Blogs and Stories
The Carrie Bradshaws of Mumbai
Brooke Slezak / Getty Images
Forget Slumdog Millionaire. With all the thirtysomething women on the prowl —in chic sandals—Mumbai is starting to feel more like Sex and the City.
I was at a cocktail party two weeks ago, when, after a series of vodka Diet Cokes, my friend Sameera Buxani piped up.
“Who among you,” she asked in her smoke-thrashed voice and lilting accent, “will donate to me your sperm?”
It was the kind of brassy, provocative statement you might expect to hear from a single woman in New York, or Los Angeles, or London. But I was at Sameera’s family’s home in Mumbai, India, and the inquiry was met with an awkward silence. Except for me and another woman, the guests were men: an economist, a writer, and an architect. All Indian. Sameera, 37, is a Mumbai-based publicist. The silence continued, but she persisted: “Boys, did you hear my question?”
I grew up coming to India regularly, visiting my grandmother who lived in a sea-facing apartment in South Mumbai until she retired. I recently returned after an eight-year absence, and discovered a different city. Yes, there are slums, and a dismaying surplus of terror attacks, but there is also less pollution, better infrastructure, and more Louis Vuitton. And there seem to be far more single women out and about than I remember seeing here before.
“If he lives alone, I’ll go to his place,” says Rashmi, 33. “But I’ll always go home at night. Out of respect for my parents.”
Perhaps one sign of an emerging economy is the increasing presence of single gals. Here in Mumbai, unattached women in their late-20s, 30s, and 40s suddenly seem to be everywhere. I’ve seen them cruising at bars, dancing at parties, flirting at barbecues and nightclubs, always with cocktail in hand, carving paths of their own, and struggling with the very American dilemma of enjoying the single life and putting marriage off just a little longer.
Lila is a journalist. Sushma works for L’Oreal. Roopa runs a film-production company. They are upper-class, well-educated, and financially stable. Their families have encouraged them to get a good education, and they have sought their own independence. They want more out of life than just to be a mother and a wife, though they want that, too. There is weeknight partying, haute couture, and plenty of hooking up. Indeed, it sometimes seems that Carrie Bradshaw herself has arrived, sandal-footed, at the Gateway of India, with all her turmoil and indecision, to put a wrench into the predictable orderliness of the old world.
After all, this is a culture of arranged marriages, and Westerners are sometimes surprised to learn that in this largest democracy in the world, the bulk of Indian women still get married that way. Yet more and more Indian women, as they remain single, successful, and independent into their 30s and 40s, are becoming less eligible for a family-arranged marriage. Sex and the City (the TV show) aired in India, and the movie struck a chord in its demographic. The papers are already buzzing about the sequel. Annie Leibovitz’s 2008 “Carrie and Big” photographs appeared in a recent issue of Vogue India. A desire for this type of lifestyle is flourishing in Mumbai—albeit, with some uniquely Indian limitations.
For one, most single women (and men) live with their parents, grandparents, and often an extended family, as is custom. Real estate is too expensive, but more than that, living alone is culturally frowned upon. Men and women rarely cohabitate prior to marriage. And despite the increasing number of single women in their 30s, a woman’s marital prospects diminish precipitously after a certain age—I’ve heard anywhere between 32-37. Of course, American women feel this way, too, but in India it is even more extreme.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
What's Joe's Problem?
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Geithner's Stock Plummeting
Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
The Bobby Jindal Racism Issue
Keshni Kashyap is a writer who lives (mostly) in Los Angeles. Her first book, Tina's Mouth, a graphic novel, is to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2010.
Wow, you must be so proud. How liberating for a woman to go around asking men for sperm. Must make her feel so independent. What an awful job of writing. And completely inaccurate. I am Indian and women like these are not just miserable, they are also pitied by everyone.
Maybe it has a bad case of the madonna syndrome. case in point: http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article5662099.ece
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
Tom Friedman called this years ago
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
gora here, married to desi, cohabitated and married for 7. i encourage more and more indian women to embrace the modern self actualized woman. Indian women are much more pressured to become doctor's marry doctor's and chop veggies with a kid in tow while curing the sick. american women are much more accepted by family for personal choice to delay or not marry. Jai ho to the self fulfilled Indian professional woman!
Wow LtCol -- I never realized the spiritual^, non-violent^^ and marital heaven^^^ that I lived here in the great US of Assholes!
