Singled Out [by New Light Productions] will be an hour-long documentary exploring… [the lives of] single South Asian thirtysomethings in North America… To many elders… that many not-so-young people are remaining unmarried is puzzling, worrisome, and even scandalous… Singled Out will… examine the… anxieties and coping mechanisms of this often stigmatized group.
South Asian Singles Research Survey
We wish to capture the experiences of single, never-married South Asian Americans from 30-49. Jumpin’ jehoshaphat, you’re old. Here, have a Prozac.
1. As a single person, are you looking to meet people for dating or marriage?
Yes No What is this ‘dating’ you speak of?
2. Do you feel pressure to get married?
Yes Yes
3. If yes, where is this pressure coming from?
<
p> My S.O. My psycho ex Sad fatty aunties Gay marriages Circus clowns
4. If yes, what kinds of pressure do you feel?
<
p> Want to make couple-friends Want to go on couple-dates Want to have couple-conversations about mortgages and tax shelters Want to kill myself after filling out these stupid surveys
5. If you are feeling the pressure/stress, how do you cope?
Krumping Rough sex with crack ho’s A bracing round of badminton Getting wasted and picking up strangers
6. What are your anxieties/fears around being single?
Not enough nagging, too much nookie The envy of my married friends To shave my back, have to keep using the ol’ shaver-on-a-stick trick
7. Would you like to have children?
Yes No Rentals only Lease to own, but the financing’s a bitch
8. Bow to the power of my cuteness!
9. If yes, would you consider having children outside of marriage?
Yes No The kid is not my son
10. Have you ever tried any of the following:
Meeting boring white people on Match Meeting boring brown people on Indian Dating Meeting freaky brown artists on Nerve As a last resort, appearing in a movie about being single
11. If you are not looking for a partner, then are you happy being single?
Yes No I’m shacked up with Rosie and her five sisters
12. You are not looking for a partner because:
I’m mentally defective I’m morally defective I lead a happy life and don’t want to totally fuck it up
13. Being a ‘single’ person, do you feel valued in the South Asian community?
Yes No Right up until I read this survey Wait, why is single in quotes? Dammit, do I need to get tested again?
14. Do you ever have to justify being single to other South Asians?
See #1-13
15. Which of the following applies most to you:
I despair of ever being married, meet all the suitables catapulted in my direction, and am pitied by the aunties I am married, miserable, and pitied by the aunties I enjoy my life as-is; I am whispered about, treated like a felon and pitied by the aunties I pity the aunties
16. Are you ever going to provide your poor, suffering parents with grandchildren?
Yes No, I take pleasure in denying them the genealogical fruit of their loins. Then I kick little puppies. It brings me joy.
17. Would you like to be considered to advertise your desperation as a subject for a documentary?
Yes No Desi please
Contact Info (Optional)
Name:
Phone:
Email:
Photo:
Measurements:
36-24-36 24-36-24 24-24-24 666 69
Body type:
Gym Guido About average A few extra pounds Tatanka
Other:
I am hot I am fiscally solvent
I always found the concept of marriage interesting. How is it every culture (correct me if I am wrong) has this type of institution? I just don’t see how the jump was made from no marriage, to some sort of ceromony where you annouce to the world that you are only now with this girl / guy.
This might win for funniest Sepia Mutiny post ever IMHO. 🙂
Hahaha! This is good. How is it that if you choose to be single, a) You are immature b) You do not take life seriously c) You are having an illicit affair d) You are gay
Also, notice how an 18 year old suddenly becomes worthy of ‘adult conversations and discussions after he/she marries and ‘settles’ down? Even more so if the significant other is tall, slim and fair, family loving and working in a top overseas firm.
Cheers Manish….this totally cracked me up!
Word. Don’t forget that you have to be completely ASEXUAL right up until it’s time for you to find “a suitable mate.”
Why only 30-49?
But thereafter, everyone’s on your case about producing babies. A friend who recently got married told me her mother and MIL sat her down for a VERY graphic talk about her wifely duties and their expectations for babies
I think its geared towards the 30-49 age group because you have ‘some hope’ still. After 49, you’re way beyond your prime.
