Photo Credit: nattu

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).

Mixed Families and the Larger Community

• Mixed and Happy (.com)
  After hearing about the  Louisiana judge who refused to marry an interracial couple – on the grounds that  mixed couples make unhappy families and unhappy children – Suzy Richardson decided to combat such ignorant racist thinking in a manner much more gracious and classy way than I ever could. She’s collecting photographs of happy interracial families to send to the now-ex judge as a Christmas present. They’re also posted on her blog for the project. If you’re comfortable submitting your photographs, I encourage you help her meet her goal of 100 families by the 15th – I believe there’s 15 to go.
• It’s a wonderful, mixed up world
  Dr. Aarathi Prasad discusses the science behind the possibility of mixed children being healthier or better looking than the average population. For more on the genetic take on “interbreeding” see here or here.
• The Great Melting Pot: “Edging” Us out with Interracial Families
  In part of the lovely interconnectivity of the internet, Catherine of Hyphen magazine responds to a Racialious blogger responding to a New York Times article of an incredibly unaware an unreflective white woman raising a mixed-race child. Good stuff for thought on the way some value whiteness and white culture (while liking an “exotic look”).

Cross-Cultural Food Issues

• Some Like It Hot
  A really fascinating article on how different cultures think – and talk about – food, especially what English speakers refer to as “hot” food. Hindi speakers, of course, refer to it with the word “masala”, and Germans talk about food being “scharf” aka sharp. Also of interest is an earlier blog post at the same site asking Is a universal Michelin guide possible?
• Hajmola: A Love/Hate Relationship
  Continuing on the topic of cultural idiosyncrasies in food, Heather of IndianTies has a post wondering if the Indian “candy” of Hajmola can ever be appreciated by someone who didn’t grow up with it. (I’m in the “this is so totally not a candy” camp.)
• Cranberries and Thanksgiving Dinner
  C at American-Nepali Household held Thanksgiving dinner with some of her Nepalese friends – and is a bit sad that they would rather have Nepalese substitutes for traditional Thanksgiving dishes rather than the originials. She’s still bringing the traditional can of cranberry sauce, though!

(Mostly) Negative Gender Issues in India

• Part-Liberated Woman
  Heartcrossings blogs about the difficulty of being an expat Indian woman considering a move back home – where she feels she won’t have the same freedom of existence that she – and her young daughter – have in the Western world.
• Answeres to Questions about My Life in India
  Sharell at White Indian Housewife answers some questions her readers have about her experiences living in India. This set of questions is regarding the different way Indian men and women seem to respond to her.
• India Among the Worst in Man-Woman Equality
  India was ranked 114 out of 134 countries in man-woman equality, according to the World Economic Forum. You can find the entire report here. The summary reports regarding South Asia that

While Bangladesh, India and Pakistan perform very poorly on the economic, education and health subindexes, their overall scores are partially bolstered by relatively good performances on political empowerment (Bangladesh ranks 17th, India 21st and Pakistan 43rd on this subindex). Relative to their own performances in 2006, Bangladesh, Iran and Pakistan register small increases in scores, while India’s sex ratio at birth fell to 0.89 girls for every boy, causing its overall score to decrease.

• Did affirmative action work for Indian women?
  In positive news, however, it looks like using affirmative action – i.e. quotas – requiring certain Indian districts to elect women leaders has led to an increase in the chances of a woman leader being elected in the same district after the quota ended. At least so far.
• Finally, I leave you with this heart-warming video about young, articulate women getting the chance to become Hindu priests:

Photo Credit: Hamed Saber

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.

GG: Have they scheduled our follow-up green card interview, then?

Aditya: Better – they approved me right away! I’m now a permanent Permanent Resident.

GG: Wait, they can waive the two-year review interview? Sweet! Do you think the fact that we sent in not one but two dog adoption contracts pushed us over the edge into not needing another interview? Or was it the printout of the front page of gorigirl.com?

Aditya: I think it was the detailed timeline of our relationship I wrote up, and maybe the fact that we own a house and two cars together. Also: I can now divorce you freely. Be nice to me.

GG: Oh, frack you. And please have dinner ready by the time I get home.

*click*

For anyone interested, our (well, Aditya’s) immigration timeline can be found here. We may have had the easiest green card experience in the history of US immigration. Ever.

