“My mom has given my matrimonial ad,” my coworker Anurag told me one day. “One of the respondents is an account manager with an ad agency in Mumbai. Drawing seven lahks per annum! That’s double my salary. So I told my mom, ‘I don’t think she’s my type.’”
Not your type…? I was dumbfounded. What could be a more perfect type than a wife who pulls in a boatload of cash?
So I argued with him. I tried to explain the benefits of that arrangement from the perspective of his future financial security, to say nothing of all the extra time he’d get to watch TV. But my arguments of real estate prices, private school tuition, and syndicated sitcoms didn’t make a dent. He wanted to be the breadwinner because, well, that’s what men were supposed to do. “What about my self-respect?”
“My friend,” I said, “you can drive your self-respect around in a gold-plated BMW.”
He laughed. And then: “You have absolutely no male ego. Are all American men like that?”
