Gori Girl

Guess Who’s Coming to Diwali?

Slate’s Dear Prudence column has dipped its toe into the intercultural relationship waters with a advice on how to deal with Indian parents refusing to meet their boy’s girlfriend. The situation is one that a number of readers here have seen – or are currently in – so I thought I’d link to this timely advice. Personally, I think that Prudie’s advice on what to do is pretty spot on: insist on having the parents meet the girl at the next chance. However, I don’t think Prudie understands all of the intricacies involved in an intercultural relationship – especially one where the parent-child relationship of one partner’s culture is so different from the other’s.

Septia Mutiny has a brief post on the same article – and while the post itself isn’t much to write home about, the comments section has a lot of interesting stories and discussions on it. Check it out when you have the time.

Indian Wedding Story: Part Three

This is Part Three of a continuing series on my Indian wedding adventure. If you’re new to Gori Girl, try checking out Part One and Part Two.

Lunchtime! Tomorrow the real wedding pictures start, but today was super hectic, so you’ll be getting the pictures from the lunch before the big night, and the story of bridal preparation and nerves.

After our pre-lunch siesta, everyone returned to the community center where the wedding ceremony would be held for lunch. All I can say is yum – the caterers were very, very good!

He’s soooo Indian!

In this guest post, NeoKalypso of Doings & Undoings writes about her understanding of “Indian-ness.”

“You are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are? That some people see things that others cannot? … There are always mysteries in life.” – Abraham Van Helsing, metaphysician and scientist from Bram Stoker’s Dracula

I knew my Indian boyfriend was pretty down with his culture, but after meeting his brother-in-law I just looked at R amusedly and said, “Wow. He’s sooo Indian.” R knew exactly what I meant, smiled and said, “Oh, he totally is. You should see him in India. He’s absolutely in his element.”

Later I will unpack this exchange for Gori Girl readers. But first, some background. I’m a white American woman and my R is from a very traditional, South Indian (Telugu) family. Of the Indian families I have had the pleasure of knowing, I feel at liberty to say R’s is the “most hardcore” (i.e. traditional) I’ve known. For example, out of his 200 family members, only one ventured outside of Telugu culture to marry…a Gujarati. R’s little niece and nephew speak Telugu. His mom, pop, sister, brother-in-law, and their kids have often lived in the same house, sharing family responsibilities (which is very common for more traditional families). It has worked well for them.

A Couple of Great Resources

In my internet browsing I’ve found a couple of sites that might be of interest to yah’ll.

First, of there’s a pretty active forum at Indiebride.com (which is a good resource in-and-of-itself), called Intermarriage, where people pretty much just discuss intercultural relationships. Different races, different religions, different nationalities – it looks like it pretty much all is represented there. The archives are massive too.

Then there’s a livejournal community, called Masala Couples, which focuses on intercultural relationships where one partner is South Indian. Again, the community looks pretty active, and there’s a lot of history to browse. And everyone is super-duper friendly.

Enjoy!

Why the Gori of Gori Girl?

There’s been some talk in the comments about the word gori, which, given the blog name, is probably a term you’ll hear thrown around here from time to time. So I thought I’d explain what it means, some of the connotations it can carry, and why I chose it for the name of this blog – as well as my pen name.

What does gori mean?

The following was derived from Aditya’s lengthy comments on the etymology of the word gori – be thankful that I’m sparing you all of the tangential diatribes that developed during our conversation.

Gori is a Hindi adjective that literally means “fair” or “light-complexioned”. The i at the end of the word is a feminine conjugation, so gori is often used as a noun, with the subject being understood without explicit reference. In this slightly looser interpretation of the word, gori can mean “pale female”, “fair woman”, or even “white girl”. The masculine version of gori is gora, which can be translated as white man. Since I’m awfully pale-skinned, at least in the winter, gori can be rightly used as an adjective to describe me, or as a noun in reference me.

Indian Wedding Story: Part Two

Part one of this Indian wedding story can be found here.

The wedding ceremony took place in the evening, so Aditya and I were pretty free to do what we’d like the morning of the big day. His family had been planning the event all along – all we did was show up – so if there had there been any last minute catering disasters, for instance they were primed to take care of them. I was still a little jetlagged when I rolled out of bed, but figuring out how to operate the bucket-based showering system woke me up.

