“Don’t you go up to him… let him come to you.” Heard that before? How about: “If you act interested he may think you’re too forward.” Being a desi girl, these nuggets of pseudo-wisdom are de rigueur, not just from out-of-date aunties and grandmothers, but even from our peers.
So if you like a guy, and you want him to know it…you ignore him. Something about that seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?
Of course, we can say that in most cultures around the world, men have been the ‘chasers’ and women have been the ‘chased’ (and the chaste, for that matter). But in most places, that coy, female archetype is replaced by women who unapologetically know what they want, and how to get it. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems the South Asian community has not quite caught up and I know exactly where to pin the blame—Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.
Okay, so I agree that this one film can’t be accountable for a generation of timid women, but Bollywood as a whole has made an effort to perpetuate the idea that women who are openly interested in a man, without hemming and hawing and acting like they can’t be bothered, are considered sexual aggressors. If we follow the Bollywood stereotype, no one would get into a relationship without being chased around trees.
A man must put himself firmly out there, profess his admiration from the rooftops and preferably save you from a burning building before you agree to falling in love with him. That sounds okay for the movies, but what about real life? How about getting to know someone over a drink or a cup of chai? Do we have to wait for some sort of gallant declaration first?
So as a South Asian woman, if I see someone interesting at a bar and I think I would like to have a conversation with him, what do I do? Hold my breath? Count to ten? Cross my fingers? Is walking up to him and introducing myself too radical a concept for our community to accept? How about if I just want to have a conversation with someone new, with no other expectations.
Of course, whenever that has happened in the movies, the girl is usually some sort of seamy seductress on a mission for the arch-villain. And so good girls aren’t supposed to do that. A friend Mona tells me, “Whenever I attempt to speak to someone when I’m out, I get looks from my friends, like what is she doing? It isn’t considered normal to talk to a stranger of the opposite sex unless he approaches me first, and even then, I’m supposed to act uninterested.”
There seems to be a common thread here. Girls who have opinions are labeled aggressive. Girls who are loud are labeled attention-seekers. And girls who actually don’t mind admitting that they like boys? They are judged too. And who does the judging? Most of the time, it is other girls. Girls who have no doubt watched DDLJ a few too many times. Bollywood simplifies relationships so that it makes it seem like every narrative should be: boy-meets-girl, boy-chases-girl, girl-acquiesces-after-boy-performs-heroic-feat.
How do our men feel, knowing that they have to measure up to Shah Rukh Khan? That they have to stare down other suitors and get into fistfights in order to get the girl? I asked a bunch of my male friends whether this had ever come up. “It isn’t that we need to act like a stereotypical hero, it’s the fact that Bollywood very rarely gives you an example of normal interaction. And girls expect the guy to make all the moves,” says Aditya. If we follow the Hindi movie trope, the less interested the heroine is, the more deeply in love the couple will be after the requisite fight, song and dance.
Perhaps there are romances that have started like that. I can’t say I’m too jaded to believe there are women who have had a typical Bollywood-style romance. As I said, perhaps there are. But maybe the problem is that in the movies, more often than not, the stories and the characters are the same, recycled in different places by different people, but all fitting into a certain set of principles.
In real life, we are all so very different. To fit into one particular type seems impossible, and many of us encompass more than one. Sometimes we are the damsel in distress, or the geeky tomboy, or even the seductress. And sometimes we are the girls running through mustard fields in a white churidaar kurta.
— Kari
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Kari ‘Bad’ Shah is a single Indian woman in her late 20’s who has lived in many cities around the world. She hopes her experiences and thoughts will help bridge the generational gap between South Asian parents and children worldwide. ‘No Sex in the City’ is inspired by the popular TV show ‘Sex and the City’ which captured the attention of diverse viewers across the globe.
