In my opinion, there are several underlying issues
concerning the modern day South Asian male* (here on out, you are referred to as
Desi. Those who don’t know what that means, urban dictionary it). But,
the root of all those problems I believe should be called the 'Peter Pan'
syndrome. I’m not sure if this has already been named before
and I'm totally copyright infringing, but it just fits so well!
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| From Google Image: Dammit I knew I wasn't creative enough to come up with this word! |
You don’t want to grow up simply because why
should you if you don’t have to? You’ve gotten by so far by being just average
and it’s worked pretty decent in your favor so why bother aiming higher? I see
all these over grown boys walking around who are enjoying the perks of being an
adult while getting away with behaving like a child, lacking responsibility and
having a blasé outlook. So, I took it upon myself, in my visionary attempts of rectifying this occurrence (sarcasm), to blow up your spot. If you are male,
between 23-32 years old, possibly single, still living and relying on your parents
this may be about you. Rest assured I am aware, you ‘don’t care’ and you might
be too lazy to even bother trying since this is too long and you’ll probably
lose interest. But I will add a disclaimer that this is a broaaaad
generalization. Any sensible person would agree I’m generalizing, as each
person is unique and no two guys will ever be the same, but I’m trying to BROADLY define what’s wrong with desi
guys and why they need to clean up their act! ;)
I’m focused on the desi male population raised in
the US, as I interact more closely with them than I do with their non-desi
counterparts and based on what interaction I do have with the non-desis (I sit
with ten white males 8 hours a day, 5 days a week in an open office
environment) I’d still say our desi men are lagging behind their fair skinned
pals.
Peter Pan Syndrome, PPS, appears in Desi men due
to a combination of factors and is displayed by clear signs listed below:
1) Upbringing.
These guys are of a generation born to traditionally conservative parents who
migrated from abroad and wanted to give their children a ‘better’ life than
they had while preserving a culture they cherish. While they focused heavily on
the importance of academic success, Desi parents neglected to teach their
offspring** basic skills in responsibility. Males in most Desi homes are given
special treatment requiring little to no involvement in household chores. This creates
a very lazy individual who thinks all small tasks are beneath him because he’s
too ‘busy’ working towards more ‘important’ things. So while these boys are
intelligent in school, give most of them a
mop and see how quickly they try to drop it. Besides, mops belong in the
hands of a woman anyway, right? (chauvinism and superiority complexes being
among the top gifts your great grandfather left you in his will). But, my point
isn’t about the lack of helping around the house (maybe a little bit), it’s
about having accountability in day to day activities. You want to be a well-liked
leader of the house or in the office? Start acting like one. Leaders have responsibilities,
even small ones, and always ‘delegating’ them to others paints an image of you
being arrogant and uncaring. Keep it up and see how fast your 'minions’ revolt!
Back to Desi
parents, along with focusing too much on education, they tend not to be
advocates of playing team sports at a young age (due to factors such as
cheapness and time away from studies). I
realize more and more the importance of team sports as I grow up. It teaches
one to have goals, to work hard for those goals, to keep trying to be better,
as well as the value of physical activity and most importantly, it teaches
failure. Desi men don't accept when they have failed, simply because they are
sore losers who never learned how to
cope with failure. They would rather sit there (due to laziness) and tell you
how to play the game (due to their superiority complex) than to admit they’ve
never played or to try and play it now. Furthermore, sports put a strong
emphasis on collaboration, and the responsibility
of each team member. Displaying how it literally takes the efforts of each
group member to win and shows how that the QB is nothing without his whole team.
This can be applied in almost every aspect of life; work, school, family, religion,
government, etc.
Lastly, what
sets the current Desi male apart from the generations before them is that most
of our fathers were very young when they were sent to foreign countries to make
something of themselves, at times expected to support a large family back home.
It's the whole concept of sending boys into the woods to make men out of them,
and I believe it works. Even if while figuring things out on their own with no
one to guide them they made wrong choices, they still learned the importance of
standing up for something and owning their mistakes by having to resolve them all on their own. Desi boys of the 90’s
lost out on this opportunity. Again, this stems from a childhood of having
conservative parents who made most of your decisions for you or simply never included
you in any decision making process. Typical of desi families, when you aren’t
sent out of the house to live on your own your mom is still making your bed,
cleaning your clothes, cooking your meals and your dad is still deciding what
health/car insurance you’ll have and college you will attend (and paying for it
too!). You might think these are small insignificant choices made for you, but
you’ll quickly see that when you lack ability of making small decisions the big
ones become even more challenging. Being out on your own teaches you to make
choices, right or wrong. Desi guys nowadays don’t even try making decision,
they are far too comfortable with that being done for them and fear of failure
hinders any attempts. Sometimes you have to jump into the murky waters to
figure out what lies there, only fate will tell whether it’s a monster or a
mermaid but I’m certain you won’t know if you never try jumping.
