Gori Girl

To Hug or Not to Hug: More on Meeting the Parents

Aditya’s parents are visiting us again for the second time – they arrived late last week – which has cut into my blogging time as we catch up with them. Of course, it also means plenty of blogging material is being generated with our temporary extended family living situation. The last time they visited I only got out one substantive post on the topic – I hope to do a bit better this time. Of course, that post – which was on the (eek!) order that Aditya’s parents tried to bring to our home, disrupting my chaotic-but-somehow-functional mess of a system – still haunts us. Today Baba and Maa dusted and vacuumed the house while we at work – and then jokingly pointed out after I arrived home that my piles of mess were exactly where I left them, just cleaner.

(Little do they know that if I am stymied in blogging about their dastardly actions of cleaning our house & cooking delicious meals I have no problem in getting irrationally upset about some other minor issue. For example: the fridge has been reorganized without my express permission, and the dishwasher was inefficiently loaded, resulting in one less cup being washed than if I had loaded it. I’m still reeling!)

Since I haven’t had a chance to sit down and think through a post lately, I thought I’d share with you the transcript I’ve typed up in spare minutes from an NPR segment called Intercultural Relationships: Can They Work?. I’m not a professional transcriber, so there may be errors – but I figured something was better than nothing for those of you who can’t (or don’t like to) listen to podcasts. The segment (and my post title) was developed from an article in East West Magazine. The article, which you can find here, is quite complimentary to the NPR segment, and I encourage you to read it as well as the transcript below. I’ve bolded the parts I find particularly interesting, and will post my thoughts on it tomorrow in the comments section.

Following the Iran Elections Aftermath

If you haven’t been following the current protests and events in Iran, then I highly encourage you to do so.

For those of you who haven’t heard about the Iran elections (not surprising given the relatively light coverage in mainstream media), Iran held presidential elections this past Friday on June 12th. The current hardline president, Ahmadinejad, was announced the winner, but the elections results released are extremely fishy, and not in line with what opinion polls were predicting. The main statistical improbability is that Ahmadinejad had roughly the same percentage of votes (around 65%) across different rural and urban areas and across different provinces, including the home provinces of his opponents and ones like Kurdistan, which historically goes for the opposition candidate like California goes for the Democratic one.

So what, right? Just another sadly rigged third-world election?

Well, as the pictures here show: No.

From Atheist to Hindu? Religion and My Intercultural Marriage

Me? Oh, well, I don’t have a faith. And, no, I’m not interested in getting one either.

That was my polite non-answer when asked about my religious beliefs by two Christians who stopped by Aditya’s and my doorstop to proselytize last weekend. And it was as true, as far as it goes – I’m not one much for simple faith in any context. When discussing my religious beliefs with friends & family, I’m most likely to to describe myself simply as an atheist. But when I’m feeling a little mischievous – or argumentative – I’ll sometimes put in that I’m an atheist – and a Hindu.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a complicated situation; I blame Aditya for it completely. Like many other things in my life, religion is something that has become more complicated since we set off on our intercultural marriage adventure.

Words on Hindostan – Part Two

Continuing from where we left off last time (see Part One for more details), here is Part Two of Mrs. Mortimer’s 1850s children’s book on India. The sections here – Religion, The Castes, The Ganges, and Beggars – are focused on Hinduism in India. Sadly, I suspect that few Americans know any more details about Hinduism than what is presented here – and I would not be surprised if few fundamentalist Christians (like some family members of mine) give the religion any more of a fair shake than Mrs. Mortimer does here. Of course, the words here are also troubling because a fair amount of it is true – although not the whole truth – once you strip away the venom and slant.

Don’t Get Your Undies in a Bunch: Worrying About Intercultural Quirks

Okay, I’m a huge supporter of researching your significant other’s culture and understanding cultural differences, but let’s just put this one out there: worrying about intercultural quirks can be taken too far. There’s reasonable concern, and then there’s fretting over – or being shocked by – cultural differences that, in the end, don’t really matter. Basically, Internet, I’m saying you shouldn’t get your tighty-whities in a wad over the smaller cultural differences or customs you discover in your intercultural relationships.

(And no, it’s not all small stuff – but there’s more small stuff than the amount of complaining would suggest.)