Talking about being assexual…yes, you are not supposed to even pretend to have normal urges.
You know what gets me though? When an umarried person who is well into their forties is touted as a ‘tall, slim, educated, homely, young looking BOY or GIRL.’ According to most indian standards..marriage makes you an adult.
sure, by every fat overbearing auntie with a cross-eyed bucktoothed 34 year old son with a collection of Transformers…
If they want to make the movie really interesting, they should throw in the bête noire (pardon the pun) of interracial dating and marriage to boot.
What’s wrong with transformers? Some of them are collectables, real works of 1980s era pop-art 😉
Yeah, don’t hate on Ennis! 😉
Yeah, they’re more than meet the eyes, you know. 😉
. It’s a canadian movie, right… ? bet you my … janghia they’ve got that angle covered.
I bet your other janghias too! Heh, what an awesome term, janghia. Thanks, Dhaavak…
Thats underwear chaddi katchi
I love the term SO, but it comes with too many expectations. Personally, I usually insist on being called somebody’s Insignifact Other until we’re ready to take it to the “telling the uncles and aunties” level … Plus, IO sounds like I/O which is just geeknasty …
How does a single person have an affair?? Isnt it contradictory?
By having sex out of wedlock. Are you sure you grew up desi? 😉
The whole list is hillarious. For us FOBs a question about “Do you get pressure from your parents to make babies .. (and fast)?” can be added.
why would I hate on Ennis? 😉
Oh, eewww!
just…EW.
Sex talk about wifely duties with your mother-in-law??? the horror!
How did you poor friend handle it?
This line:
Should come with subsections for men: – my receding hairline, “alcohol problem” and decision to quit medical school for the life of a slam-poet is whispered about as I’m forced to meet every overweight/simpering, scary/scowling, inbred/autistic over-35 desi woman “from a good family” this side of the rockies.
and women: – my past with a live-in boyfriend spreads like wildfire while whispers of cows and the price of milk come back to haunt me. I’m forced to meet pharmacists and the guy who runs a used-car dealership.
Meeting boring white people on Match Meeting boring brown people on Indian Dating Meeting freaky brown artists on Nerve
Why is Shaadi.com missing?
Oh can we please please please make the survey live, please pretty please? I want to know what people answer!!! Please? 😀
Also, can’t we take down the lower age a bit?
Plus, IO sounds like I/O
Ennis, you are a veddy veddy bad boy. 😀
Manish, I wasn’t feeling any real urgency about married at all until I got to number 8. :-p SOOOOOOOO CUTE.
We should have a Sepia Baby day when people post pictures of their neices and nephews and babies and liddle-widdle siblings.
she couldn’t decide whether to be mortified or to die laughing.
KD, please do tell all! I’m interested to know what is considered graphic for desi moms and mil’s. Did anyone sit down the guy to have a graphic talk with him about his manly duties in the bedroom?
Are you kidding? They didn’t even tell him not to leave the toilet seat up at night!
Aargh… how hypocritical. But seriously, I’m curious by what would be graphic according to moms and in-laws? Kissing? LOL.
GAH! I’ve already threatened that the next time any of my inlaws gets overly pushy or inquisitive about when we plan on breeding, I will look at them with a straight face and do one of two things, depending how I feel
1) “ew!!!!! that would mean we have to have SEX!!! gross!!!!!”
or 2) “hey, at this point I’m just trying to get some, period.”
I figure they’ll lay off for at least a year, just from the sheer horror…
Guru Gulab Khatri wrote
So Guru – katchi’s eh… – wow – good for you dude – didnt know you swung that way – I prefer the Y kind – to each his own I guess.
for those times when you need visuals- janghia, katchi,
well they tag teamed her and first of all her MIL asked her to get on the pill 3-4 months before the wedding, so the adjustment period would be over and she could garauntee a bloodless wedding and hence a good wedding night. Then a day or two before the wedding her mom sat her down to tell her that she must keep her man satisfied in many ways and that the bedroom was a sacred place where new experiences must be explored and that within the context of marriage sex was a beautiful thing. She went on to explain foreplay and its importance. like i said graphic. the mom ended telling the girl that if you keep a man happy at home he has no need to look elsewhere. The mil then gave her a graphic “positions” book and lingerie with a wink and a nod…
the guys father tried to ask him how his sex life was a few weeks after the wedding. The guy stonewalled him….