(Also, for any immigration officers reading along at home, Aditya does not plan to divorce me now that his green card is secured. I think. Please still send us an updated green card, preferably with Obama’s profile included in the Presidential lineup.)

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).

1. 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?
2. 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?
3. 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.

What is cultural continuity?

Let’s get one thing straight: cultures – all cultures – are constantly changing. And by culture here, I mean “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a society” – i.e. culture is the sum of all learned human behaviors in a particular society. What one generation learns from the previous will change as a society adapts to different conditions. The rate of the change that a culture goes through will generally vary based on the internal and external conditions or pressures a society faces, such as technological innovation, changing resources, and contact with other cultures.

For example, most Americans today would not be able to survive for very long in the wild, but the pioneers in the early days of our nation certainly could and did. As “frontier America” transformed into towns and cities knowing how to live off the land became a less important skill than those that allowed you to work in an office or factory in town.

So what is cultural continuity, if all cultures are constantly in a state of flux? Well, while everything in a culture can change, certain societal structures and beliefs – often embedded in religion or religious belief itself – are resistant to change and experience it more slowly. Hinduism in India, and the caste system which has become entwined to some extent with Hinduism, are both good examples of long-standing cultural traditions. But even they have changed over time to stay relevant, as my husband, Aditya, mentioned in his original response to Lurker frequent:

The survival of traditions is in being able to remain relevant with changing times. Even following Hindu traditions & scriptures, you can see clear evidence of the evolution of Hinduism when it responds to new “challengers” like Buddhism (Bhagavad Gita), Islam (Vedanta revival) and Christianity (Vivekananda).

So it’s not that culture continuity requires that a culture stays the same – that’s impossible – just that certain central aspects of a culture, such as particular beliefs or traditions, remain. To return to the example of “living off the land” in the US, while most Americans can’t survive out in the wild, there remains an ethos of individuality in American culture: a belief that a person should be able to stand on his own two feet without help from others or the government, just as pioneers were required to do.

Should we value cultural continuity?

I personally think that a part of the human mind craves traditions, rituals, and continuity, although this need is expressed to a greater or lesser extent in individuals. So, yes – to some degree cultural continuity is a desirable feature to have, both in society at large and in our individual lives. That being said, it isn’t the end all and be all: “tradition for tradition’s sake” is an argument easily overrode by more pressing “goods” such as freedom of choice, happiness, justice, and so forth. By that I mean that traditions cannot justify actions that hurt people or deny them their basic human rights.

As Aditya said in his comment:

I do think that the argument (or preserving traditions) are well intentioned, but the fact of the matter is that traditions must be revisited constantly to remain relevant. If we froze our traditions as they were in the 16th century, we’d still have women locked in the kitchen.
Unfortunately, this argument is also being made all over the world today to deny basic human rights to minorities and oppressed groups… from the denial of political rights to women, to outlawing gay marriage, the mantra of “this is not how it has always been” has become the central “argument” against progress of society.

Leaving aside the moral argument, which I hope all of you understand without my expanding upon it, following some traditions in the modern age is simply irrational. Traditions, after all, were formed to help societies function well – but societies today don’t exactly look like (or require the same things) as they did when these traditions were developed. Consider, for example, the traditionally arranged economy (the Indian caste system is one version of this), where a child follows in the work of his father. This system only functions as a good tradition in societies where

1. The work doesn’t change much from one generation to another.  Otherwise, there’s no point in having the child learn a skill at the knee of his father that will be antiquated by the time child is old enough to enter the workforce, and
2. The work isn’t specialized enough that only some people have the particular skill set, mental abilities, and personality to do it well. Otherwise children will be trained from childhood to do a job that they aren’t well-suited for – there’s no reason to expect my future kids will rock out as product managers just because Aditya does.

In today’s economy, neither of these points holds true, and thus the traditionally-arranged economy should be abandoned purely on utility grounds – a society that practices it won’t do as well as a society that doesn’t.

So for a tradition to be continued today, it should:

1. be rational – actually help the society & people that practice it
2. be moral – not hurt individuals or their free practice of their basic human rights

With the increased pace of technological innovation today, many long-standing traditions have been ending, amid outcries from critics that capitalism or globalization or American cultural imperialism are ruining cultures left and right, leading to a homogenization of the world. This is largely bullshit.

