Photo Credit: mckaysavage

A commenter at this site, Lurker Frequent (aka LF), has once again asked a really interesting set of related questions in the comments section of a recent post that I’d like to address as a proper post, since I have plenty to say on the topic. Here are his questions:

I am very curious to know about relationship dynamics in your Indian American Household, with regards to the cultural differences in customs in India and America.

More specifically, in India, people invite each other over and unexpectedly drop in and hang out and do things together. In the US it’s more planned, and “khatirdari” is less common in this DIY land. How does it work in your family? How do you handle all the social obligations of an Indian wife?

… the Indian bahu is “supposed” to do a bunch of stuff like cook, clean, wash, entertain the guests, manage social life etc. etc etc. It’s all voluntary though, no pressures in modern day families. How’s your “Bahurani” experience been like? Do you guys do all of that?

I think I’ll shelve the “chores” section of the question for a later date to focus on the hospitality portion of  LF‘s questions.

So what follows here are my thoughts on hospitality generally in intercultural households, the interculturalness (or lack thereof) of our household hosting , and some general tips that might be of use to others.

My Five Basic Rules of Hospitality for Our Intercultural Household:

1. Paraphrasing Emily Post: being a good host means having a sensitive awareness of the feelings of your guests. If you have that awareness, you have good hospitality, no matter which culture you’re dealing with.
2. However, I am not an Indian wife. This is not just an Indian household. Our hospitality will not be identical to the Indian version (if there is such a thing). That’s okay.
3. Likewise, Aditya is not an American husband. This is not just an American household. Our hospitality will not be identical to the American version (if there is such a thing). That’s fine.
4. While I’ll try my best to be polite and courteous to you in a manner that you’re used to,  there are also practical and ethical considerations. Also, I’m not a mind-reader.
5. If something isn’t working in our hosting routine, then Aditya and I need to discuss it. The values we care about in offering hospitality to our guests do differ – but this is only a weakness if we don’t communicate. Otherwise it’s a strength.

I think these rules are pretty clear by themselves. We’re a mixed-culture household, so the hospitality we offer is not going to be entirely Indian or American. On the American side of the ledger, we have frozen pizza in the fridge for guests dropping by during dinner, and our kitchen is generally a “help-yourself” kind of place. On the Indian side, most of our snacks & soda are imports, I always offer tea to anyone entering the house (mostly as an excuse to make some for myself), and you’re welcome to come over whenever and stay to whenever (friends have been known to come over, then mention that they’re spending the night), even if you just want to use us for our ping-pong table in the basement. (A common occurrence when we’re having a party is for guests to slip into the house unnoticed by the dogs or us, then head straight to the basement, where they’re discovered later playing ping-pong.)

American and Indian ways – that different?

However,  beyond basic customs (like offering tea or chaat to guests), I feel like it is somewhat artificial to say “this style of hospitality is American while that style is Indian. Frankly, I don’t feel like Aditya & I have a system of hospitality deeply different than what would occur if I were married to an American.  Perhaps LF‘s questions don’t give Americans enough credit in hospitality (I can’t speak to whether enough credit is given to South Asians or not).

For example, while my own family’s home didn’t operate on an “anyone’s free to drop in” manner, I do think that there are plenty of American homes that do. Consider southern hospitality, where it can be a point of pride to feed anyone who shows up around meal time. Or, to take a closer example to me, my grandparents’ household seems to have operated exactly in the “drop in whenever” manner while my father was growing up; with six children in the family, someone was always dragging a friend or three home, and the meals were made accordingly. In fact, my grandparents’ hospitality was (and is) so accepting of others that when my uncle was teaching English in Japan as part of the JET Program, he’d routinely tell Japanese acquaintances that they should stop in and visit his parents if they were ever in that part of California. Which resulted in more than one occasion of a Japanese visitor showing up on the doorstop, suitcase in hand for an overnight stay, speaking only enough English to make it clear that my uncle had sent them.

Perhaps the gene of welcoming folk into the house skips a generation, but, whatever the reason, I find that I feel the same way about guests coming to our house.  While we rarely have people come over without notice (see below), everyone in our social circle knows that they’re welcome to come over when they like. A coworker of mine, for example, more-or-less invited herself over to stay with Aditya and I during Christmas, since she won’t be able to be with her family – and this was absolutely fine with me. Some of this attitude, I suppose, might be because of Aditya’s influence – after all, he didn’t bat an eye when informed that this friend would be spending the weekend with us – but it’s also just the way I like to roll.

My easy-going attitude may also be partially due to the fact that it hasn’t been tested as hard as it seems Lucky Fatima,  Sharell of White Indian Housewife or C of American-Nepali Household. After all,  all of our South Asian friends, period:

1. have lived in the United States for at least five or six years
2. have gained their undergraduate degrees at American universities, and
3. are young (there’s no one older than 35 in our social circle here in DC)

Thus, all of our friends are pretty comfortable socializing in an “American” way (if there is such a thing). They call before coming over, and aren’t surprised that Aditya carries half of the hosting burden. Perhaps my attitude would change if I were faced with a more constant barrage of guests. Or more traditional ones. Would I feel more pressure to be a “normal Indian bahu”? Maybe. But, then again, maybe not – I’m not exactly one for compromising my values for the sake of appearances, as I discussed in my “When in Rome, Do As the Romans Do… Sometimes” post.  And things like gender equality (Aditya’s getting up to make the tea just as often as I am) and casualness (help yourself to whatever you’d like, don’t wait for me to offer it, ’cause I can be forgetful)  are things I value in my household.

