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:

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.

Me? Oh, well, I don’t have a faith. And, no, I’m not interested in getting one either.

That was my  polite non-answer when asked about my religious beliefs by two Christians who stopped by Aditya’s and my doorstop to proselytize last weekend. And it was as true, as far as it goes – I’m not one much for simple faith in any context. When discussing my religious beliefs with friends & family, I’m most likely to to describe myself simply as an atheist. But when I’m feeling a little mischievous – or argumentative – I’ll sometimes put in that I’m an atheist – and a Hindu.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a complicated situation; I blame Aditya for it completely.  Like many other things in my life, religion is something that has become more complicated since we set off on our intercultural marriage adventure.

My religious past

Growing up, I’d describe my family as nominal Christians, like so many other Americans. We’d occasionally go to church, we’d celebrate Christmas and Easter with both secular and religious iconography & stories, and one summer I went to a day Bible camp at the urging of my (more religious) grandparents.

I never really “got” religion. When I went to church while my grandparents were visiting it was because after Sunday School they served doughnuts! And juice! At five I was junk-food deprived. I did try to understand & believe in what I heard in church and from family members – I distinctly remember trying to fit the Christian story of creation together with my understanding of evolution when I was six:

Maybe the kids of Adam and Eve interbred with the evolved humans, and people who are particularly stupid or do bad things like murder and steal are that way because they have more monkey genes!

Moral theory, eugenics and faith-based science in one sentence from a six year old! (There are family members who are surprised that I’ve managed to grow up into a reasonably sane adult.) To compound things further, when I was ten I stumbled onto both Dostoevsky and philosophy, and, well, early exposure to that sort of thing is bound to screw a kid up. In my case, Ivan Karamazov’s presentation of the problem of the evil rocked my world view, and ultimately led me to disbelieve in an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent god:

Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?

Since then I’ve read significantly on religion, ethics, and the philosophy of religion, but nothing I’ve read has given me  such a strong punch to the gut – and nothing has changed my mind on the nonexistence of the Abrahamic God. That, along with strong leanings towards secular Humanism and a scientific mindset were all of my “religious” beliefs when I met Aditya.

Hinduism & Aditya

Aditya is very up front about his religious beliefs. While I wouldn’t call my husband a “spiritual person”, many of his actions and thoughts seem to flow from his religious background and beliefs – like many Hindus I know.

He’ll be writing his own post on the topic of religion and our relationship, so I won’t attempt to explain his religious beliefs myself – suffice it to say, he calls himself an atheistic Hindu – although pantheistic Hindu might be more accurate.  Prior to meeting him, I had very little knowledge of Hinduism, besides the fact that it talked about reincarnation. I did know it had something to do with reincarnation, and lots of gods. Speaking of, here’s a Fun Reincarnation Anecdote: as a barbaric, bloodthirsty child I used to go out after it rained to get rid of the snails in our garden. My mom initially objected to my use of a salt shaker as the weapon of choice, but desisted when I appealed to her vague hippie leanings that the snails were probably just people who had been very bad in past lives, and were getting what was coming to ‘em. That Russian literature, it screws a person up, I’m telling you.

Anyways, when Aditya and I first became a serious couple one of my first actions was to audit a Hinduism course, as described in this post – although I admit part of my motivation  was to end the association I had between Hinduism and evil snails. Each new aspect of Hinduism that I discovered through the class led to hours of discussion with Aditya as I learned about the specific practices he and his family followed (none of it included snails).

After these discussions I never worried that religion would be a source of friction in our relationship because our belief sets, while somewhat different, are mutually respectable and give us similar Weltanschauungs (worldviews). I think both of these – respect of the other’s beliefs, and similar mindsets, if not similar beliefs – are key to a successful relationship. I know that I could never have a serious romantic relationship with a Christian or moral relativist simply because those beliefs are antithetic to mine – and given my fascination with philosophy of religion and metaethics we’d never quit arguing about it. And as Aditya will attest, I am a classically-trained s.o.b. in a philosophical argument.

It also helped that I find many of the religious texts of Hinduism – particularly the Gita and the Upanishads – incredibly meaningful as philosophy, albeit not presented in the analytical framework I’m most familiar with. And while I don’t hold with the superstitions of any religion, including Hinduism, I certainly don’t think that the rituals and traditions of Hinduism are bunk, as I discussed in this blog post on intercultural acceptance. Rather, for me, ritual and tradition are the containers within which substance is stored – they create meaning in the same way as performative speech.

Becoming a Hindu?

While I incorporated some Hindu beliefs and rituals in my daily life and thoughts since studying the religion  in college, I have only been somewhat comfortable calling myself a Hindu since having an Arya Samaj wedding a year & a half ago. Until that point I would have said that I agree with some Hindu philosophy (I use “some” as a modifier since the heterogeneity of Hinduism means that no one can coherently accept all parts of Hindu philosophy). So why the change?