Yes, societies around the world are becoming more similar – there is more of world-wide culture today than ever before. But subcultures and individuals’ choices within cultures are more diverse than ever before as well. People today have (more of) a choice of whether they want to follow a tradition that isn’t actually rational in today’s world – or one that violates people’s human rights, such as the caste system. Moreover, today we are able to witness some amazing creative efforts as people combine two traditions to make a completely new – and wonderful – tradition or art form. See, for example, my post on Michael Jackson and bhangra. (Now, while I’d like to move the focus back to intercultural relationships, if you’d like to read more on this topic I recommend starting off with economist Tyler Cowen’s article Creative Destruction, which can be found here as a word document.)

Intercultural marriage and creative destruction

Intercultural marriage is a perfect example of the creative destruction that, when successful, leads to both great innovation and happy, meaningful lives. Every marriage consists of the creation of a new family culture – but with intercultural marriages each individual is bringing a completely distinct culture and set of traditions to the table to be combined. Yes, there will almost certainly be fewer pieces of a Indian culture or Bengali culture in Aditya’s and my “family culture” than there would be if he had married another Indian – but we can choose to keep the worthwhile traditions while eliminating the rest.

We can keep statues of the gods around the house to remind us of our values, we can play and watch cricket on the weekends, remember that our home is also the home of our family, and have lovely saris and Indian tunics in the closets. We can also keep the best of American traditions and culture. We celebrate a secular family Christmas with an exchange of presents, watch (too much) great tv programming that comes out of Hollywood, train our dogs following Western methods like crating, and have (fasionably) torn jeans in the dressers.

It takes effort to combine two cultures successfully, and a willing attitude to learn from both partners. But I personally feel the effort is more than paid back by the results. Is it worthwhile for everyone? Of course not! Intercultural relationships are hard work. (All relationships require hard work, of course, but there tend to be more difficult variables in an intercultural marriage than a monocultural one.)

If you really want all of the traditions you grew up with to be part of your adult life, then you should probably choose something other than an intercultural match, since that’s unlikely to happen in an intercultural marriage unless your partner is willing to give up all of his or her cultural traditions. Of course, given the speed of cultural and technological change, it’s unlikely that all of the traditions you grew up with will be a part of your adult life anyways. As Aditya said,

In the reality of the globalized world of today, intercultural relationships give us a glimpse of a future where the free flow of information and people have broken down meaningless antiquated boundaries.

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.

A regular ol’ day

As previously mentioned, when I wake up in the morning, there is always (magically!) a beer stein’s worth of ginger tea waiting for me. Aditya’s and my cell alarms both go off at seven am, because we like to pretend we’ll get up and do something worthwhile, like go running with the dogs. Instead, we watch the dogs pretend that they’re  WWF fighters until Maa knocks on the door around seven thirty letting us know that the tea is ready. I’m not altogether sure when Maa & Baba wake up, although I’ve heard rumors of unholy risings at 0′butt thirty.

Aditya and I will stumble across the hall to the other bedroom, where our tea is waiting on a tray Maa & Baba’s bed, along with biscuits to nibble on – typically we have some semi-bland Indian cookies, like Parle-Gs, although today we had the all-American Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies I baked on Sunday (secret tip: always put in half a teaspoon extra vanilla). While sipping our morning tea we discuss the day’s plans, the state of Indian cricket, and recent news, including what Baba has already read on BBCnews.com that morning. Well, Aditya and his parents talk – about 50/50 in English and Bengali – and I attempt to gather my wits. I think today mostly consisted of Aditya trying to explain why this video and the phrase “the world is literlly her oyster” are so funny.

We’ll chat until a little after eight, then Aditya and I will hurry to get ready for the work day. Last summer Maa and Baba traveled into DC once or twice a week to visit the various Smithsonians – which meant that bathroom real estate was a prime commodity in the mornings-, but this time they’ve hung around at home the majority of the time. By a quarter to nine Aditya is out the door to face the horror that is I-66 during rush hour, and I follow a half an hour or so later, after a quick walk & “tennis ball session” with the pups.