General Tips to Ease Cross-Cultural Hosting

1. Remember that, as a host, you should be focused on making your guests comfortable – but there are limitations. If a guest comes over who’s afraid of dogs, we’ll put our two on leashes, and keep them away from the guest. But we aren’t going to kick the dogs outside in the winter (well, maybe the Malamute…).
2. Keep in mind that you live in an intercultural household, and that it’s okay for your hosting to incorporate traditions from both cultures. Your guests from a particular culture will probably be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
3. As a couple, talk about the limits you’d like to draw regarding how much you’re willing to follow any particular culture’s traditions in hosting guests.
4. If there’s a particular cultural “hospitality rule” that’s getting you frustrated or down, figure out a solution as a couple.  Consider creating a “code” you can use that won’t make a guest uncomfortable. For example, if guests coming over all the time was frustrating me, I’d probably create a “the dogs are restless with all the people around- I’m going to take them for a quick jog” code to Aditya to indicate to him that I needed more “me” time soon. (The dogs are always full of energy, so it’s not even a lie – just a convenient truth.)
5. Keep on hand the sort of things that guests coming over might appreciate to eat and drink – in our case, that means extra frozen naan, lentils, and Indian snacks, soda, and tea for the South Asians; spicy dried squid, mochi, and fine green tea for the East Asians; and frozen pizza and chips for the Americans. And extra toothbrushes (overnight guests) and ice cream for all.
6. If there’s a particular cultural hospitality tradition that you feel you must follow that you don’t particularly like (it happens), remeber that you’re still the one in control, making the choice to follow the tradition for some greater good. So grin, try to get some pleasure out of it (like your own home version of office buzzword bingo!), and know that that’s just part of being an adult.

Photo Credit: D Sharon Pruitt

Oh yeah, I dated this international style! So, I’ve decided to start linking some of my favorite reads at the end of the week – there’s a million and one things I run across that seem like they’d be of interest to the readers of this blog, but I never have time to write a whole blog post about each one. Thus, Friday Connections. I’ll try to group links each week into subjects. Let me know what you guys think!

Children and Language

• Native language shapes the melody of a newborn baby’s cry – A recent study has shown that babies – at least German and French monolingual babies – cry differently. Moreover they cry differently from birth, suggesting that they’re already listening and responding to different language cues in the womb. Other studies regarding babies’ brains and languages can be found at the bottom of the page (apparently there are some really neat cognitive effects to raising a kid bilingual).
• The Bilingual Dilemma – This older article from the Indian-American magazine, Little India, discusses the particular difficulties South Asian parents have in raising their children bilingual in the U.S. The biggest thing I drew from the article is how difficult it is to raise children who both understand and respond in the non-English language in the US – even when both parents are perfectly fluent in both languages! I’ll definitely be looking into this further when Aditya and I start thinking about kids.
• Raising Bilingual Children series – While looking for information about learning Hindi, I stumbled across this series at Omniglot about raising children bilingual (or multilingual). It went straight into my bookmarks – the list it has at the end of other resources is great!
• Then there’s the following Dinosaur Comic:

Alt-Text: “Lots of languages have ‘ba’ sounds for dads too. ‘Baba’ in Persian, Swahili, Turkish, and Bangla, Mandarin Chinese, ‘abba’ in Aramaic, and ‘ba’ in !Kung. In other news, !Kung (the language AND the people) is/are too awesome to just be mentioned in the title-text here; their language uses CLICKS, that’s what the ‘!’ is!”

Alt Alt-Text: “the great things about babies is that you can never be racist against babies, because you were totally a baby once. the only difference is, YOU grew out of it.”

South Asian Fashion in the Home

• Using cotton saris as tablecloths – the right sari looks really great in a casual environment!
• Blankets stitched from multiple old saris in Calcutta slums – the price being charged here is a little outrageous, but the blankets are incredibly lovely.  Perhaps a good idea for DIYers…
• Vintage Hindu posters – I’ll admit that the majority of Hindu posters of Indian gods and goddess are a little too bright and colorful for the style of our home – they’d simply look out of place. However, some these vintage Hindu posters (available for purchase in NYC)are really striking, so I’ll be on the lookout this coming trip to India…
• Orange and gray color combos – a few striking rooms from Apartment Therapy. The rooms aren’t South Asian, exactly, but remind me very strongly of a modern look combined with South Asian colorfulness.
• How to: Paisley Wall Decoration – Aditya wasn’t a huge fan of the look, but I really like it (and would probably do it in a bathroom or another small space if Aditya didn’t object).

Cross-Cultural Controversy

• Let’s find the racist! And then let’s shame the racist! – A very considered, thoughtful response to the news regarding the Louisana judge who refused to marry a mixed-race couple because, well, he didn’t think it right. Jen Chau pushes us to think beyond the knee jerk “that’s so racist” response, and look at things a bit deeper.
• The Model Minority Image: Balancing Praise and Caution – Dr. Le digs into the “model minority” label that Asian Americans are often stuck with – it’s typically meant as praise, but does it also serve as a backhanded put-down to other minorities?
• The Painted Man – A blog about the making of a soon-to-be-released graphic novel of “a collection of coming of race memoirs that finds a dad confronted by racially charged questions posed directly by his young son and the people they come into contact with.” I’m really looking forward to reading the final product of the stories of this mixed-race family.

Finally, to lighten it up, I have a really cute video about an animial “odd couple”:

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.?