Younger members of metro Atlanta's South Asian community gather at the Java Monkey coffee shop in Decatur to discuss the pressures of being a "model minority." From left they are Sangita Chari, Sunita Patel, Deepali Gokhale and Aditya Kar

Four outlaws gathered at a Decatur coffeehouse to talk over their crimes.

One had married an African-American man. Another chose the wrong career. One is openly gay. The fourth, well, she just isn't submissive enough.

The group looked like a caramel-colored version of the cast of "Friends": four attractive, well-educated Indian-Americans brimming with confidence and laughter. But each has become an outlaw of sorts in Atlanta's South Asian community --- people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal --- because they've broken the rules for being a good South Asian, sometimes considered a "model minority" in America.

"You're supposed to be an engineer, a doctor, a scientist --- anything that would make good money," says Sunita Patel, 22, of Decatur, who met with her friends at the coffeehouse on a recent evening.

The group then ticks off the rules: make straight A's, cheerfully agree to an arranged marriage, have fair skin or straight hair, and be submissive in public. And, whatever you do, don't act like African- Americans.

"What's set up for you isn't realistic," says Deepali Gokhale, 30, a database consultant. "It's almost impossible to achieve the things you're supposed to achieve."

More than 70,000 South Asians now live in the Atlanta metro area, with the Indian-American population alone having recorded a 230 percent increase in Georgia from 1990 to 2000. Indians are also estimated to own nearly half the roadside hotels and motels in the state.

None of those numbers reflects the escalating divisions within the South Asian community, many of whose younger members say they're tired of being viewed as the "good minority": hardworking, submissive overachievers. They say this image has become an ethnic straitjacket that stifles individuality --- and is often used to demean African- Americans by comparison.

Now they don't want to be examples anymore. They just want to be themselves.

"You already have expectations set for you, so you can't set your own goals," says Agnes Scott College freshman Qudsia Raja, 18, a Pakistani-American.

Though she attends an elite school and plans on eventually working in international affairs, Raja says that wasn't good enough for her parents. She disappointed them, she says, by deciding not to become a doctor or agree to an arranged marriage.

"Everyone talks about you," she says. "Everyone in the community knows who you are. It's a horrible feeling to know that I have all these expectations set before me and I can't keep up with them."

Most South Asians, however, eventually find a way to meet those expectations. They're consistently held up as a kind of gold standard among America's ethnic groups. The latest census figures indicate why: Divorce is low. At least 80 percent of South Asian households are maintained by married couples. The education level is high. More than 40 percent of South Asians age 25 or older have at least a bachelor's degree. Poverty is low. The group's poverty rate is only 10.7 percent.

A quirk of history

Of course, the phenomenon of young adults feeling constrained by their parents' expectations is hardly unique to South Asians. In fact, Qudsia Raja's father, Tariq Raja, sounds like a lot of dads --- a little surprised at her assessment. He says he's not disappointed that his daughter attends Agnes Scott and that he came to America precisely so she could have a good education and career options. "I give her my opinion, but I don't impose on her," he says.

But South Asians are a special case among ethnic communities in America.

The "model minority" image is a myth built on a quirk of history, says Indian-born Vijay Prashad, author of "The Karma of Brown Folk." Prashad, a professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., says South Asians are disproportionately successful in America not because they are inherently more intelligent or work harder, but mostly because of immigration law.

In 1965, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act. The act was intended in part to fill the country's need for more scientists at the height of the space race with the Soviets, Prashad says. Most of the South Asians who subsequently immigrated to the United States fit the bill: They were the elite.

Between 1966 and 1977, Prashad says, 83 percent of Indians who immigrated to America entered under the category of professional and technical workers: about 20,000 scientists with Ph.D.s, 40,000 engineers and 25,000 medical doctors.

Not surprisingly, those immigrants did well. Now, Prashad says, they expect their American-born children to follow the path they chose, right down to being top achievers at every level. "Parents are setting up INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] standards for their kids," he says.

'Where are the drunks?'

High expectations, most would agree, are more desirable than the low expectations and demeaning stereotypes that some other minority groups contend with. But Prashad notes that high standards can be very confining.

"It's not human. It's like taking a group of scientists and making a colony on Mars and pretending the whole world should be scientists. Where are the artists, the poets, the drunks? Where is everybody that makes history possible?"

The high standards are reinforced by relentless parental and community pressure to conform. South Asian young people who don't conform to the myth, Prashad says, deny their parents access to the power centers of the community: joining the chamber of commerce, becoming a leader in the temple or heading a community organization.

