[Reader-list] Why Indian Men Are Still Boys

[Meera Rizvi]

Is this only true for Indian men? I thought it was a universal phenomenon

On 7/25/09, Chandni Parekh <chandni.parekh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> To read the full story:
>
> http://psychologynews.posterous.com/why-indian-men-are-still-boys
>
> Excerpts from a Tehelka article by Nisha Susan:
>
> Evidence is, the urban Indian male hasn’t really changed. He is cocooned as
> he has always been in a sort of prolonged infantilism – a hatchery
> protected
> by doting mothers, fathers, sisters, girlfriends, and society itself.
>
> Changed rules, changed expectations and zero preparedness. He paints a
> picture of utter pathos. “If I am supposed to cook, why can’t I cry? We men
> are constantly guessing. Am I supposed to pay for dinner or not? We have
> nothing to go on — you just patch something your girlfriend told you with
> something you saw on Star World and hope to get by!”
>
> THERE seems to be a simple equation between parents and the drought of
> responsible, responsive Indian men. In the homes of People Like Us, young
> boys do not automatically learn to cook or even to be grateful to those who
> cook for them. They are rarely taught to anticipate other people’s needs.
>
> Young Indian men routinely brutalise incoming juniors in colleges and
> justify it as tradition or socialising. Stripping, beatings, ritual
> humiliation, the eating of shit and licking of toilets, sodomy – everyone
> has a story. Worryingly, these stories are told with a grin.
>
> When an Indian man goes away from home (if at all he does) he is almost
> entirely unprepared to look after himself. Indian university towns such as
> Pune, for instance, are full of well-heeled young teenage boys housed with
> cook-cum-major-domos to clean up after them. Young women in Indian metros
> often refuse to visit their male contemporaries’ homes, sure that there
> will
> be no towels, no furniture and no food.
>
> From the moment they can walk, Indian men are taught to provide but not
> feel. Taught to command, not empathise. Taught to expect subservience not
> companionship. Taught, most damagingly, to repudiate their emotions. Their
> inner life. Their capacity for variety.
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-- 
Meera