Non-Desi like me Behind every successful man, there’s a woman
Women on top is a recent phenomenon. Around 20 years ago, when mostly men were CEOs, their wives would always be by their side. But now that there’s a role reversal, the dutiful-spouse role of old doesn’t seem to work. “No wonder,” says a regular at corporate dos, “I can’t recall senior female executives’ husbands, but I remember every successful guy’s wife!” Doesn’t it speak volumes on why men are good at playing the supportive role at home, but not in public?
Here’s a teaser: How many of you can name corporate czarina Indira Nooyi’s husband or the late prime minister Indira Gandhi’s? Director Farah Khan’s lifestyle and her success story are well known, but her husband is hardly seen or heard!
It’s the same story with scores of women in powerful positions. Does the female psyche at work make a woman look for a quiet and low-key spouse/companion? Or is it the age-old male stereotype which allows the man to proudly flaunt a beauty (read trophy wife), but rarely a successful one?
Actor Archana Puran Singh says, “Vis-à-vis men, women have lesser ego hassles. She’ll happily flaunt a successful husband. Most men wouldn’t like to be in the underdog position. He’s fearless when he’s flaunting a beauty as that’s a department he doesn’t want to compete in, but when it comes to brains, he’s not always fair.” A typical case is Rashmi Jhunjhunwala, MD of Singapore-based Worldrefractories, who refused to talk to us as she said, “I’m a traditional woman as I consider my husband’s career more important than mine.”
Preeti Vyas, chairwoman of Vyas-Giannetti Communication, likes to recall what a high-brow businessman said at a social gathering, “I don’t want my woman to be richer than me, but she can be more famous than I am!”
Even though the statement reeks of male stereotype, it’s true that most successful men are okay with their partners basking in the glory of their name and fame, but they wouldn’t prefer the reverse scenario. The reason why senior-level women in all industries often find themselves attending company dinners, cocktail parties and award presentations all by themselves as their husbands plead their own work commitments or find it awkward to play a secondary role.
A successful woman professional points out, “The issue can’t be generalised. At times, a successful wife can also be a trophy wife and vice versa. In some relationships, the husband prefers to remain low-key, even though he might be superior to her, professionally and financially. Sometimes, their interests are completely different. And then, there’s the third category where the guy has ego problems and is bitter about his spouse’s achievements.”
Psychiatrist Samir Parekh says, “This is a stereotypical way of viewing things. Even though men have reduced their biases in terms of education and professional training, on the home front they’re yet to come to terms with the changes. The answer lies in the evolution of the male psyche to put in that extra effort, to shed his ego and realise that a healthy relationship is all about support and being there.”
So, what of women who don’t care about going solo in the business social circuit? Says Singh, “In all the 24 years that I’ve spent in the industry, I’ve attended all parties and awards nights on my own, not because Parmeet has a problem, but because it suits us. It’s difficult for most men to accept a girl more successful than them, but the key is to have rivalry rather than competition. Rivalry makes you partners in learning, but competition can be unhealthy as it’s all about winning.”
Radhika Shastry, MD, RCI concludes, “The fact that so many women are scripting success stories proves that they enjoy support at every level.” There have been occasions when Shastry, married for 20 years, hasn’t been able to make it to her husband’s business dinners, “so I understand if he can’t make it to mine”.
| Office, agreed, is a tricky place to forge friendships as one moment you are treading on thin ice, and in the other sharing like a soul mate. Whoever has said workplace only attracts fair weather friends has forgotten to consider the strong emotional and political undercurrents that run in a charged up work atmosphere.