What happens at the house while Aditya and I are at work is largely a mystery to me, something that I piece together from various clues after returning home. The house often looks much cleaner than when I left. Dishes for dinner are already cooked (which makes it somewhat difficult to learn new Indian recipes from Maa). A newspaper will be on the table, despite the fact that we don’t have a subscription. The Burn Notice dvd that arrived the night before from Netflix will inevitably be ready to go out again (Maa has developed an addiction to that show that borders on the level of my CoffyBite addiction).

Aditya and I get off work sometime between six and seven thirty and are met at the door by more chai & chatting. Often this will transition to a game of Twenty Nine, which is pretty much my favorite partner-based card game ever.  Yesterday we played a cutthroat game until ten or so before finally stopping to heat up dinner, and I learned a new Bengali cuss word, courtesy of Baba after I dealt him yet another amazingly awful hand.

Dinner is normally some combination of lentils, rice, and one or two chicken/fish/prawns/vegetable Indian dishes, prepared by Maa. It’s always amazing, altho a bit richer than I’m used to – I’ve gained 6 pounds in the past month. By eleven Maa & Baba retire to bed, while Aditya and I hang out, catch some TV, and likely work a bit on our laptops until midnight. And at some point in there the dogs get a long walk or a jog if the weather is cool and my willpower & injured leg are feeling up to it (the lack of jogging may also have something to do with those 6 pounds…).

I feel pretty bad that we’ve been working such long hours, but there’s not much we can do about it. While we haven’t been able to take days off during the week this summer for day trips, we’ve been going out to eat at unique ethnic restaurants in the evenings. Ethiopian from DC’s famous U Street has been the favorite so far. Weekends have also been pretty chill, with a focus on running various errands and recovering from the week, although we did get into DC to check out the Hope Diamond at the Natural History Museum & the fireworks over the Fourth of July weekend.

Maa and Baba leave for California on Thursday, so you can expect some more regular blogging from then on. Last night, after our marathon Twenty Nine session, they sat down for an interview on their take on intercultural relationships, which I’ll be posting as soon as I can transcribe it.  I also plan on writing some more on their time here, and the lessons I’ve learned from having them stay.

(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.

The data on interracial marriages is broken down first into the sexes – so we can see how intermarriage varies by gender , and then into the three following groups, each of which gives us a snapshot of the whole picture:

1. Marriages of ALL South Asian individuals, whether the person is an immigrant to the US or not. This data is great in one way, as it let’s you know what types of marriages the entire South Asian population have, but it’s also troublesome. The problem  is that a lot of married people immigrate to the US, and they’ll be counted in this group too. That means the data captures not only the type of marriages taking place in the US, but also how prevalent interracial marriages are in  India & neighboring countries (hint: it’s quite, quite low).  Why does that matter? Well, it’s the difference between marriages happening in America and married people living in America – if you want to know more about former, you won’t learn it here. The information about this group of all desis, however, will let you know how likely it is that the random brown person you grab off the street in the US is married to someone of a different ethnicity.
2. Marriages of South Asians where the South Asian individual in the marriage was raised in the US. To be considered “raised in the US” for this study, you must have been born & raised here, or have immigrated to the US no later than age 13. If you immigrated to the the US after 13, then your childhood was primarily spent elsewhere, and you’re considered foreign-raised.  This second group serves as a sort-of proxy for marriages that take place in the US, since only the spouse may be foreign-raised, not the individual in question (remember, we’re taking the sexes separately, so for the guys, belonging to this category would mean the guy was US-raised and the woman was either US-raised or foreign-raised. This set up allows us to avoid counting couples composed of two foreign-raised individuals – which are the couples who likely immigrated here already married.
3. Marriages of South Asians where both the South Asian individual and the spouse are US-raised. This third group is pretty straightforward, and is quite interesting in terms of seeing how Indian immigrants’ children are intermixing with the rest of America.

So, the data for guys, in pretty graphical form:

Clear trends can be seen here, with couples composed of a male South Asian raised in the US achieving greater percentages of interracial marriage than the group of desis as a whole. About 8.1% of all South Asian guys (group 1) marry someone of a different race (is that higher than you suspected? It is for me!), but among American-raised desi guys marrying American-raised women (group 3) 43.4% of them are marrying interracially – quite a lot! Note, however, that of all US-raised South Asian dude (group 2), only 26.7% of them married interracially. It’s only those that chose to marry other US-raised individuals that married outside of their ethnicity to such a large degree.

