Indians Have the Emotional Intelligence of a Potato

Okay, obviously not every Indian.

There are more than a billion of us. Saying every Indian has terrible emotional intelligence would itself demonstrate the emotional intelligence of a potato.

But there is something about the way many of us are raised, particularly Indian men, that produces adults who can solve an engineering problem, negotiate the price of a house, memorize an entire textbook and somehow become completely helpless when another human being says, "You hurt me."

Ask him to configure Kubernetes and he'll figure it out.

Ask him how he's feeling and suddenly the server is unavailable.

And I don't think this is because Indian men are inherently less emotionally intelligent. That would be ridiculous. I think we systematically neglect emotional intelligence while raising children and then act surprised when those children become emotionally incompetent adults.

We teach mathematics. We teach science. We teach discipline. We teach respect for elders. We teach children how to get into engineering colleges, medical colleges and government jobs. We teach them how much money they should earn, when they should marry and what relatives will think about them.

But who teaches them how to communicate?

Who teaches them how to apologize properly?

Who teaches them how to disagree without becoming aggressive?

Who teaches them how to recognize jealousy?

Who teaches them how to handle rejection?

Who teaches them how to tell someone they love them?

Who teaches them how to say, "I'm scared"?

For a lot of Indian boys, the answer is basically nobody.

Boys Aren't Supposed to Feel Things

A boy falls down and cries.

"Why are you crying like a girl?"

A teenager is frightened.

"Be a man."

A young man is heartbroken.

"Forget her and focus on your career."

A husband is overwhelmed.

"Why are you behaving like this?"

Notice what happens over twenty years of this. We don't actually teach the boy how to regulate emotions. We teach him that displaying certain emotions is embarrassing.

Those are completely different things.

Emotional regulation means understanding what you're feeling, understanding why you're feeling it and deciding how to respond appropriately.

Emotional suppression means pretending the feeling doesn't exist.

Unfortunately, suppression is often marketed to men as strength.

So sadness gets suppressed.

Fear gets suppressed.

Loneliness gets suppressed.

Insecurity gets suppressed.

Affection gets suppressed.

Vulnerability gets suppressed.

But there's one emotion men are often permitted to express freely:

Anger.

And then we wonder why a man who cannot say, "I feel ignored and insecure," instead becomes irritated, controlling or aggressive.

He isn't emotionless.

He has plenty of emotions.

He just has a vocabulary containing one word.

Angry.

We Confuse Emotional Intelligence With Being Nice

Emotional intelligence doesn't mean smiling constantly, avoiding conflict or becoming some endlessly agreeable person.

Sometimes emotional intelligence means telling someone they're wrong.

Sometimes it means walking away.

Sometimes it means establishing a boundary.

Sometimes it means saying something uncomfortable.

The difference is that an emotionally intelligent person can recognize what is happening inside themselves and other people without immediately becoming controlled by it.

You can be angry without screaming.

You can be jealous without becoming controlling.

You can be rejected without insulting the person who rejected you.

You can be criticized without immediately defending yourself.

You can apologize without adding "but."

That last one alone would cause a national crisis.

"I'm sorry, but you also..."

Congratulations. You have successfully turned an apology into another argument.

A proper apology requires the uncomfortable realization that you can be a decent person and still have behaved badly. But many people interpret admitting fault as losing status, so every disagreement becomes a courtroom case where the objective is proving that the other person committed the greater crime.

Look at How Many Families Communicate

Indian families can love each other enormously while being astonishingly bad at saying it.

A father might work twelve hours a day for twenty years to give his children a comfortable life and still struggle to tell his son, "I'm proud of you."

Instead, affection becomes logistical.

"Did you eat?"

"Did you reach?"

"How much petrol is there?"

"When is your exam?"

"Take an umbrella."

And, to be fair, there's something beautiful about that. "Did you eat?" can contain an enormous amount of love.

But indirect affection shouldn't be the only affection we know how to express.

Imagine growing up in a house where nobody says what they actually feel. Dad expresses concern as anger. Mom expresses anxiety as control. The child expresses frustration as disrespect. Nobody explains the emotion underneath the behaviour.

Then everyone wonders why nobody understands anyone.

We Don't Understand Boundaries Either

Another emotional-intelligence problem is our relationship with boundaries.

In many Indian families, privacy is treated like suspicious behaviour.

Why did you lock your door?

Who are you texting?

How much do you earn?

When are you getting married?

Why aren't you having children?

Why don't you talk to that relative?

Where are you going?

Who is coming?

When will you return?

And these questions aren't coming only from parents. Sometimes an aunt you meet twice a year wants your complete relationship history before dessert arrives.

We often confuse closeness with unlimited access.

But loving someone doesn't automatically entitle you to every piece of information about their life.

Your adult child can love you and disagree with you.

