my story, this is typical of many educated middle-class women from the Indian subcontinent who are otherwise successful professionals in the US.


With all of my beautiful and accomplished single Indian mom friends here in US.

Another World
Most of us have attended all-girls schools or even if we went to co-educational institutions and participated in many co-ed social activities, the emphasis was on academics to be followed by grooming for marriage in terms of developing household skills, certainly not on dating. Things have changed back home now, at least according to Bollywood movies which while exaggerated fantasies are still based on some reality.

Cannot resist showing a picture of my beautiful niece as a bride at her arranged wedding.

The Rules
So coming back to my girlfriend, she decided to take me in hand and presented me with a book called, “The Rules”. This book, I can say with complete seriousness, was the trashiest reading , I had done in a while, but still full of age-old wisdom. Essentially, it focuses on the most entertaining set of games that women are persuaded to play to hook a man. Apart from personal cultural limitations, it goes totally against my personality-type of being a straight shooter who has no time for playing the dumb feminine wiles advocated within. Obviously, the book is languishing in some corner in my house.

It Is Ok To Talk to Strangers – Not So
This friend just killed me with her coaching. Once I did the mistake of telling her that a reasonably attractive man seemingly decent and seated next to me had attempted to strike a conversation with me on the Metro. I was reading my newspaper at the end of a long day, when he made an inane remark to the effect like, “This Metro service is really getting worse.” Considering it a rhetorical statement because we all know how annoying Metro is, I briefly nodded and buried my head in the paper again. He attempted again, “So how has your day been?” Now I was hit by an uncharacteristic bout of reserve and just gave him an icy, clipped response like “Good” or something to that effect. Well, that was the end of that stilted conversation. Flustered, the poor man got off at the next stop. I bet he disembarked prematurely to escape the awkwardness of the situation. (I felt bad and almost yelled out the all-American panacea for all situations- "don't feel bad, It is not personal", but of course I didn't.) Sure enough, I never heard the end of it from my friend. She literally wagged her finger in my face saying that this is America, it is A Okay to smile and talk with a strange male even if you have not been introduced formally. Well, Hello! How can I forget all my ingrained culture and the nuns’ teachings at an all-girl Catholic school that I attended for fourteen years, just like that!!! We are just plain old school.

Totally Clueless
Another time, I was very absorbed slaving away on a memo when I saw a consultant that I had seen around, standing at my office door asking if he could borrow a pencil. Irritated at being bothered while I was attempting to meet a deadline, I remember wondering why the heck was he bothering me when others were around. Anyway, I quickly gave him a pencil, but he seemed to hesitate till he saw my annoyed expression. He left and I shut my door to continue slogging. Unbeknownst to me, my co-worker had been watching the entire episode. Oh my Lord! She immediately marched into my office and scolded me, telling me that the poor guy had been hovering and sweating it out for a bit till he had mustered the courage to come up to me and I had completely blown him off. Essentially, I had just blown it -ONCE again. Needless to say, I was given another lecture on not being smart enough to pick up on the cues and kept missing the signals from nice men. Whatever!

It Is Only a Dance!
There have been other many such social situations like going to a dance with girlfriends. So picture this, while my American girlfriends were smiling and radiating positive energy, a couple of Indian girlfriends and I ran the gamut of emotions from icy, glum, gloomy to positively grim expressions. When one poor guy did venture to face me, the ultimate queen of darkness, I hesitated, till my friend Barbara lost her patience and said, “Heavens Raksha, the guy is asking you only for a dance not marriage”. Ouch!!! I trotted obediently to perform the worst semblance of swing dancing possible. Needless to say it certainly was the last dance!

We Are a Package Deal
A few months back, a couple of my Indian girlfriends and I decided to be brave and attend a singles event. Our feeling of vulnerability and social discomfort in such a situation was at an all-time high. The event with a bar-like environment was a true meat market with everyone checking each other out-blatantly. The American single women went around introducing themselves to each other and the guys. And what did we three do? We three wimps clung to each other for dear life !!! Whether going to the bar or while sitting and eating those disgusting nachos, that the event planner freely provided us or even going to the Ladies Room together like middle school girls - high school would be too advanced. I guess we considered ourselves a package deal as in buy one get two free because we pretty much were glued to each other all evening, uncaringly breaking the golden rule that you never go to a singles event in a group as that can be itself intimidating to any single guy wanting to approach any of us. One bold and definitely not beautiful guy did come over and boy did he love the attention that he got from the three of us!!! At that point, we had just wanted to redeem the exhorbitant cover charges that we had paid.

(On the surface, we were a power-trio, three haughty divas with solid professional careers - all used to alpha males in the work domain. But in terms of social reality, we were a churning internal cauldron of conflicting emotions ranging alternately from optimism, excitement and pride at our sense of adventure, but most predominantly social anxiety and awkwardness).

Some are Just Naturals
Our Western counterparts, for the most part, are simply used to the dating world and have a certain ease which just seems to elude us women from the East. This comfort level can be attributed to years of exposure and experience. Of course, some women are just naturals at meeting men in any situation. I am in complete awe of a girlfriend who can go into any place - a grocery story, dry cleaners, park, gas station etc. etc. and come back with a date with mostly regular men. It is all above board and proper –she follows the safety rules. She is just very comfortable in her own skin and can start talking about anything from parrots from Africa, war in Afghanistan to Bush's intellect or rather the lack of it with a complete stranger

It is Still a Learning Process
Of course after ten years of being single I have made some progress but it has not been easy. To put it mildly, the dating world is very draining. Due to our cultural inhibitions (we are constantly fighting our inner demons borne of generations of social taboos wherein it is constantly drilled that mingling and togetherness with men without marriage is immoral), it doesn’t come naturally. It takes double the effort to intellectually put yourself out there and go through emotional experiences which one would normally go through in high school or college here. Similar let-downs are doubly painful in middle-age and take longer to heal because of being a novice in the manipulative games that one is suddenly exposed to at this stage in our lives, coupled with the serious baggage which each of us brings to this man-woman dance. But the painful reality is that unless one is planning to spend life with bassets and cats or whatever animal suits your fancy, one has to get out and about and play the game of life while being true to yourself- finding that fine balance is what I consider truly the toughest part…