Now for the girls:

The intermarriage rates here are a little lower compared to the guys for the whole population (6.4%), but, surprisingly higher for the group 3 girls, with 45.7% marrying someone of a different ethnicity. The majority of the difference for group 3 between genders seems to come from marriages between South Asians and whites, as “only” 31% of South Asian men in group 3 marry white women, but 36.3% of South Asian women in group 3 marry white guys. It’s a bit curious though, that as we look at US-raised desis as a whole (i.e. group 2), we don’t see the same difference in the marrying of white folk – 18.5% of US-raised Indian guys married white woman & 18.9% of US-raised Indian gals married white men. Overall, 24.3% of US-raised desi women married out of their ethnicity, which is lower than it is for group 2 guys.

Now, you might be saying, “Wait a second – there’s no way these numbers are correct – I know a lot of South Asians, and very few of them are married interracially”. And, of course, you’d be correct. The higher percentages of interracial marriage only occur among US-raised South Asians. And only about 1 in 10 of all the married desi individuals living in the US is US-raised. There’s about 630 thousand married Indian guys, of which only 54 thousand are US-raised. It’s similar with the females, with 580 thousand married Indian gals in the US, of whom only 60 thousand are US-raised.

A few disclaimers:

1. This data is drawn from the US Census, and, like all censuses, it isn’t perfect. That being said, it’s a hella a lot better than the vast majority of sociological data out there, especially when compared to similar-sized data sets.
2. The data does not discriminate between citizens and non-citizens – just all people living in the US at the time of the 2000 census. So, for example, if Aditya and I had been married at that time, he would have shown up in this data, even though he’s just a green card holder.
3. These percentages are based off of different sized groups, so don’t go adding and subtracting percentages willy-nilly. If you want a number calculated, just ask.

I think the number most surprising to me was the percentage of foreign-raised South Asians who marry interracially. It’s 6.3% for men and 6.0% for women. Really, I wouldn’t have expected it to be that high – and this data is from 2000, so it’s a bit outdated. I think Aditya was also surprised by what he saw as relatively high percentages. Did anything strike you guys as unexpected?

Most of the blame for this “situation”, so to speak, could simply be laid at the feet of circumstance or chance – we happen to live in a very multicultural area, participate in activities that naturally bring a diverse crowd, and my choice of careers was more due to, you know, the job I would be doing than the diversity of people at my office. But I don’t think it’s as simple as chance – the choices Aditya and I have made both individually and as a couple, as well as our prior experiences, have made an outcome like this probable.

So.  This past week I’ve been thinking more about cross-cultural connections outside of my intercultural marriage with Aditya. How do these two spheres of life – home & husband and outside work & community – interact with each other? There’s no doubt that my relationship with Aditya has given me a fair bit of traction with the South Asians I run into – but how has it affected my relationships with people from other cultures? And how has working with an office full of immigrants and different cultures changed my marriage?

Obviously, the answers to these questions will be complex – which is why I’ll be discussing my thoughts on this subject in a series of posts. But the keystone to my ideas lies in the lovely concept of intercultural communicative competence. This term was developed as part of an effort by theorists of foreign language instruction a decade ago, and has slowly been evolving in the intercultural studies academic community. The initial discussions of this topic related to how instructors could teach their language learners how to communicate in a foreign language with real, live foreign people – not just speak a bunch of funny-sounding words. Mostly it involved learning the specifics of the culture associated with the language – things like “Germans are überpunctual – if you’re on time, you’re actually late.” Since then, though, the idea has expanded to incorporate both the specific knowledge and the skill set that all people who interact cross-culturally – i.e. intercultural learners – need to have to be successful, whether they’re speaking a foreign tongue or not.

This skill set is what I believe translates back and forth between my relationship with Aditya and my cross-cultural relationships out in the community – and each one is strengthened by the other. Next I’ll start delving into the specifics of what constitutes competent intercultural learning, but before then I’d love to hear what everyone’s initial thoughts on this matter are. Do you have many cross-cultural connections out in your community or workplace? Do you think it’s affected your closer personal relationship with a friend or significant other from another culture? Anyone else feel like they work for the U.N.?