Your friend can care about you and still want time alone.

Your girlfriend can love you and have male friends.

Your boyfriend can love you and not reply immediately.

Someone setting a boundary isn't necessarily insulting you.

Sometimes they're simply telling you how they want to be treated.

An emotionally intelligent response is to understand that distinction.

Rejection Turns Into Ego Destruction

This becomes particularly obvious with romantic rejection.

A guy likes a woman.

She doesn't like him back.

Objectively, nothing immoral has happened.

One human wanted a relationship. Another human didn't.

But emotionally, rejection can feel like a judgement of your entire worth. Suddenly the brain translates:

"I don't want to date you"

into:

"You're ugly, worthless, undesirable and will die alone."

Then ego takes over.

"She's arrogant."

"Girls only want rich guys."

"Women don't like nice guys."

Or he keeps messaging her because he thinks persistence will eventually convert a no into a yes.

The emotionally intelligent response isn't pretending rejection doesn't hurt.

Of course it hurts.

The emotionally intelligent response is being able to experience that pain without turning the other person into a villain.

You can think, "Fuck, that hurts."

You can be disappointed.

You can go home miserable.

You can talk to your friends.

You can need time to get over it.

And you can still respect her decision.

Both things can exist simultaneously.

Male Friendships Aren't Helping Much

Men can be incredibly loyal friends while knowing almost nothing about each other's emotional lives.

A group of guys can spend six hours together discussing cricket, politics, cars, games, careers, money, women and some completely hypothetical war between China and the United States.

Then one guy casually says:

"Bro, I've been feeling really lonely lately."

Silence.

"Gym join kar bro."

Problem solved.

We have somehow turned the gym into male therapy, psychiatry, heartbreak recovery, confidence training and spiritual enlightenment.

And I love the gym.

But sometimes your friend doesn't need a workout routine.

Sometimes he needs you to listen.

Male friendships would probably become significantly better if men could occasionally say, "That sounds rough. What happened?" without feeling like they've accidentally entered a therapy session.

Relationships Expose Everything

You can hide poor emotional intelligence surprisingly well when you're single.

Then you enter a relationship.

Suddenly another person has expectations, insecurities, boundaries, moods and needs that don't perfectly align with yours.

Now communication matters.

Your partner says, "You don't spend enough time with me."

Low-EQ interpretation:

She's complaining again.

Higher-EQ interpretation:

She might be saying she doesn't feel important to me.

That doesn't automatically mean she's correct. Maybe her expectations are unreasonable. Emotional intelligence isn't automatic agreement.

But before defending yourself, you need to understand what the other person is actually communicating.

This sounds incredibly simple.

It isn't.

Most arguments aren't really about the thing being argued about.

The dishes aren't always about dishes.

The late reply isn't always about the late reply.

The forgotten birthday isn't merely a date on a calendar.

Underneath these arguments are often questions like:

Do you care about me?

Do you respect me?

Can I trust you?

Am I important to you?

Are you listening?

When you respond only to the literal sentence, you can completely miss the emotional conversation happening underneath it.

Parents Aren't Always Better

Indian parents often deserve enormous respect for the sacrifices they make for their children.

But sacrifice doesn't automatically create emotional intelligence.

A parent can love their child more than anything in the world and still emotionally damage them.

Comparison is a perfect example.

"Sharmaji's son got 95."

"Look at your cousin."

"Your friend already has a job."

"That person's daughter got married."

Parents sometimes believe comparison creates motivation.

What the child may actually hear is:

You aren't enough yet.

Then the child grows up and continues the comparison internally.

Someone earns more.

Someone looks better.

Someone has a better relationship.

Someone bought a house.

Someone moved abroad.

Someone has more followers.

Someone is ahead.

Congratulations. The parent no longer needs to compare you with anyone.

They installed the software permanently.

We Also Treat Children Like Investments

There is another uncomfortable aspect of Indian family culture: sometimes love and obligation become tangled together.

"I sacrificed everything for you."

"I paid for your education."

"We raised you."

"After everything we've done..."

These statements can be true.

But love becomes psychologically dangerous when every sacrifice becomes a debt that the child must repay through obedience.

A child didn't sign a contract before being born.

Parents should absolutely expect basic respect and care from their children. But "I raised you" cannot become a lifetime veto over the adult child's career, marriage, location, friendships and beliefs.

Otherwise parenting becomes an investment portfolio.

"I invested ₹X lakh and twenty-five years into this asset. Why is it making independent decisions?"

Marriage Can Become a Business Transaction

Our emotional incompetence becomes particularly visible around marriage.

We obsess over salary.

Caste.

Religion.

Family background.

Horoscope.

Property.

Job.

Height.

Skin colour.

Education.

Community.

And somewhere around item seventeen somebody remembers:

"Do these two people actually enjoy talking to each other?"

