What are your middle names?
Prior to getting married my middle name was Noelle, which is a lovely and unique name. When I married Aditya I moved my short, Germanic last name into the middle name spot, dropped Noelle, and added Aditya’s nine letters long last name. NINE! I rather miss Noelle, but the tradeoff is that I now get to confuse the heck out of people when they read my nametag or work badge. Aditya doesn’t have a middle name because he’s a heathen Indian. Sometimes this causes him to cry himself to sleep at night.

How long have you been together?
We’ve been married for a little over two years, and together for five as of last Saturday. The picture above is of our honeymoon after the American wedding. We went camping on the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara in California.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?
Depending on how you define “know”, either six months or a few weeks. See (some of) the story here.

Who asked whom out?
Well now. He invited me to dinner and a movie at his place – sausage pizza, rum & coke, and Fight Club. On Valentine’s Day. At the time we were just friends, and he phrased it very sneakily so that I couldn’t be sure it was a date or not. Plus, you know, who watches Fight Club on their first date? (Aditya & I, apparently.) His strategy of date-asking is known as “plausible deniability”, and is a dastardly way of avoiding rejection when you ask someone out. And I wasn’t the first girl taken in by it, I hear…

How old are each of you?
We’re both in our mid-twenties.

Whose siblings do you see the most?
His, actually. We’re both the babies of our families – I have an older brother and he has an older brother & sister. Both of the brothers live in the Bay Area, so when we see one, we inevitably see the other. However, his sister lives in Bombay, so when we make our biennial trip to India we see her too. Good thing his siblings are cool people (and they have children we get to spoil!).

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
Work-life balance, without a doubt. We’re both in the “building one’s career” stage of life, so we’re occasionally often working long hours. And then we get home, and find that, once again, the dogs failed to cook us dinner and clean the house. Fracking freeloaders.

Did you go to the same school?
We both went to the same small, liberal arts college in rural Indiana, which meant that a significant portion of our time dating was spent wandering the aisles of Super Walmart. He graduated the year before I did, and promptly fled to Silicon Valley, abandoning me among the cornfields.

Are you from the same home town?
Hahahahahaha. No.

Who is smarter?
Well… Someone in our partnership has a graduate degree, and someone doesn’t. Someone also scored a whole eighty points more on the SAT than someone else. I’m not naming any names here, but someone should be ashamed of being beaten out on the math section of the SAT by an AMERICAN GIRL. Ahem.

Who is the most sensitive?
I so totally have a higher pain threshold than Aditya. This mostly means I fall down a lot, since motor skills weren’t a high priority growing up. He whines every time he comes home from cricket practice after being hit by the ball – and he plays in a tennis ball league. (Yes, I know this is probably not what the question meant – but, c’mon, I don’t want to embarrass the poor boy too much now, do I?)

Where do you eat out most as a couple?
If by “eat out” you don’t mean “make a midnight run to Taco Bell to relive our days of youth”, the answer would probably be the sushi place down the highway. Their rainbow mountain and “she’s so hot” rolls are some of the best I’ve ever had – even Aditya’s parents liked them, despite the whole “raw fish” thing. Sidenote: every Indian I have introduced to sushi thought I was joking when I told them we’d be eating raw fish. And when I warned them about wasabi. Oh, the looks on their faces…

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
India. Or Indiana. It all depends on your frame of reference.

Who has the craziest exes?
This one goes to Aditya. He dated lots of girls his freshman year of college. (Insert bad joke here about American women falling for exotic foreign dudes.) While I haven’t met all of them, the statistics are completely on my side – I wasn’t nearly as active on the dating scene.

Who has the worst temper?
Eh, our tempers aren’t really comparable. He’s more of the flash fire type, while I can keep angry little embers burning in my blackened heart for quite some time.

Who does the cooking?
Me. Aditya can cook chicken, reheat pre-made food, prepare Maggie, and is the master of all things barbeque. When we don’t eat out, evenings go something like this:

Aditya, after looking through pantry and fridge: “There’s no food in the house, and I’m pretty certain it was your turn to go to the grocery store this weekend.”
Me: “Are you on crack? We could eat for a month on what’s in the fridge without even touching the emergency TastyBite rations.”
Aditya: “You’re just trying to weasel out of taking responsibility for not going to the grocery store earlier. You can’t fool me. Or the dogs. Look at the dogs staring at you – they can smell your guilt.”
Me: “They’re only paying attention because we’re in the kitchen. The kitchen which contains food. Look, I’ll show you – I’ll have an awesome stir fry done in thirty minutes.”
*30 minutes pass and dinner is served*
Me: “Wait a moment…”
Aditya: “Thanks for the delicious meal, my lovely tubelight. Took you long enough to light up on that one.”

Who is the neat-freak?
Our basement tenant. We’re pigs. Seriously.

Who is more stubborn?
I’ll admit to being this person.

Who hogs the bed?
Kajol and Panda, when they think it’s close enough to morning that they’ll be able to pretend they’re waking us up, rather than trying to steal a nap on the forbidden bed.

Who wakes up earlier?
Aditya is out of bed earlier 90% of the time, but when I need to get up super-early I have an easier time doing it than he does.

Where was your first date?
The “bum room” of Aditya’s frat, where we watched Fight Club on a couch older than either of us. Good times.

Who is more jealous?
Aditya’s fifth nickname for Kajol is “jealous cat” (cat being a pejorative term in his messed-up brain) because she always wants attention whenever Panda gets attention from me. Of course, Aditya always wants attention whenever anyone is getting attention from me.

