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.

Aditya: So what is that story that you were telling, of when Baba came to meet you?

Baba: That was our semi-arranged marriage!

Maa: Semi? Why “semi”? Absolutely arranged!

Baba: I saw her, and then I said okay. It was not arranged. So semi.

Maa: They put an advertisement in paper, that their son is not getting married for last ten years, they’re searching for daughter-in-law.

Baba: And my in-laws had a daughter who was not being married for ten years, said, “Okay, this is a right match!”

Maa: So, when they came, they didn’t tell me… Maybe my parents knew it, but I didn’t know that they were coming. So it was Sunday, and I had lot of hair… The whole week I had to go to college, so I didn’t wash my hair properly, because in India you can’t go with, uh, hair loose, you have to tie it up. Nowadays everything is gone, but that time it was there. So Sunday is my oil massaging day. So from top to bottom I used to apply oil.

Aditya: And Maa’s hair was down to her knees almost.

Maa: So, they came at three o’clock. And I took bath at twelve o’clock, I think. And I didn’t do shampoo also. And you can just imagine…

Baba: You know, that is why I got married to her, just because of her hair. Because I could not see anything else [to judge]!

<laughter>

Maa: And in India, when some girl is to, uh, be presented to her in-laws, they put on a lot of makeup, good saris, jewelry. But I was wearing a cotton sari, normal, because I didn’t know that they were coming. And my sister-in-laws, all, my parents, couldn’t [dress me up], because I am very strict about that. What I am, I am, there’s no makeup or something. And, I used to wear a bangle on my right hand. On my left hand, I used to wear a watch, a wrist-watch. I was at home, so I didn’t wear that also. And I met him like that!

GG: So, after you both met, did you discuss anything with each other?

Baba: Oh, yeah, we had a talk, between us. But I don’t think that it was, uh, like an examination. We just discussed what I feel, what did she feel that particular day? That’s all.

Maa: And then for food, at the restaurant, I didn’t take it. Because my mother told me, don’t go with anybody in the restaurant. So he was asking, “Are you hungry?” “No,” [I said].

Baba: So I sat down, I ate.

Maa: And he ate. When we came back to our home, from [movie] picture, I was telling my mother, “Give me some food, I am very hungry!” And he says, “Why didn’t you take?!” But how could I explain to him at that time?

Baba: That was my golden era.

I cannot imagine participating in the process of an arranged marriage – not that I think that they’re necessarily bad, but I just can’t picture what it would be like. Maa & Baba’s story of their first meeting was, therefore, quite enlightening as to some of the particulars. It all strikes me as something out of a Jane Austin novel.

GG: Okay, next question!

Baba: This is off the syllabus?

GG: Yes! So, did Aditya discuss marrying me with you?

Maa: Actually, I told him, you ought to get married. If you want to stay together, you ought to get married. That I told him.

Aditya: I mean, it was a variety of things. I think it started… I mean, obviously, after graduating, I moved to California, and I was looking for housing. We talked about it. And obviously I asked before I proposed to GG.

Maa: He didn’t ask, we discussed.

Aditya: Yeah, we discussed, it was more like that.

Maa: I said, if you want to be with her, then get married. You take the responsibility.

The idea of “responsibility” being a key part of a marriage is something I’m still noodling over. I’ll admit I’ve never thought of it in exactly those terms.

GG: Did your expectations of what you expect for a daughter-in-law change after Aditya said he was marrying me?

Aditya: What I think she is asking is, would you have different expectations if she was Indian?

Baba: No. And that should be in block capitals! Because I told you, my expectations for my daughter-in-law is the same whether it is Bhabi, Punjabi, or GG, American.

Bhabi is Aditya’s sister-in-law, i.e. Baba’s other daughter-in-law, for those just tuning in.

GG: So, what would you say was something I did that impressed you early on?

Maa: Everything.

Aditya: I think they spoke the highest of your card-playing ability.

GG: Card-playing?

Maa: Yeah, card-playing…

Baba: Not card-playing ability, the way you picked up the game. You know, pick-up is more important for playing the game. If your pick up is good, whether it is cards or studies, that is a quality, and of course, which I feel did impress on the first day.

Like Aditya, I come from a family where playing cards is a key part of family bonding. Aditya’s family’s game is Twenty-Nine, while my family plays a house version of Rummy and Oh Hell. Being decent at cards in both of our families – or at least enjoying playing cards – is a pretty important trait.