You could always tell them: “My husband says that the best way to make a baby is through the back door, and I don’t want to contradict him!”
Say what you will, when push comes to shove – it’s the indians who really know how to consummate their coupling – hats off to this couple — WARNING: sexually explicit images —
Yuck…can you imagine being tag teamed by two women who suddenly tell you that sex is divine? Especially considering that they banned you from doing anything to mess your precious purity all that time?What would confuse the hell out of me is the thought of them going at it at some point in their lives! NASTY!
“okeiy dear…now you lissen to uz. You musht tek the precosion when you do the sex. In starting, it will be uncomfortable but with the time and the peshans, you will learn to enjoy the sex because it is your duty’. As for manly duties…I wonder how many indian women over 50 know that an orgasm is not a male mandate…food for fodder eh?
what is with the myth that a few hundred years ago, when they wrote kama sutra, they knew how to have orgasms, but of course, all our aunties wouldnt know jack about it, because they’re these nice subservient people who just lay there and get treated as a sperm receptacle.
The “marital advice” talk by the auntiejis reminds me of that bit in “Life is not all ha ha hee hee” where all the aunties sit down with Ayesha Dharkar’s character and start bombarding her with advice about how to be a “good wife”.
There was a sketch in Goodness Gracious Me where the bride’s mother decides to give her daughter (played by Nina Wadia) advice about her sex life too, despite the fact that her daughter had been going out with the guy for several years. It was quite funny, especially when the mother (played by Meera Syal) started commenting about the use of, er, “toys” and so on…..
If your mother sits you down to talk about sex, maybe you should pull out one of your porns (Maybe “Debbie Does Dallas” – you know, sometime a little more high end) and say, “Thank GOD you started this discussion. I saw this video and have a TON of questions…” And, just for kicks, see how long she’ll go along with it. Play the video and actually ask questions. “Mom, have you tried that?” “Which one is more fun?” “Does putting in a vibrator in that deep harm your ability to have children?”
Oh … this thread is about marItal advice not martIal advice … it gets very confusing around here.
For example – the Hindu squat – good training for fighting or loving?
See, I thought aunties would sit down and give the new bride martial advice – for example, explaining how to properly execute a left jab, and why a haymaker is never a good idea. Then again, I’m probably revealing my personal attitudes towards marriage here …
Oh, and talking about advice from aunties… Anytime one of my friends gets married and they have the lady sangeet or bridal shower with a gaggle of aunties present, they start considering her a part of their “club” and start telling dirty jokes or making various sexual innuendos. They all hoot in excitement when they see her open one of her gifts and it turns out to be some type of lingerie. It’s, um, kind of disturbing, (going back to what a couple of others have mentioned), when you consider that they want you to be a nun until you’re “of age”, and then they want you to go have babies asap. It’s not like the pressure to get married in general isn’t there for me, but if a day ever comes that there’s a specific guy that I don’t know too well and my parents are really pushing me at all, I may just have to sit my mother down and say, “You wanted me to be a nun/asexual/whatever up until this point to preserve my and the family’s honor- now you want me to go sleep with a man I hardly know?” Right.
Oh the misconceptions about sex and tradtional families on this board just cracks me up.
Is it due to the conditioning that only the Western model of courtship and dating leads to sex( alas, I thought that in younger days too, only to discover the folks who were in arranged situations were no behind us “liberated” ones, and could actually teach us a thing or two. An contrary to what most beleive, many many older women can give the down and dirty to the younger women about sexual skills , a much hidden secret on families)
This news article is interesting. Sexual experience and multiple partners by itself (as is commonly believed) is absolutely no precursor to a good sexual relationship. And experimentation is not really absent in monogamours relationships. Also, the statistics on one night stands is fascinating.
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=57996
The land of kama sutra didnt disappoint in this survey, eh?
Am sure there will be uncomfortable scepticism on this board regarding this , as seduced one is to believing
All things tradtional= unsexy
All things modern=sexy.
Or no?