Well, as a wife of a Hindu man, a daughter in a Hindu family, and a eventual mother of Hindu kids, I am now not just a believer in some Hindu thought , but also a participant in Hindu culture and family life. And for me, personally, that makes the difference between being a Hindu and believing in some parts of Hinduism. It’s an odd distinction to many Westerners, I think, who are use to the straightforward conversion processes in Abrahamic religions, which have relatively clearer doctrines of faith than most religions developed in Asia, which can often be atheistic in nature.

Hinduism’s mark can be seen in our household – if you look closely – but day-to-day life isn’t much different than what you would expect in your typical nonreligious Western home.  There’s a shelf of religious texts above my shelf of ethics & philosophy books. One flat surface in the house plays host to a Nataraja, a Buddha, incense, and a growing collection of Ganishas – but also has Indian knicknacks and the occasional tea mug. Setting up a better puja area is on the long to-do list…

But, really, that’s about it. We don’t go to Hindu temple regularly, despite the fact that there’s two temples within ten miles (I wasn’t joking when I wrote that we now live in the Desi suburbs of DC). We don’t follow many common rituals – and there’s certainly no daily household pujas happening here! Right or wrong, I do sometimes feel that this lack of outwardly trappings of Hinduism makes my claim on Hinduism less “real”, at least to others. This is a relatively recent phenomenon – when I was simply a humanist atheist I never questioned whether my identity in that group was real or not. I suspect part of the issue is simply the way Aditya and I are settling into life and looking for a community; I’ve even been considering hitting up the local Unitarian Universalists to see if we’d fit in there, with our atheistic notions and statues of gods. The two, after all, are an odd combination to most people.

In the end though, I feel extremely comfortable with my philosophical and religious beliefs. Hinduism was an unexpected addition to my philosophy, but I have no doubt that I’m much richer for it  (Aditya was unexpected too – so help me, as a preteen I had a grand plan of studying math at CalTech, getting an MBA in Switzerland, and marrying an Austrian). And while it’d be pure hubris to say I’ve got this whole religion thing figured out by my mid-twenties, I do think I’ve developed a good structure on which to grow my understanding in the future. And, hey, I’ve always got my Russian literature to fall back on.

(Not Leo Tolstoy though – he’s a religious fruitcake.)

I tripped, stepping on a few books strewn along the “path” to the couch.

“Hey!” Aditya exclaimed. “Don’t step on the books! You’re never  step on books. It’s disrespectful.”

“Well, if you don’t want them stepped on you shouldn’t leave them on the ground. They’re just books – it’s not like I cracked the spine or anything. Wait… did you just mumble a prayer to the book?”

Cultural and religious differences

When I first started dating Aditya, I knew only a little about either Hinduism or general Indian culture. I certainly didn’t know about any prohibitions about stepping on books – at most, I had a vague notion that feet were considered unclean beyond just, you know, germs and dirt from walking around barefoot.

Learning about my husband’s culture and religious traditions has been a slow, albeit rewarding, experience. I’ve struggled with many of the concepts he considered completely normal – so normal, in fact, that the differences between our two expectations about proper behavior would only surface when one of us committed a faux pas in the other’s eyes.  This struggle goes beyond just memorizing what’s cool and what’s not – at times it has been difficult to understand the reasoning behind the rules, or to take the next step and accept the differences. Some of his cultural concepts I’ve been able to embrace as my own – but others not so much.

Today I’d like to discuss three good ways of dealing with differing cultural and religious traditions – understanding them, accepting them, or embracing them – and why it’s perfectly okay to not embrace – or even accept – any tradition you find difficult or troubling, as long as that works for your particular relationship.

Understanding differences – strive for it

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story”. – John Barth

There are very few people in this world who believe that their actions are without reason or justification. Certainly no culture or religion develops a custom just for the hell of it – there’s always a purpose. When you come across a cultural or religious difference, your first goal should always be to understand the reasoning behind,  the purpose to it.

Understanding the differing custom or behavior or attitude is not the same thing as accepting it as the right thing for you to do, or even the morally correct thing for anyone. I can understand the purpose behind a suicide bomber’s efforts to kill innocents, or the reasoning that leads to the barbaric custom of female infanticide without condoning either evil practice. Understanding a cultural difference isn’t the same as okaying it – it’s just a way to open up a dialogue with a person from a different background by acknowledging the humanness of their  actions and beliefs. If you can’t get beyond a “that’s nonsensical” reaction to a cultural difference that represents a failure on your part to stretch your mind fully. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to understand the actions and traditions of cultures foreign to us. Stretching your mind is hard work!