"The pressure on the child is enormous, and the parents suffer the embarrassment of their children not being the performing animals of their community."

Sunaina Jain, a family and child psychologist in Tucker, says South Asian young people often feel torn between the outside world and the world inside their home.

"They're living in a culture that's so individual, perhaps overfocused on individuality: what I want, what I feel, what my dreams are," she says. "South Asian culture is totally not about that. It's about we, the family, fitting in and living up to what's expected rather than having your own voice."

A wide-open society

Jain, a native of India who has two daughters born in America, says many South Asian parents are terrified of their children becoming too American.

"They see this as a permissive, wide-open society," she says. "I remember Indian parents who would send their daughters back to India when they reached 14 so they wouldn't date."

Raja shocked her parents when she told them she would not enter into an arranged marriage. Her habit of voicing her opinion in the presence of men also causes her mother anxiety. "She thinks I'll have problems later on when I get married," Raja says.

Sometimes the expectations can tear parents and children apart.

Sharmily Roy, 20, a junior at Agnes Scott, says she moved out of her parents' house two years ago because she did not fulfill their expectations. They wanted her to get an engineering degree at Georgia Tech. She chose Agnes Scott instead.

"I have basically broken with them because I can't do what they want me to do," Roy says.

Defying taboos

Career choice isn't the only land mine within the community. Marrying outside the ethnic circle and being homosexual both clearly fall outside acceptable behavior.

Aditya Kar, a native of India who now lives in Atlanta, is gay. When he returned home to tell his father this, he literally didn't have the words to break the news.

"I was talking in Bengali to my father when I had to use the word 'gay,' but there's no equivalent word in Bengali to get the full meaning," he says. "I had to use the three exact words in English: 'I am gay.' "

Kar, 36, says he once contemplated suicide because he thought something was wrong with him. His story was featured in a documentary about gay South Asians, "For Straights Only," by Atlanta filmmaker Vismita Gupta-Smith.

"If I had seen one South Asian face in my childhood or teenage [years] who said, 'I'm South Asian and I'm gay and it's OK,' I would not have thought of ending my life and probably used it in a more productive way," Kar says.

Sangita Chari fell headfirst into the tension between South Asians and African-Americans when she fell in love with a black man.

Every South Asian interviewed for this article acknowledged that there is widespread racism within their community, with many routinely dismissing African-Americans as inherently lazy or prone to criminal behavior.

"If you're new to this country and you're watching television and you see one type of individuals who are committing crimes, that's what's going to come in your mind," says Aparna Bhattacharyya, director of Raksha, a nonprofit service organization for South Asians in metro Atlanta.

Chari, 30, met her husband in college. When they grew closer after dating for six months, she fretted over the prospect of marriage. Good Indian girls didn't marry black men.

"It was a huge struggle for me," Chari says. "I felt like I was making a decision that would take me away from the Indian community."

"South Asians are status-conscious," says Jain, the psychologist. "If a man's daughter marries an African-American man, she's going to be subjected to all the prejudice already present in this society. She's going to be doubly different. Who wants that for his child?"

Chari says that, before she got married, she once decided to break up but couldn't find a good reason to do so.

"I asked myself, 'If I give in and don't marry him just because he's black, then who am I?' " she says today.

'Model minority suicide'

Bhattacharyya says that dispelling the "model minority" myth would help the South Asian community. The community faces such problems as domestic violence, teenage suicide, homophobia and culture shock, she says, but they are rarely talked about openly because no one wants to dispel the myth. As a result, she says, the community can't get the help it sometimes needs.

Once, when Bhattacharyya applied for a foundation grant to help South Asian youths, she was told that she didn't need it because South Asian youths don't have problems.

"I was so angry. We're always seen as the doctors and lawyers. People don't think we have people who are victimized."

Prashad wants South Asians to commit "model minority suicide" by being outspoken and individualistic and not allowing their success to be used to downgrade other people of color. "Why do I want a myth of success for myself when it's premised on the failure of others?" he says.

Chari, one of those who gathered at the coffeehouse, says she no longer lets others shape her identity. She says the decision has freed her. When others make the same decision, she says, it will liberate the South Asian community.

"I'm Indian regardless of who I marry. I'm an American regardless of what anybody defines me as. If I buy into the myth, I'm not allowed to be so much of what I am. And we as a community are now allowed to be so much of what we are."