Chapter 8: Rich Indian Bankers and Stepford Wives

Erudite, rich Indians in the city, actually, let’s just call them bankers, hedge fund guys and let’s not call them erudite since reading financial papers and dossiers does not make one well-read in my assessment. Back to the point....I increasingly perceive that my melanin infused brethren in the guise of the Rich Indian Banker (RIB) guy are trying to be WASPs. Not to say that they are insects.. but just like the insect which suffers an identity crisis of being neither a bee or an ant, my wallet heavy countrymen are trying hard to belong to the elite American white class. If the MJ experiment with skin bleaching had gone well, maybe we would have had a long line of brown RIBs trying leach the melanin out from their body. (I am going to keep an eye out for scientific progress at this end and rapidly invest in such a company and maybe one day belong to WASPdom). 

So while the eligible Indian male brethren are trying to go white and inculcating a dislike of all things Indian, the women-kind is undergoing their own parasitic (think wasp) metamorphosis. This is translating into many cloning themselves into a facsimile of a Stepford Wife to appeal to the white and the coconut male alike. The feisty and fiery Indian girls who have struggled against the double whammy of gender and color imposed glass ceiling, are turning into cookie-cutter versions in appearance and behavior. These women dream of summers in the Hamptons, white attired sailing trips with Chuck and Mary of the Mayflower genes, $1,000 tickets to the Viennese opera ball, designer togs and accessories, Central Park homes and an endless list of options to encourage a fatuous and vacuous living style.

I have been apprised that embracing this attitude along with ironing my unruly locks, wearing high heels to wreck my spinal cord, investing in $1,000 clothing to attend banker infested charity event (no matter that the charity is for the poor, starving, homeless and clotheless in the world) is apparently a successful formula. My penchant to sport bargain $100 dresses, loud cackle and the sight of un-straightened teeth, preference for comfort over clingy attire, tendency of drink scotch, bourbon and wine all in the same sitting and Bollywood does not make a strong competitor in this environment.

Cosmo says that cashed-up guys think they deserve to be with trophy women, or women they deem prizeworthy. They want their women to be extremely beautiful, plan social schedules, have good manners, be submissive and compliant to the man’s needs…. So either I am to try out this new formula or give up on the hope of the wealthy white or RIB knight.

And given that I am averse to changing my body and soul for such wasp action, I continue to have faith that it does not take an entire country but just one to sting my hive.