Where a colleague’s promotion can make you thoughtful, jealous or even spiteful, a jointly received dressing-down from the boss suddenly irons out all differences. It is easy to end up as friends in an office setup than otherwise, as colleagues at a certain level turn into confidantes, and realise in the true sense your professional woes. Admits Manmeet Ahluwalia, marketing head with an online travel company, “Our work schedules are such that we end up spending most of the day in office. In such a situation forging friendships with immediate colleagues is but natural.” He also feels that interaction level is higher with colleagues than friends, and in the process you get to know each other better. Explains senior clinical psychologist Dr Bhavna Barmi, ” Friendship entails a sense of intimacy and inter-dependence based on common goals and interests. Therefore, people relating closely at work are bound to develop friendships. Besides, it fosters a sense of competition and camaraderie as well.” Just as office friendship is a reality, instances of friend turning foe are commonplace too. A jealous colleague is capable of spoiling things for you by baring your personal details, or worse still, a gossip about the boss. But, does that mean real friendship in an office setup is only wishful thinking?Avers Ravneet Kaur, writer and food enthusiast, “You can make friends at work provided the two of you are from different teams, as misunderstandings are inevitable. After all, you are in a competitive atmosphere, and your paths are bound to intercept.” Gopika Misra, content manager with an online travel company, too feels the same way. “If you have friends in different departments it would be smooth sailing, but if it is a reporting relationship or you have regular work dealing, stress would creep in,” she opines. But there is another facet of this blow hot, blow cold relationship. Ravneet recounts an experience with an ex-colleague whom she considered a friend. “She used to come up with advises in the most difficult situation and expressed so with all honesty, or so I felt. Later I realised that she wanted me to cut a sorry figure before the editor, while she got away with brownie points.” While you make friends in all innocence, it is hard to negate the fact that a vindictive colleague in the guise of a friend is a threat to your job and can mar your terms with fellow colleagues including the boss. Guy de Noronha, a senior journalist, explains the phenomenon well, “This happens in the early phase of your career when you are busy climbing the ladder, and are hardly tolerant towards others. Friendships at this stage are surface-level, like going together to the pub on a Friday night and getting drunk. But with more years of work, you create your own space and no longer feel threatened by your colleagues. Lasting friendships happen only then, once you are over your insecurities.” He goes on to add, “My greatest friends have come from work. Never have I left an organisation without earning a good friend.” Dr Bhavna sheds more light on this apparent friendship between colleagues. Says she, “Workplace friends help navigate through a difficult work environment, are better placed to relate to your grievances, and offer advice from an empathetic standpoint. Having said that, it is imperative to consider that lack of trust among employees, an extremely competitive work environment, back-stabbing and sabotage, undermines common goals and hampers team spirit.” She warns, “For such friendships to survive, both parties must act responsibly and respect each other’s professional commitment. To say the least, a broken friendship can zap productivity and spread discontentment.” However, Manmeet feels misunderstanding between colleague-friends should not be considered the end of the road. “It is like any other friendship with its share of ups and downs. I don’t see any demarcation. As long as it is peer to peer, and there isn’t a conflict of interest, it shouldn’t be a problem. Complications arise only when it involves a superior and subordinate.” But, what is it that makes an employee-boss friendship farfetched? Admits Guy, “With a superior it wouldn’t be an honest relationship because at the end of the day it boils down to business. You might be courteous to your boss if you ran into him in a cinema hall, but certainly wouldn’t enjoy sitting next to each other while watching the movie!” But it is possible to be friends with an ex-boss, offers Gopika. “I am friends with my ex-boss now, and have told him honestly about how we hated his ways. Today, those professional barriers are gone and we have discovered fresh friendship,” she signs off. |
