Why I’ll Never Let a Man Pay for Me

On male entitlement, the ₹370 biryani that broke the internet, and why “provider” men are the last thing independent women need.

Unlike men, I’m not keeping a tab. Read it free here!

There is a particular kind of dread I feel before a first date.

Not the usual kind, not the outfit anxiety or the small talk panic. It is something quieter and more specific. It is the mental calculation I run before I even leave the house: how do I make sure he does not pay for anything?

I am a splitter. I split bills, I pay my share of trips, I Gpay friends before they even ask. I have done this so consistently, so carefully, that people who know me have started calling it a personality trait.

It is not. It is a defence mechanism.

And I have been thinking about why for a long time. The ₹370 biryani finally made me write it down.

The Biryani That Explained Everything

By now, most of you have seen the clip or heard about it, because many of us could not bring ourselves to watch it. At comedian Pranit More’s Ashleel Show, a male audience member shared a story. He had taken a woman out and spent ₹370 on biryani. She wanted to go home after eating.

His complaint? He had still not “recovered” the money he spent on her.

The audience laughed. Pranit More called it “peak Gurgaon content.” The room erupted.

Let me be very clear about what that room was laughing at. They were not laughing at an absurd man or at a self-aware joke. They were laughing in recognition: the warm, comfortable laughter of people hearing something they privately believe said out loud on a stage. They were laughing because the premise, that a woman’s time, company, or body is a transaction that a biryani can partially purchase, felt relatable to them.

That is not a punchline. That is a confession.

Pranit More later said he regretted how the clip was interpreted, and the video was removed from all platforms. But let’s be honest: an apology issued after the clip goes viral and a quiet deletion is not a reckoning. It is damage control. The comedian who hosts a show called Ashleel, which translates roughly to obscene, gave no pushback to a man expressing that a woman owed him something for a meal. He laughed and gave it a catchy label. That is not just failing to challenge a dangerous idea but rather amplifying it to an audience of millions.

The apology does not undo the applause. That applause told every woman in India exactly what she already suspected.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/parth.says/reels/

What Men Think “Provider” Actually Means

Here is the thing about the biryani man: he did not invent this idea. He inherited it.

He was raised in a culture that taught him explicitly, through every Bollywood film, every dinner table conversation, every “boys will be boys” ,that when a man spends money on a woman, he is investing. Not a gesture, not a choice but an investment with an expected return.

This is what male entitlement actually looks like in practice. It is not always the loud, violent version because most of the time it is a man who genuinely believes he is being generous who pulls out his wallet with one hand and keeps a running tab with the other.

And we are supposed to call this being a provider.

I want to ask something directly: are men really providers if “providing” comes with fine print? If the biryani comes with conditions she never agreed to?

If the gift, the dinner, the gesture , none of which she asked for is quietly converted into a debt she is expected to repay in ways she never consented to?

Because that is not a provision, that is a purchase, and she is not a product.

Why I Started Splitting Long Before I Had Language For It

I am self-made, and I’m working on my corporate career. I do not need anyone to buy me dinner, and I am not saying that to perform independence; I am saying it because it is simply, factually true.

And yet.

The moment a man pays for something, even something I did not ask for, I feel the weight of it. The invisible ledger he is keeping. The way his generosity has a texture to it, slightly too deliberate, slightly too visible, tells me it is not freely given.

So I got ahead of it, I split every time. On every date, with every friend, in every situation where money changes hands between a man and me.

What I did not expect was how that strategy would quietly take over more than just my wallet.

I started splitting emotionally, too. Pre-emptively pulling my weight in relationships so he could never claim I owed him anything. Over-contributing: my time, my effort, my energy to make sure the ledger stayed balanced. Because the one thing more terrifying than a man who pays for dinner is a man who then tells you what that dinner was worth.

And here is the part I am embarrassed to admit: it has made me easier to exploit, not harder. Because when you are so determined not to owe anyone anything, you forget to notice when you are the only one giving.

The Friendship Tax

It is not just dates. It follows me into friendships as well.

