They were quite beautiful: delicate, pure gold swastika earrings, with subtle etchings along the front and edges. I wish I had taken a picture of them – and of my husband’s face when he opened the gift. I still don’t know who the giver was, but I suspect it was an older Auntie with superb taste and very few NRI relatives.

I’m almost certain it was Auntie since almost all of the single men at our wedding gave the simpler gift of money. Superb taste is certain, given the quality of the gift – similar to the other earrings I received, pictured above.

NRI stands for non-resident Indians – citizens who live in countries other than India. And an older person, with few family members who’ve lived in the West, would almost certainly give no thought to the swastika having any meaning other than the traditional.

You see, in Hinduism, the swastika is an ancient symbol for good luck. And while it’s known that Hitler co-opted the symbol for his own use, the first and primary connotation in India is the swastika’s Hindu meaning. Until they’ve lived in America, or another Western country, most Indians don’t realize that the swastika screams “Nazi, Nazi, Nazi” to those of us raised in the West.

Of course, Aditya, being born and raised in India (and a religious studies major to boot), knew of the true (aka Hindu) meaning of the swastika. The expression on his face was priceless not because he was taken back by the gift, but because my mother and uncle were in the room while we were opening the wedding presents, and it was now up to him to explain to these Americans why we had been given those earrings.

Luckily for him, they’d been traveling in India for a couple of weeks by that point and had already seen plenty of swastikas on the road:

I think it’s the little cultural things, like using swastikas as decorative items, that make you more aware of being in an intercultural relationship than any of the major things, such as food, clothing, or family practices. It’s that little unexpected jar to the system, a reminder that, hey, this person grew up in a fundamentally different culture from me. These little things, however, are the easiest to get used to, though they may look odd to an outsider (“Yes, that’s a swastika in the painting on the living room wall. No, we’re not planning a Blitzkrieg against France anytime in the near future.”).

The swastika earrings situation was easily resolved, like most little cultural things. Maa, having traveled to the US to visit both her sons*** already knew that, uh, difficulties might arise if I were to wear the earrings back home in D.C. She happily accepted the earrings, after checking to make sure I was fine with her regifting them to another young bride.

***Aditya’s older brother, whom we both call “Dada” (which means older brother in Bengali), lives only a few miles away from my dad’s house in California.