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.

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.

The System, you see, is the underlying, um, order that controls the chaos of our lives. It’s the three piles of letters and bills ,discordantly stacked on the counter top, which cannot be mixed. It’s the pile of clothes on the closet floor that magically rotates, allowing for the least wrinkled and least pungent item to float to the top when needed. It’s the random junk strewn all over the living room by my inner Feng Shui master that lets me find the scissors, postage stamps, or a hair band right when I need it. Move one thing, and it’s quite possible that my entire life will be ruined. Or I won’t be able to find my favorite lip balm. Basically the same thing.

Aditya and I have developed The System through many years of practice, and Maa and Baba just can’t hope to learn the dance in only a couple of months. The System is breaking under the weight of four adults in the same space doing their own thing.

First, there were all the delicious Indian leftovers in the fridge – where did my aging vegetables go? Where’s the moldy cheese? Who hid the frozen meals behind all these rotis?
Then there were the piles of clean clothes appearing in our bedroom - I can’t find my sweater; it’s not on the floor or the ironing board, or draped over a chair, or wedged under a couch cushion… oh, the dresser!
Finally, we hit rock bottom when I walked in the door after work one day, and found the Kajol fur dust balls had disappeared, and the wood floors seemed distinctly… shiny.

I enquired about the radically changed appearance of my home, and Baba told me he had cleaned it. Having been raised to be polite, I thanked him profusely, and told him that there was no need to do so much housework during the day. Frankly, I was a little embarrassed at the state that Aditya and I had allowed the house to descend to – especially with guests visiting. Baba replied, saying, in effect, that “No, no, you should not thank me. I consider this my house too, and I have a responsibility to keep it clean.”

I’ll admit that this statement… pricked me a bit. “No,” I thought, “this is my house, and I’ll decide however clean it ought to be. And I can darn well thank you if I want to.” There may have even been a mental image of a tongue sticking out somewhere along the line. Before I could voice these fleeting thoughts, however, the slightly more rational and mature part of my brain asserted itself.

“Wait a second, Gori. You get home tired from work, walk in the door, and are upset that someone cleaned up the house for you? And, hey, did you notice that delicious smelling curry on the stove? You know, an Indian curry, cooked by someone from India, where the whole extended family home is a common thing? And where duties – particularly familial duties – are considered things you just do, not things you’re thanked for? Remember how you and Aditya always use to have arguments over his lack of please & thank you? Yeah… let’s connect those dots now.”

So, yes, some papers were moved out of their traditional place. And it took me two days to hunt down my favorite blue scissors, which Maa absconded with to use while knitting an all green outfit for a grandson on the way (no, not mine, and yes, I suspect he’ll look like a little, but awesome leprechaun). The System is shot, and that can be a little frustrating, even if there are new benefits to this short-term extended family lifestyle that I signed myself up for. But there are benefits – awesome ones in terms of household chores, and even better ones in terms of family time: mornings and nights spent playing cards, watching movies, and discussing Indian and American culture and news.

Could I handle this extend family thing in the long-term? I don’t know. I can be prickly when things don’t meet my expectations, especially at home. I need my alone time, with the door closed, as much as I need air – like any other true introvert. I miss knowing exactly what the statuses of the fridge and pantry are, day and night. Right now it’s working, though, and that’s all that really matters.

I ended up thanking Baba again for cleaning up the house, and told him how much I appreciated his efforts. I do the same thing with Maa when she cooks a lovely dinner for us, or gives me a hand with clearing the table, or even passes me something out of my reach. Growing up, I was taught to thank family members for efforts made, large or small, and to always make requests with a “please”. Maa and Baba are accepting of this strange American quirk of mine.

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.

Americans: when the going gets tough, we get out of the way

I’ve driven in pretty much every area of the US – West Coast, Midwest, South, East – and one thing that never fails to amaze me is how good American drivers are at clearing a path for emergency vehicles to get through. The highway I was traveling on yesterday had what looked like a 3 or 4 car pileup – all the lanes but one were completely blocked. Traffic was already moving slow prior to the accident, and the road had more than its fair share of idiots zigzagging to gain a few car-lengths advantage, or refusing to alternate when lanes were merging. Idiots on the road always worry me, but particularly so when I’m driving an unfamiliar van with massive blind spots.

