Tag Archive | "america"
Friday Connections 27-11-09
Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I'd blog about if I had the time. This week the categories are mixed families, cross-cultural food, and gender inequality issues in India (with a really sweet video).
Continue reading...My Immigrant Husband Is Now Free to Divorce Me!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
A phone conversation from last night: Aditya: Hey, guess what came in the mail today? GG, at the office, as always: How are you home already? Don't you work? ... And, yeah, so what came in the mail? Aditya: News from the Department of Homeland Security.
Continue reading...Broken Traditions? Intercultural Marriage and Cultural Continuity
Thursday, July 16, 2009
A new commenter, Lurker frequent, brought up this interesting topic in regards to intercultural marriages in the comments section of my last post: As an Indian in the USA; the only reason I would not want to marry a local is to not "lose" my own traditions and culture. Minds meeting , and matching interests and hearts are more important, but certainly , coming from an old and rich tradition, one would want to preserve it by having a completely Indian family, no? Thoughts? It seems to me that there are several issues in play here, some of which Aditya and I discussed in the comments section when Lf first wrote out his comment (do check it out). What is meant by cultural continuity? Is it something we should value, and if so, why? Does intercultural marriage (which often leads to Third Culture Kids) automatically mean that the cultures of the parents is ending? What does it mean to say that India has an "old and rich tradition" (compared, presumably, against America or other Western cultures' younger and poorer traditions)? Is it something we should value? What exactly do we mean by tradition, anyways? What sort of culture - or cultures - do we want to have in our own lives? For those of us in intercultural relationships, what (if anything) are we losing by not creating a monocultural family? Will our lives be richer for it? Poorer? What about extended families? Well, that's a lot of questions! Enough for a book or three, certainly, so I'll just give a simplified sketch of my own views on this matter, than open it up to the rest of you.
Continue reading...A Day in Our Lives – With Indian Inlaws
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
In a short few days the only hope I'll have in the blearly mornings is that it might just be Bagel Monday in the office. When I crawl out of my sleep coma, you see, sophisticated details like which day of the week it is are completely beyond me - any day could be Bagel Monday. My primitave mind is only concerned with two things: getting our dogs, Kajol & Panda to shut up and stop wrestling on my larynx and/or bladder, and what sustenance awaits me that might be a good enough incentive to get out of bed. This past month, though, Bagel Monday has diminished in significance, and glorious 20 Ounces of Ginger Tea Everyday (With Biscuits!) has replaced it as my main morning motivator. I love it when my in-laws are staying with us. Note that I didn't say visiting us - that would imply that Aditya's parents are house guests while they're here, while, as Baba says, it's their home too. Granted, our daily life changes some when Maa and Baba are here in Washington DC, the morning tea being just one example, but the changes are more minor than many people who hear my in-laws are in-town would expect. Since we're coming to the close of Maa & Baba's second extended stay out here (they were here last year in the late summer, and will be visiting once more this year), I thought that it'd be good time to write about the "typical day" in our household while Aditya's parents are here.
Continue reading...Interracial Marriage in the US: Some Simple South Asian Demographics
Monday, May 11, 2009
Want to settle the debate on how much interracial marriage there is in the US? I know I'm tired of hearing the occasional uninformed comment on how South Asians just don't marry people outside their ethnicity, and isn't it downright odd that my supposedly proud-of-his-Indian-heritage husband would do so? (Hmm, well, he is an odd, odd dude. But not because he's married to me. Or, I mean, not 'cause he's married to a white woman - I'll admit you might have to be odd to voluntarily marry me. We brought matching crazy to the marriage table as dowry.) Well, the statistics on interracial marriages in America are now here, courtesy the US Census, so we can put this baby to rest. Actually, the statistics have always been "here" since the 2000 Census information was released, but I'm not such a numbers nerd that I felt like crunching the raw data myself with SAS or STATA. Luckily for me, a pair of sociologists have already done the dirty work, and their results have been made available at Dr. C.N. Le's Asian Nation website. I'm going to only present the South Asian related statistics here, but Dr. Le has the same sort of information available on all Asian ethnicities, and you can tease out information about other ethnicities as well.
Continue reading...Cross-Cultural Connections in your Community
Monday, January 26, 2009
I share my office with a Chinese-American man. My team at work consists of said office mate, an Indian-American (Gujarati) guy, a Turkish fellow, a white dude from the Midwest, my Taiwanese female boss, and three Indians in our Delhi office (two Mr.'s and a Ms.). The offices closest to mine include said Turkish fellow, a Bangladeshi bloke, an Indian (Bengali) lady, a Ghanaian-American gent, a French woman, and a Nepalese chap. Really. For those of you keeping count, that's two Caucasian Americans (including myself) out of fourteen folk. With numbers like those, as you may guess, I don't talk to white Americans all that much while at work. (Or women, either - but that's what you get for working in a field dominated by economists and engineers.) However, even when I step outside the office, I've found that I don't interact with a many people - or, really, more than a handful of people - who appear to be from the same general cultural & racial background as my own. Frankly, it's a little odd now that I think about it.
Continue reading...
A Tremendous Overachievement in a Community of Overachievers
Sunday, January 11, 2009
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.
Continue reading...Wait… I Thought This Was MY House!
Friday, August 29, 2008
Aditya and I have both been pulling long hours at work during the past couple of weeks. Frankly, it's rare that we both get home before the night sets in. While we both have careers that have require long hours (my company's motto: "the hours here are flexible; you can come in as early as you want, and leave as late as you want"), recent project disasters have stretched our workdays beyond our version of normal. This is particularly unfortunate as Aditya's parents, Maa & Baba, are currently visiting us from India. Of course, they are here for two months, so it's not as if we won't end up having plenty of family time together - but I do wish they didn't have to spend so much time at our house by themselves. I worry about them getting bored; even Kajol, the energizer puppy, can only go for so many walks. I fret about all the interesting monuments and historic sites we aren't seeing in the evenings for lack of energy and sunlight. And I'm genuinely distraught that, at some point, they might break The System while we're away at the office.
Continue reading...Confluence on the Roads: Thoughts about American, Indian, and German Traffic
Saturday, June 21, 2008
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.
Continue reading...Christmas Wedding Gifts
Monday, March 10, 2008
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?
Continue reading...
Friday, November 27, 2009
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