2) Society.
To their parents much dismay, Desi boys grew up in a western influence and have
acquired a laid back, lazy outlook. They seemed to have taken on the “I don’t
care” mentality of American youth, yet conveniently neglected to catch on to
the ambitious American mindset. Growing up heavily influenced by MTV and video
games coupled with the increased use of internet promoted an idle and
unsympathetic attitude. Spending all afternoon fighting monsters on a computer
does not make you a superhero. When your actions don’t have any serious
repercussions, you are learning zilch about real world scenarios. You can know
all the theory out there, but until you can pass a practical exam how useful is
your knowledge? This “I don’t care’ attitude may work as a kid when you can just
reset the game, but as a grown up, you damn well better care!
You should care
if this is the 3rd time you’ve ‘misplaced’ your phone and the battery is dead
so you have no way of finding it, because you were too careless to charge it on
time. Or if your car stops on the side of the highway at 2 am, because you were
too ‘relaxed’ about filling up gas sooner. Or if you get a flat tire, making
you late to an important job interview all because you were too thoughtless
about getting the tire checked three months ago when you first noticed it was leaking
air! It shows you are irresponsible and reckless with valuables in life. You might
think ‘it’s not a big deal and it could happen to anyone’, but ironically, it’s
always happening to you. And maybe when it’s just affecting you it’s not that
serious, but what about when you have a family? What is this teaching your own
child who watches daddy’s ‘calm and laid back’ attitude? That it is okay if he
keeps screwing up? That others will probably get ahead of him in life, because
he was too uncaring about these ‘minor’ things in life. You might brush minor
things off with your ‘who cares’ attitude, but over time that attitude spills
over onto major issues and when that happens you begin losing out on big opportunities.
Desi boys need to reevaluate this ‘cool boy’ demeanor. Teach your son that its great to be laid back
in certain situations but a real superhero, instead of one in the video games, actually
physically DO work like fix things (ON TIME) and they give a crap about the
important things in life like getting an education, job and building a family.
They have goals and they work HARD to get things done, doing them promptly!
So basically, a huge facet is this hybrid of Desi
roots in a non Desi environment. But the somewhat surprising fact is that Desi
girls were largely saved from this dilemma. Desi girls have always come up
stronger than their male counterparts because given their cultural background
they were equally as strong academically, but as females they were NOT lazy, so
they graduated on time, got a decent job and by 27 are in a managerial role
therefore earning better than male counterparts and beyond ready for marriage
(especially by Desi standards). Yet they have no suitable mates as all the
Alpha males are already nabbed by rishta-hunting aunties who paired them with
the optimal Desi girl (22 svelte, and freshly out of college), so most single
guys left are the Beta males suffering from PPS. When I chitchat with other Desi girls we find there is an unending list of guys who didn’t know or
care about what they were doing in college, graduated late and thus are now
behind in the workforce. They are doing mediocre entry level jobs that pay the
bills, but they are not ‘go-getters’. Now they’re 26-28 years old and just
starting to get on track, but still seriously lagging behind in being ready to
settle down. No, this is not all about marriage, it’s about making you the best
darn man you can be and marriage is an important facet of that.
Essentially, Desi guys are not all that terrible,
they are courteous, witty (Desis are naturally blessed with a sense of humor,
no deny it), academically advanced, and boy do they know how to win a girl’s
heart. (It’s all that Bollywood cinema they were pretending not to watch as a
kid) They just have a few key areas that could use some serious improvement.
All the laziness and lack of responsibility is preventing guys from achieving
at their real potential. What this does is make them lag behind as strong
leaders; it hinders success, and deters them from having any real goals and
accomplishments. You know what makes a Desi girl proudest? Seeing a Desi guy
who succeeds. One who succeeds both professionally and personally. So guys, Get
your act together!
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| Although this has nothing to do with him, Aziz Ansari is one of my favorite 'desi' guys on TV! Funny desi boys, we love you. |
*you know you’re really just overgrown boys, and
that is what you should be called!
** This is where the Desi female lucked out (we
didn’t think so at the time), but most females were required to help their
mothers with all the tedious housekeeping tasks, to make us more marketable as the optimal Desi girl. So we ended up learning how to scrub toilets, vacuum
carpets and set tables for dinner parties. Along the way we basically learned
how to do things on our own when mom wasn't around and we learned the
repercussions of doing it wrong too (Desi mom punishments make Japanese water
boarding look like a slap on the wrist). And let's be honest, girls are
naturally better than boys ;)
