This is what I witnessed on a recent flight from Kolkata to Bangalore. The plane was typical of budget air travel: full of businessmen and mothers. The smart flight attendants were young men. The pilot, captain of the flight deck, was a woman. This is not an uncommon combination in India these days. I was struck instead by the behavior of the male passengers.

In most countries, a woman clambering aboard a plane with a fretful infant and turning a crowded row of six into a de facto row of seven is usually met with hostility. Here, every other row seemed larded with these women and their babies. But those stuffy Indian businessmen — men of middle management, dodging bottles and diaper bags and carelessly flung toys — they didn’t grumble. Instead, up and down the plane, I saw them helping. Holding babies so that mothers could eat. Burping infants and entertaining toddlers. Not because they knew these women, but because being concerned and engaged was their normal mode of social behavior. So, I will say this — Indian men can also be among the kindest in the world.

Women know this. When I asked my friends and acquaintances — both Indian and expatriate — about their perceptions of Indian men, they mentioned intelligence, wit and a reverence for learning. Others described gregarious partners who knew how to relax and enjoy themselves. All of them talked about commitment and caring. One said, “I love that he is deeply concerned about his parents.” An Englishwoman said of her long-term Indian partner, “He makes me feel cherished and taken care of in a manner I never experienced in the U.K.” Another said of her father, “He supported my mother through their marriage, through her job, with the kids, her health, everything.” A 16-year-old schoolgirl echoed this: “You feel safe with them. No matter what, they will see you home safely.”

Strong familial commitment is not a phenomenon restricted to the urban middle classes. Migrant laborers care for wives and children, and still send money home to their parents. The young woman who was gang-raped on a New Delhi bus on Dec. 16 had a village-raised father who supported her ardently. This part of the story is so unsurprising, it rarely makes the news.

Let me introduce the Common Indian Male, a category that deserves taxonomic recognition: committed, concerned, cautious; intellectually curious, linguistically witty; socially gregarious, endearingly awkward; quick to laugh, slow to anger. Frequently spotted in domestic circles, traveling in a family herd. He has been sighted in sari shops and handbag stores, engaged in debating his spouse’s selection with the sons and daughters who trail behind. There is, apparently, no domestic decision that is not worthy of his involvement.