Why Don't Indian Women Pay on Dates?
Questioner: Sir, thank you for taking up my invitation to meet. I really appreciate it. I know you don’t do a lot of this and I really had to talk to you, so thank you.
Acharya Prashant: Welcome.
Questioner: As you know I was in the US for last twenty years. I came back about a year ago. I was in Rishikesh, that’s where I came across your myth demolition tour, I have been following you since then and I have just been stuck in India since then. I thought I would go back in one month, then two months, then six months and nine months, now one year and now it’s more than one year.
So, I have just been over here and there have been lots of experiences over here and that are so different from what I experienced in the US. Things are so different. People are different. It’s even different from twenty years before when I was here. I know you don’t do talks on particular topics but there are some events that have happened that just play on my mind and I know you like keeping discussions open ended but is it okay if I bring up some of these more personal issues?
Acharya Prashant: Alright. Well, you have already started. So, yeah, please.
Questioner: Thank you, sir. Over the last few months, I downloaded some of these online apps, you know, to meet women and it’s been pretty easy to swipe and meet and chat. So, I went out on a date with this one woman and she looked very attractive, so I was interested in meeting her.
So, I planned a nice expensive restaurant, I went there before and I made sure the waiter gave us the most private cozy table and then I told him that the service has to be a little discreet so I can spend time with her. We made sure that the food that was there was some of the best, that you know like men typically do.
And then I carefully chose the wine and she was very impressed. And then the dessert was something, you know, very exotic and almost like you see in the movies like very romantic. And at the end of it there was this palpable sense of excitement at the end. And I feel embarrassed talking about it.
I took out my American international credit card and you know you put it in that and he comes with the machine and, you know, you wait for it to get processed. And you are like waiting and waiting and then that horrible word ‘declined’ was written on the screen.
So, then I said, “Can you just try it once more? You know it’s an international card. Sometimes the chips don’t work.”
So, he tried it again and all that time she pretended that this wasn’t happening. She was like looking at her phone, swiping, doing something and then the waiter said loudly, “Sir it’s declined again.” And like my heart stopped. I was really embarrassed. And then he said, “Do you have UPI?”
So, I said, “I don’t have bank account in India as yet so I don’t have UPI. Can you do Apple Pay?” And I showed him Apple Pay and he says, “No, no, India is full of Android there is no apple over here.” So, I said I don’t have an Android pay.
So, then I said, “Okay what about PayPal? You know the PayPal app?” So, he says, “Paytm” and I said, “No, no, no PayPal” and he says, “No we have Paytm.” And I said, “I don’t have Paytm.” So, then he just raised his eyebrow and he says, “How can you not have Paytm?”
I have seen these Paytm ads but I just don’t have an account. And then she got up and went to the bathroom. She didn’t want to be involved. So then when she went. I kind of pleaded with him saying, “You know, I’m on a date. It’s going well. Can I just go back and get some money. I’m just ten minutes away. And I’ll make sure I’ll give you 10% extra also for the inconvenience. Just don’t give me more embarrassment.”
And then he said, “I have to ask my manager.” So, then the manager came and the manager looked skeptical. And then I was pleading with him and then she came back. And I guess this is what, I guess still plays on my mind that she knew what was happening and she never offered to pay. And when I compare this to, you know, I have been on dates in the US and there every woman offers to pay even if I don’t take her up on it and some are very insistent even without asking.
And here she saw what was happening and just didn’t offer to help me out. And I guess more personally I kind of felt embarrassed asking her like I think I wanted to show that I didn’t need her help or something. And I just kept quiet and this thing just keeps playing back in my mind that like, why are people like that, her and me?
Acharya Prashant: So, you said, “You would be asking something personal,” but what you’re narrating is hardly personal or private in the sense that it touches upon a vast area of human psychology, relationships, economics, everything.
You know when you were talking of this, I was reminded of economic statistic called the female labor force participation rate and in India it’s been declining since the eighties and the nineties. What that means is that the proportion of the total workforce over the last twenty-thirty years, women are actually opting to drop out of work.
So, yes that’s in my mind — that this dependence on men is not something that you witnessed only in that particular restaurant on that date. It’s a more widespread phenomenon across the country, the entire country — ‘India.’ And yes, you would probably rightly contrast against what happens in other countries, especially Western countries. It involves both the Genetics and culture. And if you could understand this you could probably be able to understand a lot about how we both are men and women.
You see, traditionally women have been trained to be at home and it has seeped very deeply into their psyche, so much so that when we publish videos on women empowerment and I say that very loudly that women ought to work and without financial independence there is no real independence. Then it receives, surprisingly initially, a lot of resistance from the women themselves.