I was completely baffled by Aditya’s reaction to my accidental stumble over his books. After all, they were just books – things, objects, items. Even after he explained that it was a matter of respect – respect over the knowledge the books contained, the wisdom we gain from the written word – I still didn’t find the whole scenario logical. Sure, respect learning, I got that – but why did he offer what looked like a prayer to an inanimate object? It wasn’t like the book cared it was stepped on! It was only after I  was told by Aditya that it was a pranam (respectful salutation), not a prayer that I realized – duh – it was a salutation to what the book symbolized, not the physical object itself. All right, I thought, I get it. By stepping on the book, you disrespected learning, and then you offer a pranam, and show that you actually do respect learning. Sounded a bit superstitious to me, but I understood the basic reasoning behind Aditya’s actions. And because I understood the basics it was something that I could tolerate, even if I didn’t think it worthwhile or logical.

Accepting differences – try for it

Accepting a cultural or religious difference goes beyond understanding the reasoning at play. Acceptance  means that you recognize that this cultural or religious difference is worthwhile and good  for the people who practice it.

Not all traditions are worthy of acceptance, of course – I’m not suggesting that you accept traditions that are obviously morally wrong, like honor killings, just because some culture  says that it’s a good thing. Even with more mundane cultural differences, though, it’s not always a simple jump from understanding the reasoning behind a cultural custom to accepting the cultural custom as a good thing for others. You could think it’s just a waste of time (my feelings on  most superstitions). Or that it’s a tradition that doesn’t solve the problem that is actually at hand – it just distracts from it (my feelings on most faith-based healing shticks you see on late-night tv).

While I believe that we should all strive to understand the cultural differences we come across in our intercultural relationships, I don’t think it’s necessary – or even possible – to accept all cultural differences. What’s important is that the level of acceptance of each others’ differences works for your relationship. This means that you’re both comfortable with each other’s differences, and neither person feels pressured to accept that which that which they find troubling, morally or otherwise.

Over time I did move from simply understanding Aditya’s tradition of not stepping on books to accepting it as a worthwhile endeavor.  As he explained the tradition more – and as I learned more about Hinduism in a class I was taking – I learned what Aditya got out of the pranams to “offended” books. For him, at least, the short practice wasn’t about superstition or righting some cosmic tally against him. Instead, it was a occasional reminder of why learning was valuable. A moment to pause and reflect.

I don’t think this particular tradition of his was one that I had to understand and accept in order for our relationship to succeed. Perhaps he wouldn’t have appreciated the eye-rolling I inevitably do when I think someone is being silly, but our relationship would survive. It’s a bit hypothetical, though, as I have come to accept this tradition. However, other cultural differences were deal-breakers. For example, it’s very important to Aditya that his parents be able and welcome to visit us for months at a time, or even move in with us, as is common in his culture.If I could not have accepted this value of his, than I doubt we’d be together today – it’s just too important to him. He communicated this to me very early in our relationship, and I learned to accept this foreign tradition.

How does one go about accepting alien customs, traditions, and beliefs as worthwhile and good – and a part of your life now? Well, for me, it’s taken mostly time and thought.  I’ve had to radically retool my understanding of what a good child-parent relationship is to get to the point of being comfortable with the idea & reality of long visits from Maa and Baba.  With the book thing, well, I’ve thought a fair bit on what it means to respect an abstract concept, and how one shows those sorts of values in everyday life.  (Yes, I was raised a heathen child without religion or much spirituality.) I’ve come to realize the value of these small, symbolic gestures of Aditya’s, how it allows for a redirection of one’s mind to the more important things of life, a little reminder of what matters. In fact, not only do I accept the idea of pranam to knowledge in Aditya’s life, I’ve come to desire it in my own. Which brings us to the final section…

Embracing differences, ending differences

The third and final way you can deal with cultural and religious differences is not just understand, not just accept, but embrace the differences and make them part of your own personal culture or religion. I think you see this most often when one half an interfaith partnership converts to his significant other’s religion – thus ending the interfaithiness. In some ways I’ve done that by embracing parts of Aditya’s Hindu practices and faith – I too now avoid stepping on books out of a respect for the knowledge they contain.

However, embracing all – or even most – of your partner’s cultural or religious beliefs should not be your main goal in dealing with differences. I mean, if you both completely embrace the other’s traditions, you just end up flipping sides! Nor should one person try to give up their culture entirely and embrace the other’s – you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of pulling it off, and if you somehow did, I suspect you’d find you’d lost a large part of the core part of yourself in the process.

No, I firmly believe that you should embrace the parts of another culture that strongly call out to you, and just try to understand and accept the other cultural differences. Think of whole-heartedly embracing some of your partner’s traditions as a bonus, but not a goal. Be open-minded enough to understand the purposes of different customs, and try to see and accept the good in these cultural and religious differences. But remember: it’s okay to not love, or even like, all parts of your partner’s culture. After all, it’s the differences between the two of you, in part, that brought you together.

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!