Gori Girl

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.

Here’s a short, positive guest post from contributor NeoKalypso of Doings & Undoings on family, loss, and understanding.

As most of the regular readers know, I’m relatively new to my intercultural relationship with my South Indian guy, R. Though we’ve known each other for longer, in August we will be celebrating an official year together.

Recently I had a very close family member pass away. It was an intense, emotional time and R was there for me every step of the way. He was with me through intimate family gatherings, saw where I grew up, and witnessed my grief over one of the greatest influences of my life. During all of this, my mind was often elsewhere, I was moody, and I was just all around uncharacteristically, but rightfully, sad. No one has even been a supportive part of my life like this before—usually I just buck up and find myself dealing with hard stuff alone. But R was there throughout everything: kind, listening, and not to mention absolutely loved by my family. He was my rock the whole time.

I’ve finished up with dreadful exams just in time to hear about a dreadful incident in northwest Indiana. According to the AP report:

An interracial couple who awoke to find a burning cross in their front yard in Elkhart are praying for peace and asking for privacy.

Maggie Williams says the cross burning took her and her husband, Adam, by surprise.

The FBI is investigating the cross burning, which police are calling a hate crime. Elkhart police say the 5 1/2 by 3 1/2 foot wooden cross was left burning against a tree about 15 feet from the couple’s front door about 2:30 a.m. May 2.

The Williamses have met with Mayor Dick Moore and representatives from the police department, the FBI and the NAACP. Bradley Vite, a family friend, says they also expect to meet with a Department of Justice official.

I’m hoisting up from the comments a request for advice from a reader, Travelergal, who’s run into a bit of a sticky situation with her Indian boyfriend’s family. Her boyfriend, R- just informed his family about her, and, well, the response was not as enthusiastic as one might hope. R- has emailed her about their responses, and now Travelergal is trying to figure out the best course of action:

I need your advice so here goes…my boyfriend recently told his parents about me (he is in India right now so of course he sent me this by email). I am a white American girl and he is a South Indian man. Are their comments normal? What can I do at this point to begin the process of “Slow Acclimation”? I want them to eventually accept me but I have no idea where to begin or what I should do at this point! Any advice would be great!!

Travelergal included her boyfriend’s email, which I’ve put below the fold, along with my responses (in red). I’m sure she’d appreciate all of you chiming in with suggestions, advice, or sympathy as well.

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.

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much lately, but I’m in the middle of finals – things will be calmer in a week or so, and I’ll get back to my regular posting schedule. In the meantime, here’s an amazing video from Britain’s Got Talent. Be sure to watch it all the way through!

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.

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!

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.

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!