How long did it take to get serious?
I was the first girl in college to last more than a fortnight – on the fifteenth day Aditya realized this, had a mini-crisis about the “seriousness” of our relationship, then calmed down when I smacked him on the head.

Who eats more?
Aditya has a far faster metabolism than me, so I think he ends up eating more, but he sure eats it slowly. The speed at which he eats is a running family joke.

Who does the laundry?
We both do. I separate the laundry, tell him which pile he is allowed to wash, he does those loads and I do the delicates & hand wash. I fold and he unorphans socks from our singleton box. It’s all very modern and egalitarian and shit.

Who’s better with the computer?
I am master of the interwebs with a blackbelt in googlefu, and Aditya is charge of the little things like software and hardware.

Who drives when you are together?
Adtiya, mostly, because he cares more than I do about the perfect way to zig-zag in traffic. I find this is a good rule in a relationship: the one who cares more about a little thing takes care of it.

Panda Bear is the latest addition to our family, and, as an Alaskan Malamute, he tends to be a bit too warm to snuggle comfortably for that long indoors. He’s about two and a half years old, and another rescue dog – poor pup spent most of his life tied in a field with grass so high he couldn’t see out of it before Animal Cruelty rescued him. When he came to us he was twenty pounds underweight and didn’t know what a treat was or how to play with another dog. He’s still a bit of a failure with treats – he’s excited to get one, but just drops it afterwards for Kajol to eat. Kajol, however, has taught him to play like a champion at the only game she knows: wrestling. We often look out onto the deck to see Kajol’s head disappearing into Panda’s massive jaw, or him just calmly sitting on Kajol while she struggles to get free.

They’re a well-matched pair, despite being from such different breeds – and I suppose there’s a semi-corny lesson in there for all of us in an intercultural relationship, or, really, any mixed relationship where looks or personalities or abilities differ.

Panda’s main weakness – a general shyness and fear of new things and people, due to his poor socialization as a young dog – has never been a problem for Kajol. The first few times I went hiking with them poor Panda was scared silly of water crossings and rock scrambles, while Kajol is fearlessness personified while on the trail. He follows her lead there, and also when we go shopping at some of the dog-friendly stores in the area. It’d be hilarious to see a Malamute quaking in fear of a shopping cart at Petco, if it weren’t a sad reminder of of his history.

Panda’s strengths, though, are one’s we wouldn’t mind seeing Kajol emulate. He’s an incredibly chill dog – very easy-going and relaxed when he’s in familar surroundings. Kajol, on the other hand, still has puppy-brain, and has been known to clear the sofa and coffee table in one bound when excited. She’s starting to take her cues from him, though. Recently she jumped on Aditya in excitement and Panda growled in disapproval – and Kajol didn’t jump on Aditya for the following week. She also likes to stick close by him when out on walks.

As far as how our mixed relationship affects the dogs – well, it doesn’t, much.  Aditya claims that they know more Bengali than I, which is patently false – I’m sure they’re just responding to the tone of his voice, not the words. *grin* We’re both on the same page as far as training is concerned, and we share the responsibilities of care and upkeep, like any modern couple with their pups.

I’ll admit to being a bit worried about training when Aditya’s parents came for a long visit – this was pre-Panda. But that’s another post.

We were originally going to name her “Gobi”, which means cauliflower in Hindi. However Maa vetoed that idea: she refuses to call the dog anything so silly. Which I’ll admit Gobi is – but it’s also pretty cute. So instead the pup gets the slightly more dignified unisex Hindi name of Kajol, which means kohl. Kohl is the heavy black eyeliner favored by many Indians, Arabs, emo kids, and Jack Sparrow. And, of course, our Kajol, whose eye markings I’ll be studying next time the eyeliner goes on.

We adopted her from the Virginia German Shepherd Rescue, and, folks, they do some amazing work there. Kajol was rescued from a pretty bad county shelter, where she’d developed kennel cough and gathered a zoo of parasites. She came to us perfectly healthy and well-socialized, though she has the slight separation anxiety you’d expect from a dog that has had so many changes in her life. She’s a real sweetie, though, eager to please and smart as a whip. We’re slowly learning more about each other – for instance, I’ve learned how she signals that she needs to use the outdoor facilities, and she’s learned that jumping onto our bed then starting to pee on it will get her a quick escort to the backyard. *grin* It’s all part of owning a dog – but the good here certainly outweighs the bad!

Aditya’s family has always had German Shepherd Dogs in India, and he’s even shown them in the ring, so he’s very comfortable working with Kajol. I’ve never had my own personal dog, but my family has had dogs (currently a massive golden lab named Bear), so I’m also pretty at ease with Kajol. Despite learning about dog ownership in such disparate cultures, we’ve come to a quick agreement about how to handle our pup. Actually, our knowledge bases are quite complementary: Aditya knows more about the age & breed-specific behaviors that Kajol exhibits (mouthiness and quickly figuring out our training tactics), while I can inform him about American-specific training techniques and pet supplies (crating, dog seatbelt harnesses, and Kong toys). We’ll be taking her to an obedience class later this summer once she’s become comfortable with our household and routines.

I’m sure you’ll be hearing plenty more about Kajol in the future, but it’s time for us to head to bed. I’ve got a sleeping dog who will be wanting her morning meal and walk bright & early tomorrow morning.