Gori Girl

ESL Tutoring – or How We Met

I’ve never heard the story behind this photograph, although I know it was taken Aditya’s first year of college, and I’m willing to guess that the crossdressing costume was somehow part of the International Student Association’s annual Bazaar. Oh, how his past comes back to haunt him***

Aditya’s a year older than me, so depending on when this picture was taken I was either finishing up my last semester of high school (I graduated a semester early) or already working in Germany as an Au-Pair. Before leaving for Germany I went through the college application rigmarole, and ended up choosing the same small midwestern liberal arts college that Aditya was crossdressing studying at. Yes, you guessed it – we met in college.

Well, sort of.

A Tremendous Overachievement in a Community of Overachievers

Aasif Mandvi can’t do a very convincing “Indian” accent (at least to my ears), but his delivery is typically spot on – and this bit had be cracking up. I’ve always loved how the Daily Show dealt with “minority issues”. They aren’t afraid to take on the discussion seriously, and they aren’t afraid to skewer that same discussion when it turns ridiculous as it so often does in our media. They don’t hit the mark every time, but when they do, it’s brilliant, as when Stewart, reporting on Obama’s race speech, said, “”and at 11:00 on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race as though they were adults.”

Hat tip to Ennis over at Septia Mutiny, who is wondering if Gupta’s nomination gives Mandvi a bit of job security for a few years.

A Mixed Pair

It was really early in the morning, you see, when the dogs informed us that they needed to go out. My turn to let them out, unfortunately, but afterwards the three of us agreed the hike back upstairs was too long, so we settled on the couch for a nap until the sun was properly up. Well, Kajol – a total snugglebunny – and I settled on the couch, and Panda slept on the cool floor next to us.

Panda Bear is the latest addition to our family, and, as an Alaskan Malamute, he tends to be a bit too warm to snuggle comfortably for that long indoors. He’s about two and a half years old, and another rescue dog – poor pup spent most of his life tied in a field with grass so high he couldn’t see out of it before Animal Cruelty rescued him. When he came to us he was twenty pounds underweight and didn’t know what a treat was or how to play with another dog. He’s still a bit of a failure with treats – he’s excited to get one, but just drops it afterwards for Kajol to eat. Kajol, however, has taught him to play like a champion at the only game she knows: wrestling. We often look out onto the deck to see Kajol’s head disappearing into Panda’s massive jaw, or him just calmly sitting on Kajol while she struggles to get free.

They’re a well-matched pair, despite being from such different breeds – and I suppose there’s a semi-corny lesson in there for all of us in an intercultural relationship, or, really, any mixed relationship where looks or personalities or abilities differ.

Confluence on the Roads: Thoughts about American, Indian, and German Traffic

Yesterday Aditya and I made the trek to the holy queen of all box stores, IKEA. It was the first day of the Preview Summer Sale, so of course we were there, battle plan mapped out, lists made, room measurements at hand, and stomaches ready for meatballs. The plan was that I would arrive mid-afternoon with the U-Haul rental van (the better to transport our loot – we take IKEA seriously in this household), and Aditya would come directly from the office once he was off work at 7. Once there, my orders were to make one reconnaissance sweep, then head to the ground floor to secure the bed we’ve been trying to purchase for the past year. Yes, we’ve been sleeping with a mattress on the floor for a year rather than give up on our dream cheapo bed just because of little things like it always being out of stock.

We plan, and God laughs. I think it was when the third firetruck passed me, sirens blaring, and traffic ground to a complete standstill that I realized I would not be reaching IKEA at 1300 hours. There I sat, stalled on the highway, surveying the baking asphalt meadows around. To pass the time, I started observing the cooperation of the other drivers in responding to the emergency vehicles and the on-going traffic jam, and thinking about how other car cultures I’m familiar with cooperate in their own ways.

Categories, Generalizations, and Stereotypes: Talking About Cultural Differences

We talk about cultural differences a lot on this blog: “Indian parents tend to worry about X, Y, and Z when their children are getting married.” “My husband grew up in a culture where it wasn’t okay to do A, B, or C.” “Lego people of South Pacific descent enjoy conga lines and grass miniskirts.”