Maa: Even when we came back from the cabin, you cooked for us, a nice —

Baba: No, that was afterwards, but, my point is, the first day.

Maa: But, that time, they were not even engaged. So I liked it very much.

I made a spicy spagetti with chicken sausage (since Maa & Baba don’t eat beef or pork), a simple salad, and some out-of-the-box cake for the family at Aditya’s brother’s house while they were off on a day trip – really the meal was nothing special or complicated. I think Maa might have been secretly afraid that the rumors of Americans were true, and I couldn’t cook a thing.

Aditya: What about Bear?

GG: My dad’s dog.

Maa: Oh, very sweet, very nice.

Aditya: Baba was taking pictures all evening of Bear, there were more pictures of Bear than of GG.

Maa: I liked your mother, your grandmother… And I was very much impressed by you.

Maa met my materal grandmother while I was back in the Midwest, attending college. Granmama is a French-Candian immigrant, altho she’s lived in the US for most of her life.

GG: Anything I did that surprised you, or maybe somewhat negative? Something you thought was kind of odd?

Baba: Actually, should I tell you? Yes, I’m not so critical in little things. If otherwise it is acceptable, it is okay.

Maa: Yes, everybody has some problems.

Baba: If everybody is happy, I feel that it’s good enough. I don’t see things so critical.

GG: Okay, so, now, Aditya & I are married… What is the hardest part about having a non-Bengali, or non-Indian daughter-in-law?

Maa: From my side, the only difficulty is to express myself.

Baba: The language.

Maa: The language. The hardest thing. Nothing else.

Aditya: (sarcastically) GG has been working hard on her Hindi.

I think I have a mental block against learning languages. I’m still struggling to keep a schedule of regular studying – but hearing this was a big motivator.

Baba: I don’t… Whether you are GG, or someone else, it would have not have made much of difference if that person were the same as GG. Because I don’t, uh, everybody has some shortcoming, some strong points. So if I forget about the rest of the things, only see the small shortcomings here or there, mentally I will not be happy. And I do not want to be unhappy.

GG: But is there any difficulty you see, maybe in customs I don’t know, or…

Maa: Even I don’t know a lot of customs. So I don’t care for that.

GG: Or my family doesn’t have the same expectations that an Indian family would…

Maa: How would I know, how do we know what your family expectations? We don’t know…

Baba: One thing I know, GG, that I have got my own way of looking at things. I can lead my life in that lane/line/road – whatever you want to call it, but I cannot make others follow it. Therefore, yes, often things happen even between me and Maa, where we think differently, we argue, feel bad. Maa stops talking, I stop talking, but that is for only a few hours. Because we know that this has to be there, because [we are] two persons.

Similarly, if I am very critical to anybody, it is making an unhappy relation, and no one is happy by doing so. It is better if we can enjoy each other’s company, which is good, overlook the shortcomings, the things that we don’t like. If I know that GG does not like something, I would like to avoid those things as much as possible. I have not vacuumed your bedroom, because I have felt that you would not like disturbed whatever arrangement or, uh, disarrangement…

<general laughter>

…that you have got. It is something like that, I have avoided it. But had it been my world, anybody could have done it for me and I would be happy. It is something like that. I try to avoid, don’t see things, which I feel may cause a bit of uneasiness between two persons.

GG: Is there anything that has been a positive, an unexpected thing that you’ve learned or experienced from having an American daughter-in-law?

Baba: Should I say now, one-to-one? Ready? Sure? I had the impression that Americans are generally very clean …that they keep things in order. But here, I have found…

And the truth comes out! This was the only critical thing I could get Maa & Baba to admit.

GG: It’s as much your son as me!

Aditya: GG, don’t even go there. You know, Thalith used to be our roommate, first when the three of us lived together, and then Thalith, GG, Ivan, and Claudia [lived together]. Thalith always used to make fun of us because the house was dirty and he used to blame me. But after I graduated, and he lived just with her, then he realized that what he actually saw there was her mess minus my cleaning up. You know, I visited GG twice, surprised her by arriving there before she expected me to be there. And the first day that I got there GG was sitting on the bed. And to get on the bed you could only put one step on the ground from the door. So you had to make a hop on one foot towards the bed, and then from that foot – you didn’t have space to put down the second foot – you had to hop off of that foot straight onto the bed. So everything you see is, always remember, that is GG minus my cleaning. Don’t say that it’s equally my fault.

While it is true that my college apartment room was that messy (I was working on my senior thesis!), it is complete falsehood that Aditya is a net benefit in the cleaning  department; during the same time period Aditya’s studio in California was nearly as messy. Really, we’re just messy (and busy) people.