They say that it is a man’s job to earn the money and it’s our job to run the household. So, we are already working. And if we will go out to earn who will run the household? To some extent what they’re saying is alright and I can see where they’re coming from but at the same time there is this strange idea that the workplace; the workplace outside the boundaries of the home, is the preserve of the men folk. And that the natural, ‘natural,’ that the natural place for women is within the boundaries of the house. That idea is to a great extent social. It is social and the proof is that the idea does not remain constant or same across societies.
So, you have this idea in the Indian society. Even in the Indian society in some parts it’s more deep-rooted, in other parts it’s making way for better ideas. And in the western world this idea is not that deep-rooted. Though even there, there is an imbalance, an inequity in the labor participation rates so there’s the social part of it.
And then there is the biological part. Prakriti — physical nature, has prepared the female body to be at the nest. That’s there in the body. And it becomes very difficult to fight what’s there in your cells, your DNA, your hormones. It becomes very difficult. When these two combine, the biological urge to stay at home and take care of the kids, think of breeding and raising of kids as your first priority and the social training. Then it’s quite a potent, viciously potent combination and one of the results of that combination is what you experienced on that date.
But I wonder why it has been playing so much on your mind? You feel disturbed about what the lady did? Or you feel disturbed about yourself or what is it?
Questioner: It’s both actually. The first is the most obvious one that she knew what was going on, she heard the conversation and still she was on the phone and went to the bathroom. It was almost like, you know, I’m just putting words but it sounded like her approach was ‘it’s your problem not mine.’ And I guess for me as I reflect on this it’s why was I so quiet? Why couldn’t I just ask her and say, “You know, can you help me out? I’ll pay you back, my card got declined.” But I was trying to put out this image of, you know, I’m in charge, I’m in control. It’s almost like we were both playing two stereotypes in a way.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, exactly. See the conditioning. The forces of conditioning, they cut both ways. So, just as women are trained to be homemakers, similarly men are trained to be the breadwinners and the ones who would bring in the cash. So, from your point of view, it might be quite surprising that she didn’t offer to pay but probably from where she was looking at it, it was quite natural that you being the man, would take care of the payment.
Because it’s interesting, because you too, as a man, were probably equally strongly conditioned. Had you been there with a male friend, you probably wouldn’t have hesitated to ask the other to pay up. Maybe you could have said that later on, I’ll settle it with you. Right now, it’s an obvious thing, 'My card has been declined and the UPI doesn’t work, so you pay.'
You must reflect on why you were so hesitant in straightaway asking her to pay up. So, there is the force of conditioning and then there are also the motives that typical man, you know, Indian or American, almost secretly cultivates while taking somebody out, you don’t want to look vulnerable. You don’t want to come across as someone who needs help and something within you tells you, if I take help from a woman I would probably be less of a man and if I am less of a man how am I going to proceed with her as per my intentions?
So just as you desist from asking her to pay, similarly she resists from offering to pay up and it’s a bad game you know. It’s a bad game because the two parties are playing pre-scripted roles. You are not you. You are the one manufactured by your body and trained by your society. And so is she, a physical product of her bodily design and a mental product of social training.
And if two such persons are meeting each other, is there really an individual meeting another individual? I suppose when you meet the other gender like this, you wanted to be interesting. And the word love too starts to come into the picture. Right?
Now, can there be love when there is no individual agency in the first place? She’s playing a role. You too are playing a role. And if the two of you are just playing the roles, how is love possible? In the sense that, can a conditioned being really have the free will to love? Take it to an extreme. A purely conditioned being is called a machine. Can a machine love? So, to this extent that your friend did not offer to pay up, it is merely, you know, something that you can just regret.
You could say it could have been better, had she acted in a wiser and less conditioned way. But from being just not beautiful, it becomes totally scary when you think that this is how most men and most women relate to each other — in very, very preordained ways. So, the script unfolds in a restaurant, the script unfolds in a temple, the script unfolds in a wedding, the script unfolds when you’re meeting and it’s a script unfolding, your entire life. Right? If this one particular incident that would have lasted no more than ten minutes?
Questioner: Yeah, it felt like ages.
Acharya Prashant: It feels like ages. So, if those ten minutes feel like ages how would an entire lifetime of such a relationship feel? And that’s the horrible part of it, you see. Most men, most households are living this way. And then comes a point when they stop feeling even uncomfortable about it. You felt uncomfortable, you’re raising it with me then comes a point you say, “But this is how things are.” This is the natural order of things. Very few of us are left to realize that it is not the natural order of things. It is the distorted order of things. We have distorted ourselves to an extent that the pure natural self is just totally obfuscated.
