Repressed

Talking over tea at his house in Chapel Hill, Naman told me people were going to stare. He was right. They do. And so too was he right that they are innocent and mean well, curious to know this person they have seen in the movies, read about in the newspapers, a fascinating creature from the other side of the world in their city. With this in my mind, I often wave back (sometimes I am annoyed), aware and understanding of this sweet curiosity.

In the three weeks since I arrived, these cultural courtships continue consistently but are waning in intensity as the smells and sights of the garishly colored male fade. Past the initial steps of our relationship, my mind and this new world are in a new place, a distilled, refined next step in understanding what’s around, searching for the legs, body and tannins, not just the grape – that men use their breast pocket on their dress shirts, that women keep their money in the left strap of their brow just under their sari, that no one puts their lips on a glass but pours it into their mouth instead. Academic training is largely overblown, people holding more degrees than names but trapped in a formal education system that conditions thoughts away from creativity and into a box of success, right and wrong, good and bad. One of my co workers took the day off for her exams. She is 33, but still taking classes, adding certificates to her C.V. but unable to scan two pieces of paper into one document, making one document for each side of each page – just as she was taught 12 years ago when she completed her coursework.

A bobble head reply for yes.

These things are amusing, the small bright things that add living color to complete the composite of a national flag. And so too are their drabs grays and diluted browns. Here, I am not speaking of caste, or poverty, or anything of such international renown, but instead, of the deeply confused, horny generation that watches Bollywood movies with sparkling women and bare flesh and then goes home to arranged marriages and sexual repression in their horniest years.

American women, they, uh, are cooperative in these matters? One 25-year old asks this way. Another, when I tell him I am from America grabs his right forearm with his left arm while franticly wiggling the fingers on his right arm. One night stands? You can get girls? The questions come in all forms, and I dumbfounded by them. I get questions like this all the time, understand where they come from, but am repulsed by the comfort with which they are asked and the expectation of certain answers.

Cooperative in these matters? Are you serious? Did that just happen? Uncomfortable saying the word sex, but with internet access in his home he is horny beyond repair in the context of acceptable Indian behavior and wants to live vicariously through the words I am about to tell him: that American women are easy.

Instead, I shut them all down and tell them that it is impossible to find women in the U.S. and I am thinking of arranging a marriage while I am here.