Maa: What to say…

GG: It’s okay to say unflattering things. Whatever is on your mind.

Maa: Actually, I love you very much, all qualities, but the only thing, I can’t tolerate this much of untidiness. No, I think that, uh, you are since your childhood away from your mother, maybe that has affected you. Because only a mother can teach a daughter…

GG: My mother is also very messy.

Maa: Maybe, maybe because of that.

Maa: What you will do, please, you [GG] do the dusting and cleaning, let him do the vacuuming. Yes, do it together. That way you will enjoy it. Otherwise you’re doing it here, he’s doing it there. When Aditya told me that last time that Amy [the basement tenant] was here, that after Amy left, we’ll do the basement as the TV room or something like that. How is it possible that somebody is playing there, she’s playing here in her computer? This is not right. Whenever you’ll be at home, stay together. That is the first thing between husband and wife. You’ll see that in our house also, wherever Baba is I try to be, yes, because I don’t get to …

Baba: You see, when I want to avoid her, she’s always there! … Have you gone to church? Have you seen a dirty church?

GG: I don’t go to church.. I’ve only been a few times when I was little.

Baba: Okay, the ten times you’ve gone to church in your life, have you ever seen a dirty, stinking church?

GG: No…

Baba: Why? Cleanliness is next to godliness! And it is your house. You want that, you know, welcoming look. A house that is messy cannot be a happy house.

Point. Aditya and I really do need to stop living like we’re still in college.

GG: Okay, last two questions. Is there any advice that you would give to an American, or another Westerner who is dating an Indian, and is worried maybe that the parents won’t approve or anything like that?

Maa: Yes. There is something. Like [in] India, we are naturally very family-oriented. It is in our, uhh, in our heritage. But in Western country, people are so advanced, so educated, so independent, that sometimes, they feel, that…

Baba: They become islands.

Maa: Yes, they become islands. The space, their conception of personal space makes them very lonely, gradually. Everybody has some defects, some shortcomings – that is a girl also and a boy. Don’t look at the shortcomings. If you like somebody, if you love somebody, try to, both of, try to compromise on some points. If you can give only will you have something. Always if you – uh, not you, I mean general you – that giving away is much better than taking away.

Baba: No, actually, her question was actually if an Indian boy or a girl is dating an American boy or girl, what advice would be given to them. That is what she asked.

Maa: That is the advice! You have to give something to take something!

Baba: No, no, no… That you are talking about harmony in married life or in relationship. I would say that if they are dating an Indian boy, don’t just go by the boy. Unless he has decided to get out of the family altogether – cut off, I mean – not that [he is] in touch with them, they come and go… Otherwise, the boy should make it clear exactly how his parents or her parents would react to such a decision.

Like, you two are very nice. When you come to India, we [could have] decided no, you have to be like Indian girl, you have to put on a lot of oil, get up early in the morning, five o’clock, take a bath, go to temple, do puja, come back, then you go to the kitchen, cook food.

Maa: That type of family is still there in India.

Baba: A lot of them! The ones that – I have been reading your blog – most of the people they have got that type of problem when they go abroad, to their in-laws place. Therefore, it must be absolutely clear in mind [of the couple] what the expectations [are] at the other end. And if it is so, they should not go to India at all. Because a lot of disharmony would be created on such visits. And as far as we are concerned, as I told you, we are much more liberal, we know and we have got faith on our children, and things are different. I don’t think that one can, uh, judge parents just by seeing our family.

Maa: Even uh, Indian girls get lots of problems.

Baba: Indian girls get problems at their in-laws place because the culture, the practices are different.

GG: Would you suggest for a couple in that situation, that they just go along with the parents, or they say “no, we aren’t going to do that. She will not be getting up at five am”? Or some sort of compromise?

Baba: No, no, I would say if they’re going to live in US they should live like in US. They cannot live in US as [in] India. If you are going to live in India, live like India[ns]. You should not change your lifestyle because you are in a different country [for a short visit], you better live the style of the country [that] you live in.

GG: Anything else you want to share?

Maa: No, I told you that space is very…

Baba: Space should not make–

Maa: Make a man lonely.

Baba: No. That should not, I would say, divide a couple.

Aditya: I think it’s all about, when it comes to intercultural relationships, or really any relationship, it’s all about setting expectations. Like you should never get to the point where there is, like… In most Indian families parents are part of the married family. And you should never get to the point where those stakeholders are not on the same page.