Two people are expected to spend perhaps fifty years together, and emotional compatibility can receive less analysis than the wedding hall.

Can they resolve conflict?

Can they apologize?

Can they discuss money?

Can they talk about sex?

Can they express affection?

Can they disagree with each other's families?

Can they establish boundaries?

Can they admit insecurity?

Can they sit together without performing?

These questions matter enormously.

Yet we're often more interested in whether Mars is sitting in the correct celestial neighbourhood.

The Internet Made Some of This Worse

Social media gave emotionally immature people an infinite supply of validation.

Now every insecurity has a community willing to convert it into an ideology.

Got rejected by one woman?

Here's an entire ecosystem explaining why all women are terrible.

Had a bad boyfriend?

Here's another ecosystem explaining why all men are narcissists.

Angry about your career?

Someone will explain that society secretly conspired against you.

Insecure about your appearance?

An algorithm will show you genetically exceptional people until you feel defective.

Instead of processing emotions, we outsource them to recommendation algorithms.

And algorithms don't necessarily show us what makes us emotionally healthier.

They show us what keeps us watching.

Anger is excellent for engagement.

The Funniest Part Is That We Value IQ So Much

This is what makes the whole thing funny.

India worships conventional intelligence.

Marks matter.

Degrees matter.

Engineering matters.

Medicine matters.

Government exams matter.

Technical skills matter.

Parents will spend lakhs coaching a child for competitive exams.

A seventeen-year-old can spend twelve hours studying rotational mechanics because getting into IIT might affect his career.

But the same person might spend almost no time learning how to communicate, regulate anger, choose a partner, establish boundaries, understand manipulation, recognize insecurity or handle conflict.

Yet those abilities will influence practically every important relationship he has for the rest of his life.

You can have an IQ of 140 and still destroy your marriage because you can't apologize.

You can be an incredible programmer and still make everyone hate working with you.

You can earn ₹50 lakh a year and still be incapable of maintaining friendships.

You can solve differential equations and still not understand why your girlfriend is upset.

Intelligence isn't one number.

Indian Men Don't Need Fewer Emotions

They need better relationships with the emotions they already have.

Strength isn't never crying.

Strength is being able to experience sadness without collapsing under it.

Confidence isn't dominating every conversation.

Confidence is being able to hear criticism without feeling personally destroyed.

Masculinity isn't pretending you don't care.

Sometimes caring deeply about something and admitting it requires considerably more courage than acting indifferent.

And emotional intelligence doesn't make a man weak.

If anything, emotional control is one of the most traditionally masculine qualities imaginable.

The man screaming because someone insulted him isn't demonstrating control.

The man who understands that he's furious and consciously decides what response benefits him is.

One is being controlled by an emotion.

The other is controlling himself.

We Need to Teach This Stuff

Maybe schools should actually teach some of it.

Not "moral science" where children memorize five virtues for an exam.

Actual emotional education.

How do you disagree?

What does a healthy relationship look like?

What is manipulation?

What is consent?

How do boundaries work?

How do you apologize?

How do you identify what you're feeling?

How do you deal with rejection?

How do you communicate anger without aggression?

How do you comfort someone without immediately trying to solve their problem?

How do you recognize when you're jealous?

How do you know when you're being unreasonable?

How do you resolve a conflict where both people have legitimate concerns?

These are skills.

And like other skills, they can be learned.

That's the encouraging part.

The Potato Can Evolve

I don't think Indians are genetically deficient in emotional intelligence. I don't think Indian men are inherently insensitive. In fact, Indian families and friendships can contain extraordinary amounts of loyalty, sacrifice, affection and community.

The problem is often expression.

We're frequently expected to understand love without hearing it, understand pain without discussing it and understand boundaries without anybody establishing them.

Then we carry those habits into friendships, workplaces, marriages and eventually our own parenting.

But culture isn't DNA.

Every generation gets to decide which behaviours it inherits and which ones it deletes.

We can keep the family closeness without the emotional blackmail.

Keep respect for parents without demanding obedience from adults.

Keep masculine resilience without teaching boys that sadness is feminine.

Keep strong marriages without treating divorce as shameful regardless of circumstances.

Keep community without destroying privacy.

Keep sacrifice without turning it into debt.

And maybe teach our sons that there are emotional states somewhere between "fine" and "angry."

Because the goal isn't to create a generation of men who constantly talk about their feelings.

It's to create adults who actually understand them.

A man should be able to say he's scared without believing he's weak. He should be able to hear "no" without interpreting it as humiliation. He should be able to apologize without feeling defeated, disagree without screaming, love someone without controlling them, lose someone without hating them and care about his parents without surrendering ownership of his life.

That's emotional intelligence.

And considering how much effort we put into developing every other kind of intelligence, maybe it's finally time we upgraded the potato.