I think constantly about how I am perceived. Not in the usual way, I have a very functional relationship with my own self-image. I mean specifically: will he think I am using him? Will being around men who have money and choosing not to reach for my card become a story someone tells about me?

The gold-digger accusation is the nuclear weapon of male entitlement. It pre-emptively silences women from ever receiving anything, ever relaxing, ever allowing someone else to be generous because the threat of that label hangs over every interaction.

And the truly maddening part? The men throwing around that accusation often do not have anything worth digging for to begin with. I am a financially independent woman; I do not need their money because I have my own. But I still police myself, still calculate, still pre-emptively give because the label is not really about money but about control. It is a way of making women feel that receiving anything, even freely given generosity, makes them morally suspect.

That is patriarchy doing its job very efficiently.

The Double Standard That Makes Me Want to Set Something on Fire

Let us talk about alimony, since the same men who think ₹370 biryani buys them consent also love to bring up alimony at dinner parties.

They will tell you, with great authority and righteous indignation, that alimony is unfair. That is exploitation. That it is, and I have heard this comparison made many times now, “basically the same as dowry.”

Let me take a moment with that.

Dowry is a practice where a woman’s family is extorted (yes, extorted!) into paying the groom’s family as a condition of marriage. Women have been burned alive over it, killed, and harassed into suicide. The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 exists because the dowry system is a documented, centuries-old mechanism of violence against women.

Alimony is a legal provision designed to prevent destitution for a spouse usually the one who sacrificed career opportunities, economic independence, and years of earning potential to support the marriage.

These are not the same thing. Comparing them is not a hot take but rather a lie dressed as logic.

But here is what is really interesting about the comparison: the men who make it are the same men who, in the same breath, want to be called providers. Who wants to pay on dates so they feel like they are owed something? Those who want to perform generosity when it gives them power, and reject financial responsibility the moment it is legally compelled.

You cannot have it both ways.

You cannot perform “I take care of my woman” as a personality trait and then treat alimony, care, mandated by law, as an outrage.

Unless, of course, the point was never to care. The point was control.

What the Laughter in That Room Actually Cost

I have heard the counter-argument. It was just a joke. You are too sensitive. He apologised. Move on.

Here is what I want to say to that:

The laughter in that room was not innocent. Every woman who has ever been followed home after a man paid for her meal, every woman who has been guilted into something she did not want because “he was so nice to her,” every woman who has ever paid for her own biryani and still been made to feel like she owed something, she heard that laughter.

She recognised it. She has been living inside it.

A joke that the whole room laughs at is not just a joke. It is a social contract being renewed. It says: we all agree this is how things work here. And when the person on stage with the microphone does not push back , when he laughs along and gives the ugliness a catchy name, he signs the contract too.

That is what makes it matter. Not the ₹370, not even the entitlement of one man at one show. It is the room.

What We Are Actually Dealing With

We are a messed-up generation. I say that not with despair but with precision.

We are a generation of women who were told to be independent, ambitious, and self-sufficient and then penalised for it. Made to feel cold for not needing rescuing, made to feel difficult for paying our own way, made to feel suspicious for succeeding without a man’s help.

And we are a generation of men who were told to be providers but never had a conversation about what provision without entitlement actually looks like. Who inherited a transactional understanding of relationships from fathers who learned it from grandfathers, passed down through every Hindi film hero who spent money on the heroine and expected her gratitude to look a very specific way.

This is not about one comedian. It is not even about biryani.

It is about a culture that has decided women’s bodies, time, and attention are resources that can be purchased and that has normalised that belief so thoroughly that a room full of people finds it funny instead of frightening.

I split bills because I am afraid of what men think they are buying when they pay.

And the fact that I have to think about this at all, the fact that any of us do, is the most damning indictment of everything that room was laughing about.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/veerasareestudio/?hl=en

If this made you think, share it with someone who needs to read it. And if you are a man reading this and feeling defensive right now, sit with that and follow me for the sake of my ego here ;)