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Arabs dress you up in thobes and want you to smoke hookah, while Desis assume you’ll love Bollywood movie nights and bhangra. Such things clearly have no relevance to one’s theological exploration, but they can work their way into a convert’s religious vernacular as though they are pillars themselves. It takes an uncannily strong effort to resist the assumption that having converted to Islam, you must now immerse yourself in this cultural language that is not your own. And yet, you can never truly be a part of that culture to which you are expected to assimilate. The earliest anxieties I can remember about Islam were directly linked to a feeling of being out of place in Muslim communities, not because of bits of culture I felt encouraged to adopt, but because of the explicit racism that litters our community. “I would never marry a black man,” a phrase that would have won a girl in my elementary school severe detention, parent-teacher conferences and possible sensitivity mentoring, became an almost weekly refrain—someone mentions the desire to marry, another person asks what kind of person they are looking for and inevitably up pops that sordid phrase. “ I would never marry a black man.” “My parents just wouldn’t accept a non-Arab.” “I’ll only marry a Khaliji.” “I just want a nice Indian guy.” And so it goes. Of the many variations of this recurrent theme, “I just don’t think I could marry a non-Desi” became the one I heard the most. It might have stung even more that it came up, not in conversations among people who were strangers to me or those I might have been interested in, but in flippant comments shared amongst my group of friends—my Muslim friends who were examples of Islam for a person aspiring to be something better by way of this religion. People whom I expected to be good role models were, with no shame, so meticulously fluent in the language of racial bias. I spent a year keeping Islam at an arm’s length because of this cutting narrative and have remained hesitant about my ability to belong to this community long after. Do I realize that much of these sentiments come from parents and communities in which Muslims live? Absolutely. Still, the “I don’t care about race, but I just need to respect my parents’ wishes” line I’ve heard more times than “Let’s find a place to pray” is an offensive and quite frankly cowardly copout. Respect is not obedience and honor is not acquiescence. There is an irony that is sardonically amusing in converts being told over and over again they need to understand the difficulty in going against the ways of convention. We need to pause and reconsider the gravity of this offense. Whether derived from our own preferences or those of our parents, there is the assumption that the vast majority of the Muslim community is not good enough for us—based exclusively on their race. Were I the only one, I’d say call me oversensitive and let’s get on to more significant issues, but I’m not. I am hard-pressed to find a Muslim convert who hasn’t been rejected by the opposite gender, had an engagement broken or felt compelled to leave their faith on the basis of being maligned due to their race. And what hurts the most is my peers know it, yet treat it with relative apathy. When I sift through words I have written in moments of passionate frustration on this issue, the emotional turmoil that overt racial bias has caused in me is striking. I describe myself as someone who is ‘worthless and powerless’ and the Muslim community as an ‘albatross on my back that suppresses my love, my dreams, my emotions and my whole religious existence.’ ‘I don’t want to be a Muslim,’ I write. ‘I’d be crazy to want this. I’m stuck being a Muslim because I happen to believe in a religion. This isn’t a community, it isn’t a family, and I don’t want to be a part of it.’ These sentiments were written at times where I felt especially lonely, lost and turned away. They are not emblematic of my over-all experience with or sentiments towards Muslims. But they are a major part of it. I find myself blessed because I am at a point in my life now where the people I am closest with are, for the most part, beyond this paradigm, but then I think to myself how truly disheartening that is—that among the unique, endearing qualities of those I love, amidst the special characteristics that set them apart from the larger Muslim community is their ability to see me beyond my race. In which century am I living? This is a sincere appeal. I want to beg Muslims to not just take a long look in the mirror, but to make actionable change. I am asking Muslims to purge these stock phrases from our lexicon, to consider the feelings of exclusion they cause to Muslims who don’t belong to the larger ethnic group in a community, to flout the blatantly racist sentiments and conventions we know to be wrong, but we, ourselves, have been party to perpetuating for so long. As benign as it seems, simple phrases like “I’m just looking for a nice Pakistani man” are so painfully disheartening, loaded and paint a loathing self-image. When you are non-Arab, you aren’t good enough. When you are non-Afghani, you are worth significantly less. When you are non-Khaliji, you can never truly prove your own self-worth. When you are non-Desi, you are left wondering how much easier life would be if you were no longer Muslim and never had to worry about being non-Desi—non-Desi like me. (Photo by Vincent J. Brown) Adam Sitte is a writer based in Washington, DC working on civilian empowerment in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. |
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