I am not married, but as an Indian I just wanted to put my own experience and two cents in.

In my family, my parents share the household work. My dad works outside the house and cooks and my my mom cleans and cooks in the house. One of my bff’s my is Italian, and her family is fairly old fashioned, her father never cooks any of the food, he waits for his wife or his 3 daughters to cook. I am so glad that does not happen at my household and that just because you are a man, does not mean that you can not do some cook or do some household work of your own (my dad does some household work, but my mom does do most of it).

Also, we don’t have too many relatives that come over to our house fequently, since they live all over Canada, the US, Britian and India. However, when we find out they are coming we do make Indian food and chai for them and if its the female younger guests (not either of my grandmothers) they come into the kicthen and also help out with the cooking. Its pretty great! Also, like anrosh says, shoes are ALWAYS taken off right away. Shoes are never worn inside the house, it is definetly a no-no.

Yet, I will ask my guests to leave their footwear at the door ( i do not want people who has walked all over town to walk into my vaccum cleaned small space – where we eat on the floor sometimes or sprawl ourselves to watch tv and do yoga every morning)

And have cocktails for my guests – fruity ones and with alchol for those who don’t. And I make the drinks (not appreciated for a indian bahu)

i have picked up the good ones from my husband’s culture but not the “bahu mentaility where one almost has to behave at the beck and call” and we have worked into “our house” ways.

to each its own,

However, I will say, that in more formal situations, i.e. elder friends/acquantainces of M’s parents, etc., he will coach me on how to be bahu-ish, i.e. saying adaab to everyone, make sure duppatta is on my head when greeting, bring in snacks and chai, sit demurely and quietly while elders talk. This is only in Karachi, and very infrequent, and doesn’t bother me at all. I think it is fun to try to make a “good impression” for these people, and it helps M’s parents out so that people can say, oh, even though M married a foreigner, she is really good at respecting our ways, etc. At least that is what I have been told people say.

If I lived there or had to do it all the time while I was visiting, that probably wouldn’t go over so well for me.

I’d just like to say that I’m pretty sure that in most of the well educated families of India, customs such as pulling a veil over your face in front of male members are considered immensely retrogressive and are genuinely disliked…..It is really a pity that people in certain parts of the country just refuse to let go of these stupidities…and treat women like slaves…I am happy though that such foolish practises do not exist in our Bengali household.

J and I’s hosting is normally the same whether our guests are American or Indian. Since we cook almost every evening anyway, having unexpected guests isn’t a big deal. We put a big cloth on the floor in our our living room, bring all of the food and place it in the center. Everyone sits on the floor around the food on the cloth. We pass plates to everyone and allow them to dig in. Once everyone is done I will whip up some type of sweet and we offer them either coffee or tea, which ever they prefer. Then we all sit, visit, relax, and enjoy our sweets and tea or coffee. Our American friends are now use to the fact of sitting on the floor and eating, but at first was like “We are sitting down there to eat?!”

I would go out on a limb and say that Southern Hospitality is very similary to ‘Indian Hospitality’.

actually most Indian chicks do submit to traditional Indian roles. I think your view, which has some grain of truth to it, emanates from experiences in urban India. It helps to note that Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, New Delhi, all the enlightened parts of India, make up less than 3% of the entire population. The vast majority of Indian women are submissive, unfortunately.

The ones in urban India, who went to the best English medium schools and were exposed to western culture, turn out to be the most independent and liberal.

Far as American hospitality, there are generalizations. I want to experience Southern Hospitality. I’d love to sit on a verandah and drink sweet tea (that’s my stereotypical image anyhow). But on average I found and find Indians much more lavish in welcoming me than Americans, but it is still true for ME I am odd and interesting to the average Indian whereever they live (they like to see me come dressed in sari), and I am still NORMAL looking to most Americans (when I am not dressed in Sari), so I will be treated as such….

What we expect to find we also find easier to uncover……

Thanks for the post.

This image of a “bahu” arises mainly from indian TV soaps which , unfortunately STILL revolve around family politics….A pity that our Directors here cannot think of realistic themes..

Cheers.

Some thing I have learned is don’t ask if anyone wants tea or drinks or snacks…just bring it out and even if the guests don’t touch it, pour it and give it to them. This is hard for my American sensibilities because I am thinking: “waste of time and energy if they don’t drink this, this is all showsha.” But if I didn’t go through the motions and do this stuff, I would look rude and kanjoos.

Once in Pakistan I hosted a ladies only pizza and dancing party. I set out the pizza buffet style…it even looks bad that I didn’t make the food myself and served pizza from Pizza Hut. Usually at parties for people of my in-law’s background, the hostess makes a lot of the food (or really servants or a cook-servant make it) and maybe one or two things are brought from outside…for very big parties a caterer might be hired to come and make food in the home kitchen…but for this small of a party, I should have cooked. I went with Pizza Hut because it is expensive and a special treat so that would make up for the fact that I didn’t cook, I guess. Anyway, then when it was time to serve the food, I thought I was being gracious to call the elderly aunties to eat before the younger women. But I was wrong. Even though the food was buffet style, some of the younger women went to go make plates for their mother-in-laws or aunties or moms. I was thinking, how will they know which kind of pizza the elders want, it would be better for the aunties to get their own choice by themselves (those were my thoughts, I didn’t say it though)…but for them, it is showing respect that the old aunties don’t even have to move from their chairs to get a plate, their dutiful younger family members respect them so they brought it for them. Anyways…even such a simple event as a pizza party can be very insightful for me into seeing cultural difference in expectations.

I have picked up a lot of desi taqalluf habits and I think it has made me a better overall hostess, although I am still an American in my ways at heart and some of the “pehlay aap,” “you must take some more (said as food is heaped on plate by hostess), aapne kuch bhi nahin khaya” stuff is still foreign for me. Still, there are so many nice things, like I live in a neighborhood with lots of desis in Dubai and on every holiday we get trays of sweets and sometimes portions of dishes from them…like on Diwali and Eid. That stuff is really really nice to participate in.