^ - "God-fearing" is not spiritual, whatever your crazy, hypocritical priest in Appalachia might tell you.
^^ - Gun-related violence in the US !? Makes Peshawar seem, sometimes, like the Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee.
^^^ - Divorce rate is 50% here...perhaps you shouldn't be mouthing-off on marital issues here.
It's all very good, people forget how liberal India has been historically, in fact, if you look at how all the things that modern Liberals associate with had deep roots in India
1. Kama Sutra was written in India
2. Pot/Weed was first used there and is still legal in a different form during Holi, a spring festival
3. The first schools of Atheism - Carvaka and Lokyata were in India
4. Women were very liberated and free in ancient India
5. We've had a history of strong women - the first woman leader of a national party in India was chosen in 1925, 50 years before MT for England, and we've already voted for 2 women PMs
6. And finally, just like all Liberals, us Indians consider ourselves spiritually and mentally superior to others, but still we fell prey to the two biggest frauds of the 20th century - Gandhi and Teresa
All this unnecessary info/opinion left aside, I really think that the pick-up line was cheesy/wannabe-ish. Seriously, donate sperm? C'mon, you can do better than that. I've seen a lot of elite Indians trying to ape the West, and frankly speaking, it's just sad. And LtCol, I couldn't read your first comment, but judging from the response, I see that you had written God-Fearing in your post as a good habit. Yup, that's something that you have in common with suicide bombers. Please, don't talk about this nonsense of religion being associated with morality. Religion is just stone age philosophy and should be left to that. It is no coincidence that the countries with the lowest rate of belief - excluding Communist countries - France, Sweden, Japan, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands etc. seem to be doing so much better than the countries with the highest - Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Zambia, Congo etc.
mufasa, I somewhat agree with you, that women's liberation accompanied by extreme feminism, if forced upon as the only thing for women, is almost as bad as women's oppression, because it is somewhat oppressive mentally as well. What I'm saying is that if a woman says that all she wants to do is stay home, cook, and look after the kids, she should not be looked down upon by "feminists". Like Lois Griffin of Family Guy said, "Feminism is about choice".
Somebody flagged my post because it offended their delicate sensitivities. I never said anything about religion or "God-fearing". I said something to this effect:
Wow, and I thought that vapid, self-absorbed, class-driven women in their late 30's and early 40's who think everybody should come running when they finally "decide to have a family" were an American (and more specifically NYC) phenomemon! For any men who aren't interested in younger women and who have no problems with being riddled with AK-47 bullets, blown to shreds, or captured and decapitated during a simple night out on the town, then Mumbai is the place for you!
I'm sure that the douche who flagged it the first time because they can't handle opinions different than their own will do so again. And then they will try to make it seem like I said something about religion.
It's interesting how the subject of women leading lives that are financially independent cranks up accusations of 'feminist' and 'selfish'.
Here are some U.S. facts courtesy of the American Institute on Domestic Violence.
- 85-95% of all domestic violence victims are female.
- 5.3 million women are abused each year.
- Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women.
- Women are more likely to be attacked by someone they know rather than by a stranger.
These U.S. statistics alone should explain the common sense reason for why a lot of women are on their own, or should have the ability to be independent. Males are often the children mothers are trying to protect. And those are just the situations dire enough to make the statistics.
The mythological family unit of protection and care that we'd all like to believe is not a given. And no, this isn't an anti-man rant. This is about what our culture accepts as ok behavior from all of us -- I think men and women are very equally complicit.
I spoke to a former case worker who was retired from the child services division of our state. I asked her if domestic violence was worse now or just more reported. She said the latter, she wasn't even allowed to report most of what she saw throughout her career.
So don't be surprised if women embrace independence while longing for a good partner. It's not anti-man. It's pro-life.
The main problem as I see it is that the modern single Indian woman, much like her American counterpart, wants it all. Just like the men who have been doing it for years. Career, partying, traveling, sex, etc. And settled down after she had her fill. But unfortunately, and almost universally, it is not working out that way, especially when the woman is well into her thirties and beyond. She is just not what an 'eligible' guy wants to marry especially with all the baggage she brings with her, when there so many other choices for these men. And the choices are indeed wide for men, because they have no problem going way 'below' in status to equal or higher in seeking a mate. Whereas the successful experienced older single woman wants only the ones equal or 'above' her, and these males generally do not want her.