Yet, when the first fire truck came by on the left shoulder the entire left lane cleared out to make room for it – and all the other lanes made room for them. And the same thing happened when the second truck came, the two ambulances, and then the final firetruck. Drivers who wouldn’t allow others an inch in their lanes prior to the alarms did whatever they could to make space. I’m not sure how this norm to get out of the way gets hammered into the admittedly thick heads of American drivers (road rage, anyone?), but somehow it does. In fact, I didn’t even notice it enough to remark upon until I’d traveled to a few developing countries where road rules and norms haven’t quite been established yet – people don’t want to block emergency vehicles, but there’s no agreed upon response to sirens in the distance. But that’s not to say that drivers in developing countries don’t have their own ways of cooperating with each other.

Indians: always aware of where everyone is

Traveling on roads in India can be a worrying – perhaps even terrifying – experience to those who aren’t used to it. I was certainly shocked, even though I intellectually knew what to expect. For those of you who haven’t had the chance to fear for your lives in India, think of the bumper car ride at your county fair except at the last second there’s no bump. Or, try checking out the video below, that perfectly reflects my experiences in Bombay & Calcutta (except with 1/3 as many cars):

Yes, that’s really what it’s like. Except more cars, rickshaws, trucks, and motorcycles & scooters, and occasionally animals.

However, did you notice how aware the drivers were of where the other vehicles were – at least the ones in front of them? I wouldn’t last a day driving in an Indian city without getting into at least one accident! That’s not because I’m a bad driver – really – but because I’m just not used to needing to be on top of the situation like that at every moment. I bet most Americans would have trouble surviving on India’s roads – they aren’t used to the give and take of Indian traffic patterns. Or the lack of, you know, people following lanes and traffic lights and stuff. Despite these things, Indians have a system of cooperation on their roads that works for them. I don’t think it’s the most efficient system – did you see how slow all of the vehicles were traveling in the video? – so I think it’d be a good idea for India to eventually adopt road rules & norms that are more similar to the Western world’s to ease congestion.

Of course, sometimes the complete disregard Indians show towards rules, such as lane lines in the cities is a good thing, given Indian road design. A few blocks away from the house of Didi, my sister-in-law, was this gem – possibly my favorite road scene in Bombay:

Yes, yes, I know, I can work wonders in Microsoft Paint. If you write me very nicely I might be willing to send you a signed copy of my masterpiece, Bombay Road. In case you can’t get the details from the impressionistic work (inspired by the blurry photos I took), the blobs with four black dots are cars, three are rickshaws, and two are scooters/motorcycles. Vehicle volume suggests a mid-afternoon setting. There’s a divider in the middle, which had some lovely bushes and a massive tree (the green blob dead center). The lane lines, which were quite fresh, didn’t account for the tree. Let’s hope the red rickshaw and green car don’t care too much about sticking in their current lane.

Surprisingly, the other major culture I know about is occacsionally willing to disregard lanes…

Germans: the best drivers I’ve seen

Of the nine months I lived in the country, I can’t recall one time I saw what I would characterize as “bad driving.” Now, that could just be a selection bias – I spent most of my time in a small town and rural area, where the traffic was light. But I imagine that the strict requirements for getting a license in Germany – long hours behind the wheel with a professional instructor, difficult written exam, stringent driving exam, heavy fees – results in better-than-the-American-average drivers. Maybe not by a lot, but probably some.

These requirements, I think, end up producing drivers that are a good combination of American & Indian drivers – they’re good at following the rules of the road (in my experience much better than Americans), but have the awareness of their surroundings similar to the Indian drivers I’ve seen. This combination, though, leads to some driving behaviors that I think would be suicide in other countries. Witness the next amazing Gori masterpiece, inspired by the classic arcade game Frogger: German Road.

