Kids these days...

I met a girl last week who'd just who'd just done her first year of Business at Laurier. She professed to be a nerd, but her countenance betrayed someone that was outgoing and socially well-adjusted. She was smart, funny, generally cool - on the student council and all that. I discovered later that she'd gone to my high school but graduated 4 years afterwards. And I couldn't help but think "damn... why weren't there Sri Lankan girls like her when I was in high school?" Her boyfriend was a Chinese accounting guy from Waterloo. Now ordinarily I'd give props to the yellow man, but this is one I must admit would regret having got away.

But what took me by surprise was how quickly she'd revealed that she had a boyfriend. Back in the day, if you were Tamil having a significant other would be pretty scandalous. But of late I've had a lot more exposure to Tamil high school kids, and I can't help but think that the crop of Tamil kids today - girls especially - is so different from even just 5 years ago. How had things shifted so rapidly in my community?

Back in my high school days, Tamil girl-guy relations were characterized by a distant awkwardness and a certain diffidence. You would never see a group of Tamil girls and guys hang out outside of school. Even in school it wasn't that common, and certainly none of the Tamil kids I could recall dated - dating was a white people thing.

What accounts for the change?

Most of the Tamil kids in high school/uni nowadays have grown up here from a young age. Coming to Canada @ 6 vs. 16 makes a huge difference. That wasn't the case in the 90s, and even the Tamils I schooled with in the early 00s still had that residual FOBiness. Now we've become more fully acclimatized and Westernized (there isn't much immigration from Sri Lanka anymore, so the FOB quotient is low).

Let's not discount the effect of technology - I think cell phones are the biggest factor in this trend (throw Facebook in there too). I remember in Grade 11 a girl asked for my number (pre-cell phone days). So mortified was I by the prospect of a girl calling my house, I meekly mumbled a hollow reply and excused myself. Nowadays the parents never have to know.

My feelings are mixed on whether I welcome this change. I'll admit to holding Tamil girls to a higher double standard - there's a part of me that still expects them to be chaste and pure and all that. What concerns me is that as a guy, this is the likely the pool of potential spouses I'll have to draw from or resort to. Do I really want someone that's cycled through 7-8 boyfriends with all that baggage? Now I see why Punjabi guys import their brides from the motherland.