This is a pretty sensitive topic. In talking about cultural differences, I’m careful to not make too strict generalizations – I’ll hedge what I say by emphasizing I’m talking about my own, personal experiences, or suggest that a group seems to act in a certain way, or that some (but not all!) people from a particular culture do a particular thing. But it’s impossible to avoid making any generalizations at all about cultures or to keep from categorizing people – and silly to even try.

A Cougar in the Backyard: Dispatches from My First Indian Wedding

In this guest post, NeoKalypso of Doings & Undoings give us her thoughts on the first Indian wedding she attended.

Igniting the fear and fascination of city dwellers, a cougar recently turned up roaming around my highly metropolitan area. The cat was a fairly big dude, about 5 feet in length 150lbs, and eventually made its way into the tiny backyard of a resident who described seeing the animal roam by his window as “surreal.” When the police came they tried to contain the beast, but when it lunged at a policeman it was shot and killed. Turns out, shooting the cougar was really the only option given how ill fitted the city is for large, wild animals. The cougar could have killed someone, and there was no easy access to vets or tranquilizers to entertain any other safe idea. This is an example of an ecotone: when two different ecosystems collide and cause tension. The cougar and the city dwellers were just doing what they knew to survive, unfortunately both could not survive together.

Fortunately, I made it out of my first Indian wedding alive, and though my experience isn’t as dramatic as the poor cougar’s fate, I certainly felt out of my element. After having traveled plenty of strange places, visiting Buddhist Mongolian homes, sleeping in $3 hostels, and not to mention my general love for Indian culture, one would think I could handle any kind of situation, any kind of pressure… right? In almost any other contexts and as a seasoned, brave explorer, I think I would have found The Indian Wedding a smörgåsbord of fascination and wonder. However, let me tell you, The Indian Wedding is a much different experience when you are dating one of their own.

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.

I’m a Rock Star in India!

Read through to see a video with excited schoolchildren…

India’s Delicious Products – Or, Why Can’t We Get That Here?

Possibly the best thing about being in an intercultural relationship, at least for the curious mind, is the in-depth, nitty-gritty exposure you get to a different group’s culture. Be prepared for the flood of new customs, food, clothes, vocabulary, entertainment and so forth that’ll be coming your way. The only thing I can compare it to is living in a foreign country with a roommate or family from that country – of course, then you’re still in an intercultural relationship, just not a romantic one.

While a number of problems can arise from having two or more cultures operating in the same house, today’s focus is on the unadulterated good things that come from sharing a culture. The things that will remain perfect in my mind forever. Even if Aditya were to run off the squirrel that hangs out near the bedroom window (they were eying each other this morning) and break my heart, or declare a hatred for IKEA (and break my heart), I will appreciate our time together because of these three things:

Christmas Wedding Gifts

Indians rock at the wedding gift-giving thing. In fact, I think the Indian version of giving wedding presents is far superior to the typical American way. This belief of mine is based on the one Indian wedding I’ve attended – my own – so it’s not exactly statistically sound. But I think my experience is enlightening, nonetheless, and I’m told it’s fairly typical.

Last Christmas, exactly a year and four days after our civil ceremony in the US, Aditya and I had our Hindu wedding in India. The date was picked for a combination of reasons: it was auspicious according to the astrologer Maa (Aditya’s mother) consulted; the weather in Calcutta would be near perfect for anyone not from Calcutta; and, most importantly, the groom and I could get time off of our jobs in D.C. to fly halfway around the world.

Of course, the timing also meant that I couldn’t spend the holidays with my culturally-Christian family in California, exchanging gift cards (Best Buy for Aditya, Borders for me), and watching various younger cousins, nieces, and nephews play with the cardboard boxes their toys came in. Still, I consented to go to India. We get out to the West Coast every season anyways, and I was told there’d be presents for me in India. (Sure, it also meant I could finally meet Aditya’s sister and his extended family, perform important Hindu marriage rites, see his homeland, etc, etc, whatever – today’s focus is on presents.)

Shall I start with the reasons why Indian wedding gifts are excellent?