This is the unfortunate fact and there seems no getting around it, not at least in the next 20 years!
The institution that most strongly protects mothers and children from domestic abuse and violent crime is marriage. Analysis of the 1999 findings of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has conducted since 1973, demonstrates that mothers who are or ever have been married are far less likely to suffer from violent crime than are mothers who never marry.
1. Again:
mothers who are or ever have been married are far less likely to suffer from violent crime than are mothers who never marry.
Marriage dramatically reduces the risk that mothers will suffer from domestic abuse.
The incidence of spousal, boyfriend, or domestic partner abuse is twice as high among mothers who have never been married as it is among mothers who have ever married (including those separated or divorced).
Mothers who have never married--including those who are single and living either alone or with a boyfriend and those who are cohabiting with their child's father--are nearly three times more likely to be victims of violent crime than are mothers who have ever married.
Children of divorced or never-married mothers are six to 30 times more likely to suffer from serious child abuse than are children raised by both biological parents in marriage.
Never-married mothers experience more domestic abuse. Among those who have ever married (those married, divorced, or separated), the annual rate of domestic violence is 14.7 per 1,000 mothers. Among mothers who have never married, the annual domestic violence rate is 32.9 per 1,000.
Never-married mothers suffer domestic violence at more than twice the rate of mothers who have been or currently are married.
Never-married mothers suffer more violent crime. The NCVS provides data on total violent crime against mothers with children under the age of 12. Total violent crime covers rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault committed against the mother by any party. Total violent crime covers violence against mothers by former and current spouses and boyfriends as well as by relatives, acquaintances, and strangers.
Violence Against Children:
Rates of victimization of children vary significantly by family structure, and the evidence shows that the married intact family is by far the safest place for children.4 (See Chart 3.) Although the United States has yet to develop the capacity to measure child abuse by family structure, British data on child abuse are available. These data show that rates of serious abuse of children are lowest in the intact married family but six times higher in the step family, 14 times higher in the always-single-mother family, 20 times higher in cohabiting-biological parent families, and 33 times higher when the mother is cohabiting with a boyfriend who is not the father of her children.
You can read more at:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/BG1535.cfm
And the bonus is that the kids have a Daddy.
Daddies are important to children. Children are people, too.
And they have needs besides those that mommy has.
Feminism is about doing the right thing.
If you are woman enough you will.
Liberated, strong independent women in charge of their own lives and destiny have always been a big part of Mumbai. Women executives, bankers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, small-business owners, etc. have made an indelible mark on the city since the 1960s, and increasingly over the past decade as gender-biased glass ceilings have been shattered. Most professional women in Mumbai have, however, pursued their careers within the traditional boundaries of progressive modern urban Indian values - higher education, followed by marriage, children, and the parallel pursuit of a career largely enabled by progressive spouses, in-laws, and cheap domestic help. With few exceptions, this remained the basic paradigm, even for the millions of women pursuing mid-level clerical and support staff jobs out of sheer economic necessity - a multi-income household is often the only choice for the striving middle class in India's most expensive city. This paradigm, however, is slowly shifting. The economic liberalization of the past 15 years has brought with it increasing opportunities, diminishing gender bias, and most importantly access to credit for modern housing, cars, and other essential necessities, allowing women to chart professional lives outside the traditional support system of extended families and marriage. This phenomenon is the ground-breaking one, and not the glamorous lifestyle of nightclubs and high-end South Mumbai restaurants which have always been a staple of Mumbai. Unfortunately, only a fortunate few have this choice. Lack of rental housing meeting the aspirational standards of Mumbai's professional class (courtesy of Mumbai's antidiluvian rental laws), home purchase prices that often match those in New York and London, and worsening safety standards (courtesy of Mumbai's lackadaisical and increasingly corrupt police force) make full financial and personal independence an unattainable goal. Unless, or until, changing social mores are matched by infrastructural changes, cosmopolitans with the girls at sundown may just have to suffice.
Nice to read the article, though Shobha De has been writing this life style for decades now. So it is 'passe' now and 7you cannot use it to define Mumbai realistically. The rich people of society in India have been living this way for decades and it is nothing new. The difference is that it gets published now openly whereas it was a limited access literature earlier. I like Keshni's other article on Bobby Jindal and thus ended up readin this article too. I would say that she has engaging way of writing. This article does not have anything new to offer though (with all due regards).
-rajeev
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.
Please log in to leave comments.