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What's Your Indian Type?

The one thing that truly perplexes me is the number of fantastic single Indians friends I have, and how hard it has been for them to find other Indians in the US to forge meaningful relationships. Individual personality traits aside, I suspect that the largest discrepancy in compatibility happens along what I call the Distance From India (DFI) spectrum.

On the far left of the DFI spectrum is what we would call the real Fresh off the Boats (FOBs). You know them when you see them: they travel in packs, carry home-cooked tiffins to work, and drop their articles when they converse in English.

On the far right we have the Coconuts (brown on the outside, white on the inside). These too have distinct characteristics: they mispronounce their names, make fun of their parents’ accents, and talk about India as if it were a place they would have to lose a bet to visit.

Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum are the Americanized Desis, the ones that have a curious mix of an Indian and an American accent, and the Hyper-Indianized ABCDs (American Born Confused Desis), that usually listen to remixed bhangra and throw “brown” several times into a sentence when describing themselves. This is also a group that is prone to the thug complex (oversized clothes, gangsta rap, desi “honeys”).

Now when you consider the number of points between each of these on the spectrum, it’s not hard to imagine how difficult it would be to match your “Indian type” with that of a potential mate. One viable option is to stake out the avenues your group tends to frequent:

For the FOBs, you might want to hang out in the cafeteria of your local technology company, or on shaadi.com. For the latter, beware that the content on the site may not be self-contributed, but rather the generous perspective of an adoring friend or family member. You should verify by the third or fourth communication that you are actually corresponding with the prospective, and not with the prospective’s mother.

Coconuts are a little tougher to spot in a crowd as their looks are deceiving, but you can tell them easily with this easy trick: Ask them if they have been to India. If you get revulsion, condescension or pure ignorance, you have found your person. You can now go eat overpriced chicken tikka masala, and discuss how shocked you are that people in India have cell phones.

The good news, is that whatever your Indian type preference, you can apparently find them in this country. I would consider myself somewhere between FOB and Americanized Desi and I found my ABCD at an Indian wedding (fabulous resource!).

The question on my mind is whether IndiaOn should take on some sort of Indian type profiling and matching. We could even patent it.

Thoughts?

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