When I emerged dripping from the bathroom, Maa politely inquired whether I’d like to wear a sari, a salvar kameez, or whatever clothes I’d brought with me from the US. Now, as I’d never been to India before (and my inlaws refuse to purchase the high priced imported Indian clothes in the US), this was going to be my first time wearing Indian clothes. I decided to go all out, and start with a sari.

Who is Affected by your Intercultural Relationship?

Many people subscribe to the idea that your personal life is nobody’s business but your own – as long as you aren’t maiming others, anyways. While I generally agree with the sentiment this idea expresses, I also think it’s important to realize that, like it or not, your actions affect a wide swath of people. In fact, at the margin, your actions affect the entire world.

Let’s all pause for a moment to ponder that grandiose thought while breaking out into The Circle of Life.

Everyone back? Good. I brought up this topic because being in an intercultural relationships has a tendency to disrupt the “social equilibrium,” if you will, of the people around you. In almost every country and region an intercultural relationship is the exception, not the norm. So while being in any relationship might affect those close to you – my dad still hasn’t gotten over the fact that I’m no longer his little girl – intercultural relationships are both a regular ol’ relationship and something of a challenge to the status quo. As if romantic relationships weren’t tough enough on their own!

In this post I’m focusing on how intercultural relationships, in particular, affect those around us. I’ll start out by laying out a (non-comprehensive) list of the type of people who can be affected by your intercultural marriage or relationship, continue with how these effects ripple out through the social web of life, and then finish up with how much you should really care about it all. This post developed as I thought about how parents can react to their children’s intercultural relationships – I’ll be applying the principles and theory I develop here to that post, which will be the next “serious” one.

Indian Wedding Story: Part One

I’ve mentioned previously that Aditya and I recently had our Hindu wedding ceremony in India, and I’ve been meaning to write a post or two (or a hundred) about my experiences in India. And then a reader mentioned that she liked the pictures of the wedding that are sprinkled around the GoriGirl site, and would be interested in seeing more of them. So I thought I’d combine these two ideas and post a couple of pictures each day, working through the story chronologically. We’ll start off with our arrival in Calcutta (also known as Kolkata – but I’ll go with my inlaw’s usage), where the wedding took place.

Meeting the Desi Parents

Few things fill me with as much dread as meeting my partner’s parents.

First off, I’m socially awkward by nature – at least when meeting new people. I never know how to make small talk, or when good eye contact crosses the line into weird staring, or if my posture and facial expressions are saying “possibly mentally deranged” rather than “cool and confident “.

Then there’s the fact that I’m meeting the parents. While I’m not exactly a “people pleaser”, I do think it’s important to have a good rapport with the parents of your significant other, at least if he or she is close to them (and Aditya is). If the relationship continues then they’re going to be a part of your life forever, and well, family matters, you know? And first impressions matter too.

Finally, with Aditya’s parents I had the whole “different culture” thing to worry about too. All of the social rules and interpersonal cues – which I only have a passing knowledge of, anyways – go swishing out the window when you’re faced with a new culture. Not only could I completely mess up, I could completely mess up and not even know what I did wrong.

Despite this, my initial meetings with Aditya’s parents – first Maa, then Baba – ended up going quite well. While this may be more due to their innate awesomeness than any actions of mine, I hope my story can help out some of you who are struggling with the same sort of worries I had had. Next post I’ll be focusing on some of the more “theoretical” aspects of meeting the parents, which will greatly extend some of the points I bring up here, so be sure to tune in for that too.

I’m Dreaming of FIOS Internet…

So, we still lack internet at the new place, which means the lovely post sitting in Word on my laptop won’t be available to you guys until I can get to campus tomorrow morning. You’d think I’d remember things like this *before* I left for home, but you’d be so wrong. I blame lingering moving amnesia. (This mini post is coming to you via Aditya’s iPhone.) In an attempt to ward off any wrath (or disappointment), I offer up the following two articles on intercultural marriages with Indian partners:

The United Colors of Desi: More and More South Asians Are Marrying Outside Their Race
An article profiling several white-Desi couples. Also includes some gorgeous pictures of happy couples.

Nothing can prepare you
An article written by a male Canadian about his relationship with an Indian woman.