Now, with this hornets nest being stirred, I gotta run….and hide… (laughing hard..) Sumita
“lady sangeet” eh? Your friends must be either Punjabi or Kashmiri …
I don’t think anybody is saying one is better and one is worse, or that aunties don’t know anything about what goes on in the bedroom (obviously they do, or we wouldn’t be here) it’s just that I am shudderingly nauseated to think that ANY aunties have sex the way I do. [fingers in ears, lalalalalalalalalalalala]
On behalf of all the guys on SM, I’m afraid we’re going to need some details…..
Quantity doesn’t equal quality. Having a lot of sex or having sex before marriage doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically have a healthy sexual relationship once you’re married. I have no doubt that the aunties have a ton of tricks under their sleeve. But for me personally, it does wierd me out when someone your parents want you to go out of your way to be decent and extra-chaste in front of all of a sudden wants to give you tips on how to get your swerve on. I do understand where they’re coming from – it’s how it was for them, too. Sex aside – it was like that for marriage as well. Your parents want you to not date anyone and you can’t really talk about boys/girls with them, and then when the marriage process starts, they want you to give them the play-by-play with every prospect, and they want to give you advice on getting to know someone.
“What do you wear when you go meet these guys?” “A cute shirt and nice jeans.” “No, I think you should wear something more formal. Maybe a nice pair of black slacks. Or something else you wear to work.”
Maybe for kicks the next time I have to meet someone new I’ll show up in my favorite red salvaar kameez and with my head covered, and refuse to talk to them with my kund/ghungat between us. And I’ll walk up to them in the Thai restaurant barefoot holding a clay pot filled with water on my hip.
DD
(teasing now)
Check out the Khajuraho pics. the animal thing did not go down too well with me. Then there’s the Rumi poem about a woman having a sex with a bull(was it, am not sure, but some animal)
Nah..
I shudder to think they not only knew about all this in days long past, they even expressed it in poetry and sculpture.
In those shuddering moments, am happy in my modern world naivete…
(woah, wiping perspiration off brow, still ROFL)
Sumita
Jai Singh,
BESHARAM! [throws chappal, throws vase, throws tawa, throws Xbox, throws the Queen]
Hey now – why’re you getting angry with the xbox? What did it do to you?
laughing Sorry DD, I couldn’t resist that one. You should have got an idea of my (alleged) sense of humour by now…;)
I’d better stop before you send Mr DD over here to have a “quiet word” with me. Although I guess we could duel for you. Awww, how romantic. “Chappals at dawn…..”
I’ll let you ladies get back to discussing your love lives now. This is great, it’s like gatecrashing a Bachelorette party. I’ll just sit in the corner quietly with all the other guys and wait for the pillow-fights to start.
Sumita: if it’s a contest between “moderns” and “ancients” on who is/was more erotic, I’d give the palm to the ancients any day. Heck I’d probably give it to the “medievals” too, going by your Rumi example for instance…
And this quote from The Perfumed Garden (and many others therein) cracks me up:
“Know, O My Brother (to whom God be merciful), that a man who is misshapen, of coarse appearance, and whose member is short, thin and flabby, is contemptible in the eyes of women.
When such a man has a bout with a woman, he does not do his business with vigour and in a manner to give her enjoyment. He lays himself down upon her without previous toying, he does not kiss her, nor twine himself round her; he does not bite her, nor suck her lips, nor tickle her.
He gets upon her before she has begun to long for pleasure, and then he introduces with infinite trouble a member soft and nerveless. Scarcely has he commenced when he is already done for; he makes one or two movements, and then sinks upon the woman’s breast to spend his sperm; and that is the most he can do. This done he withdraws his affair, and makes all haste to get down again from her.
Such a man – as was said by a writer – is quick in ejaculation and slow as to erection; after the trembling, which follows the ejaculation of the seed, his chest is heavy and his sides ache.
Qualities like these are no recommendation with women. Despicable also is the man who is false in his words; who does not fulfil the promise he has made; who never speaks without telling lies, and who conceals from his wife all his doings, except the adulterous exploits which he commits.
Women cannot esteem such men, as they cannot procure them any enjoyment.”
::: shudder :::
You can say that again.