Baba: That’s what I’m saying. And once – often courtship, like salesmanship – often the boy or the girl will tell little bit of half-truth. They will tell the facts just to impress, or hide things that maybe one [will] realize when you go to India. So that should be quite clear, how it is like at the other end. Like earlier, people used to get married, not to Americans, but a lot of people used to get married to the European girls, mainly British. And most of these people are sufficiently moneyed, but they were not like Rajas. But they used to give the impression that they were like small Rajas. And after the wedding they used to go, they used to find that things are not like what they heard during their courtship, and they had a lot of trouble during those days. The same way that I feel that one should be quite truthful, and put both sides on the right side of the picture, and then decide.

Maa: And husband and wife relationship should very, very based on honesty.

And that was the end of the interview.

I sat down with Aditya’s parents, Maa and Baba, a few nights ago with a list of eight questions to find out their views on American culture and intercultural relationships… and we ended up talking for over an hour, thus necessitating a Part One and a Part Two. Today’s portion focuses on the early days: their worries on sending their youngest son, Aditya, to a foreign country, thoughts on American culture, dating, and their first interactions with me. Technical details: I transcribed the interview from a sound recording, and have only edited (in square brackets) for clarity or in keeping with Maa & Baba’s wishes for certain things to be “off the record”. My comments and notes post-transcription are in red.

GG: What were your concerns when Aditya came to the US to study?

Maa: Whether he’ll be able to cope with everything; [I was] concerned with his studies. And we didn’t have that much of money to support him, so whether he would be able to support himself.

Baba: Firstly, the financial part. Secondly, he had never lived away from home – this was the first time he’d be living away from home. Thirdly, it was a strange country for him, the surroundings, the education system, language, food, everything was different! And I knew that he would be able to cope with the things, but I had doubted how easily he’d be able to cope up with it.

Aditya was the first member of his family to travel to the US. Maa and Baba first came to visit after his older brother, Dada, also moved to the US, about half way through Aditya’s college career.

GG: Do you remember what you guys thought of the US then? What your impressions, your ideas of it were?

Baba: Actually, as far as I am concerned, when I came to the US, I was more or less not surprised. I knew the US quite a lot – from movies, from books that I have studied, and I expected it to be more or less like this. The only thing is that I did not expect the US to be so huge as a country.

Maa: Actually, when I came for the first time, my whole concern was for Aditya.  So I was not interested in how the US was – [I] only wanted to know how he was.

GG: Did you have any worries about Aditya being at a US university, meeting Americans, maybe dating or falling in love with one of them or anything like that?

Maa: No, I didn’t have any concerns.

GG: Did you think he would date Americans when he came to the US?

Baba: No, I never thought that was an issue. If I liked someone at the right time, right age, I always said yes. Of course, I had certain reservations, and that has not happened.

*waggles eyebrows at Baba’s phrasing*

GG: What reservations?

Baba: That is off the record.

<Aditya laughs>

For the record, I still haven’t heard what the reservations were.

GG: Were you aware of his social activities when he was at the university?

Baba: Yes, he used to write, sometimes spoke to his mother… not to me. From what I could gather, I figured I had a fairly good idea of his activities. Of course, some of it was my imagination…

Maa: Nah, I knew only the portion that he used to tell us. But I [only] know half of it.

GG: So you knew that he had… (to Aditya) how many girlfriends was it?

Aditya: I told them…

Eight girlfriends his first year, I believe, (EIGHT!) and he tossed them all in two weeks or less. Shameless.

Baba: Yeah, he had many [girlfriends] in Delhi also…

Maa: Actually, we are not very much, uh, concerned with children’s girlfriends or boyfriends.

Baba: As long as you are not doing anything wrong, if your aim, your studies are going properly, I think that there is nothing wrong in having girlfriends. How you take that relation matters… Like, I had in India at one time I knew a lot of girls – and of course, my parents were also very liberal. Even today, if I meet them, if I get a chance to meet them, there’s nothing wrong in this, I always felt. Yes, if somebody has some bad intention, that is different. For that…

Maa: Nah, it is very natural. There is nothing to worry about. If I know my children, they will choose the right thing.

Baba: No, as long as a child knows what is right or wrong, there is no need for the parent to worry. And I, at least, have the confidence in my children; they can recognize right.

Maa: And in that way my impression of Aditya is very high.

Baba: That every mother has!

Maa: Nah, he’s a moralist type.

