Vikas Marwaha would normally be considered a good catch by Indian parents seeking a husband for their daughter. The 27-year-old software engineer earns $80,000 to $100,000 a year and comes from a family “of doctors and engineers,” according to his profile on a matrimonial Web site.
But Mr. Marwaha works for a start-up Internet phone company in San Francisco. And because the U.S. economy is wobbly, that’s a problem. Many Indian parents now are balking at sending their daughters to the U.S. to marry.
Until recently, overseas candidates would quickly elicit 10 to 15 responses from young women, says Smita Seth, 55, owner of Manpasand Marriage Bureau in Ahmedabad. But in the past few months, she has had to coax parents to even consider overseas grooms; they prefer men from their own towns instead.
In order to find a suitable bride, many Non-Resident Indian (N.R.I.) men leave their successful US jobs, try to find suitable jobs at home and begin the search for a bride, anew… where they’re being confronted with the fact that its pretty hard these days to find a “bride who is smart, fluent in English, and ‘simultaneously, docile in the house’.”
I wonder how other bachelors from other cultures worldwide are coping… the potential brides too! Someone should do a study on this… it seems that the general trend is reversing. People are leaving the US now, instead of flocking to it!
The reason? Pretty simple actually… as the Mighty Sparrow succinctly put it in one of his classic calypsoes:
I was kinda shy as a teenager. I guess it was because I’d attended all-male primary and secondary schools. Even though I had no problem relating to and with the female friends I grew up with, whenever I was around a girl I had a crush on, I’d turn into a complete, bungling mess.
Ahhh… teenage love!
I remember this one time… there was this one girl I really, really liked. I was… 14, going on 15? We met at Daniell’s “summer” vacation camp. She made my heart do all sorts of acrobatics whenever she was around. And she liked me, too… I could tell! She’d always make it a point to look me in the eye and smile. When I’d least expect it, she turn around and smile at me when she caught me staring at her. I’d feel my face get flushed whenever she and her friends passed me by. Her friends would always giggle at me, but she never did…
I’d been in this situation before… I’d have a crush, I could tell that she liked me too… but I just didn’t have… the “skill” …to close the deal. I’d either bungle it, or simply not do anything about it past the flirting stage. I’d just watch them from afar, and watch (eventually) as some otherdude got the girl.
This time was going to be different. This time, I was determined to overcome this shyness. So, I sat closer to her in my classes… ate lunch near to her table… I noticed when she came in and went so we’d always happen to ‘bump’ into each other… eventually, we got to talking and laughing, and my confidence grew more and more with each passing day. Eventually, I really felt myself falling for her, and she for me! One day, I decided to make a bold move. With all that was happening between us, the ‘deep feelings’ I felt had to be revealed.
I asked her for a kiss…
Politely.
She… sort of smiled… then said no.
She said I was “nice”, but I was “just a friend”.
😐
A few weeks later, after camp was finished, one of my classmates was telling me about this (different) girl he was seeing for a little while and had just kissed for the first time.
Me: So what did she do when you asked her for a kiss?
He: Ask? I didn’t ask her anything! I just… held her and kissed her!
Me: (quizzically) …and she kissed you back ?!
He: (laughing) Yeah! 😀
Me: Oh… 😐
What’s my point? Why am I putting this all out there? Its simple, really…
Newsflash! As far as ‘they’ are concerned, you already are! And they called you “uppity” to boot! So what are you going to do about it?
The thing is, is America ready for another angry black man? I think McCain is doing whatever it can to goad him into displaying his (righteous) rage simply because it will play him into their hands.
They will twist it so much that it’ll leave Jeremiah Wright speechless. They’re doing it already anyway… almost every ad spins the facts, quotes out of context, and makes the truth out to be something stranger than fiction.
I don’t know what McCain’s minions are holding back, but whatever it is, the microsecond Obama takes off his belt to lash the dolts with some sense, they will let the pit bulls go after him and won’t hold them back.
If we’re alarmed at the people who look at him and call him uppity now, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Who knows? Maybe America is ready. There’ve been several portrayals of “Angry Black Men” in popular culture for many years… Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, and even Will Smith have filmed righteous indignation scenes throughout their careers that resonate with us still.
The Bobolee Chronicles 