If there exists a straight stretch of a road with only one lane in each direction – and decent shoulders – German drivers will spontaneously work together to create a middle lane for either side to use as a passing lane. The first time I was in a car & saw this behavior – on a highway traveling at 90 km, no less – I freaked. With both sides on the shoulder as far as they could go, there were still only inches between them and the cars passing in the middle. If the drivers in the middle weren’t careful, of course, they could have a head-on collision when two cars traveling in opposite directions tried to pass simultaneous. One mistake by any of the cars, and an accident was almost certain.

And yet, I lived to tell the tale. And Germans continue to cooperate to create dangerous situations just so they can pass each other and go a bit faster. As do Americans, with their weaving in and out of traffic. And Indians with their “whatever works” rules. *grin* I suppose the lesson we can all draw from this is that, really, people, the world over, like to get where they’re going.

I eventually got where I was going too, and pulled up to IKEA only a couple of hours behind schedule. And we finally have our bed. (And another bed for the guest room. And a dining table. And chairs. And other stuff. Let’s not discuss my IKEA addiction, please.)

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?

Number One:

Indian weddings can last several days and have over a thousand guests – tiring, yes, but it also means days getting gifts. Maa and Baba (Aditya’s father) took pity on their shy daughter-in-law, and chose a ceremony that would only require me to be on center stage for a couple of hours with a few hundred guests looking on. The day after the wedding – Boxing Day for those keeping count – we had a modest reception, at least by Indian standards. We ended up receiving gifts for about four days in a row: wedding items in the days before the ceremony from family members, then gifts from guests after the wedding ceremony and during the entire reception. And our wedding was on the short side!

Number Two:

The guests actually give the gifts. Instead of placing all of the presents on a table off to the side, as is common in American weddings, Indians walk up to the bride and groom to hand them their gift. For better crowd control, there is typically a designated area where the bride and groom will be waiting to meet their wedding guests. For instance, Aditya and I had proper thrones:

While I was not thrilled to remain the complete center of attention for so many more hours after the wedding ceremony (see how my eyes are glazing over in fear and jetlag in the photo?), I do think that the throne idea is a good one. We were able to meet everyone at the wedding, exchange at least few words, and get a quick picture in. And because guests came up to us in small groups I could be briefed on who they were and how to greet them by Maa or Aditya.

Number Three:

Money is a seen as a perfectly acceptable gift. In fact, you can even explicitly tell guests ahead of time that money is preferable, as Maa did for us since luggage space is always tight. So practical! As an economist I can also appreciate that giving money tends to decrease the deadweight loss that results from getting a present that cost more than you value it at. (Of course, the story on deadweight loss is more complicated than the rediff article makes it out to be). Money gifts in India are typically given in envelopes made for occasion. A few we kept are pictured above. Many envelopes, although none shown above, come with a place on the front to glue a one Rupee coin, since it’s considered inauspicious to give money in even denominations.

Number Four:

Here’s the one that sends Indian gift-giving out of the ballpark (a right proper sixer for all you cricket fans): thank you cards are not required or expected in any way! Since the guests actually handed the gifts to us (mainly to me, actually), we were able to thank them on the spot. And, really, that’s much more personal than a barely-legible card produced in a marathon afternoon of note writing.

Lastly, Number Five:

Indians just pick really good gifts – at least for me! Except for a few culturally ill-informed pieces, which I’ll discuss in a future post, all of the (non-money) gifts we received were either beautiful pieces of artwork for the house, or lovely saris, shawls, or jewelry for me. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff, that I’m still ooohing over – especially since we’ve finally got everything unpacked and arranged around the house.

It was actually Aditya who got the bad hand as far as presents go – he missed out on the Christmas gift card craziness with my family, but was given only one gift – a very nice watch – meant for him at the wedding. Well, he also received a money envelope from one Uncle who was a close friend of Aditya’s father. Uncle’s years had brought him plenty of wedding experience, and perhaps a little clairvoyance: “This envelope is for you, Aditya, since all the other things will be for Gori… from now on.” Truer words were never spoken – being a daughter-in-law in Aditya’s family is a pretty sweet deal.

…of course, what Uncle didn’t know that there’s a Best Buy quite close to our house, and a lack of Christmas gift cards didn’t keep Aditya from purchasing a “wedding gift” or two for himself. So I guess we’re all winners in the end, at least as far as presents go. Except for those poor suckers American newlyweds writing thank you notes. Next time have an Indian wedding!