Baba: Yes, he’s a moralist type.

I suspect – but do not know one way or another for sure – that the attitude that Maa & Baba express here is pretty unusual for mainstream Indian culture. Heck, I suspect it’s pretty unusual for the majority of American parents of teenagers too. Anyways, with the basics of Maa & Baba’s views on dating established, we now changed tacks to start discussing Aditya’s relationship with me, which was more serious than those with previous girlfriends (i.e. I lasted more than two weeks).

GG: Do you remember when he told you he was dating me? Do you remember what he said?

Baba: Yes.

Maa: Yes. When you two had some difference of opinion, and I told him that this girl is a … in our language, Saraswati, it means goddess of learning – she looks like that.

Aditya: This was when we were broken up.

Baba: Maa said that you better make up!

You can read my take on first meeting Aditya’s parents here. In short, when I first met Maa, Aditya and I had downgraded our relationship to “an icy friendship” due to quarreling too much.

Aditya: By the way, the only reason that Baba and I didn’t talk over the phone while I was at the university was because Baba telephone conversations are always telegraphic.

<general laughter >

The first question he asks you is “How are you?”, and by the time you have said, “I’m good” the conversation is over and the phone has been hung up.

Maa: [He’s like that] with everybody.

Yes, yes he is.

Aditya: Yes, with everybody. When we were growing up… I mean, I don’t even know how common telephones were when they were growing up. When we were growing up, Baba used to be away, you know, and we had to do trunk calls. And in the middle of the night, it’d be super expensive, and Maa would be running down the stairs at 11:30 pm, because, you know, there’s a trunk call with Baba.

For Americans or others scratching their heads, a trunk call is the British English (and, apparently, Indian English) word for a long-distance call, especially one routed by a real, live operator.

GG: So what were your expectations for a daughter-in-law? Before you knew about me or anything – just general expectations.

Maa: I want only the good relationship and to look after my children – daughter-in-law or son-in-law. Look after my children, and a good relationship with us. Nothing else.

For the following anecdote, Bhabi is Aditya’s sister-in-law, Dada is his older brother, and Didi is his older sister.

Baba: You see, before Bhabi’s marriage [to Dada]… Bhabi was in school, Dada was in hostel, they had not met each other. They were in class 7 or 8. And she was learning some dance in Calcutta. She came to our house because Didi was in the same class – Bhabi had missed some classes, and she came to make up those missed classes. I was working away from Calcutta, and I used to come [home] during the weekends. I came… it was a duplex, our house was. I was climbing the stairs and I saw Bhabi. And when she came, I said, “Who is this girl?” And Maa said, “Didi’s dance mate.” And I said, “I would like to get a girl like that as daughter-in-law [for Dada]”… By God’s grace, that has happened. Of course it happened after…
<argument starts over how long >
Five, six years, let us say. So after that, I always expected that Aditya’s wife would be something like Bhabi. In all respects.

GG: Punjabi?

Baba: No, not Punjabi. I don’t look at Bhabi as Punjabi. See, this language or religion – I feel everything is the same. So I don’t look at a Punjabi or American or European… My thing is – “similar” means – she should be intelligent, sharing, and good in studies, plus she should be something where we are comfortable, my son is comfortable, and she should be someone who gets into a relation[ship] for lifelong.

Because there are a lot of cases I have found where people don’t – the girls or the boys – don’t think beyond certain time: four years, five years, ten years. But I always felt that my children should get a partner for the whole life. Not part time or, I would say, “live together” type. That is the type of girl I expected. She should be presentable, so that people don’t say – don’t take it – that she doesn’t fit into the family. I feel that that is a bigger thing, because I still feel family is much bigger than self. And that was what [were] my expectations, and I feel that I am quite happy on that one respect. The rest of the things, small things, would be different between individuals. Those better to not be discussed, because everyone has their own way of looking at things. But my general expectations for my daughter-in-law or son-in-law were the same. It is not that [the expectations] for daughter-in-law different [from] son-in-law.

While I suspect that Baba cares a bit more for what others think than I do, I must admit I was quite pleased with his perspective on this – I really couldn’t ask for a more considerate and reasonable set of expectations.

GG: What do you remember Aditya telling you about me before you met me? Like on the phone.

Baba: He didn’t tell me anything!

GG: Aditya, is this true?

Aditya: Because Baba’s phone calls are so short!

Baba: That has already been said. Whatever he said –

GG: But he went back to India one summer.

Baba: That is true, but Aditya is very close to – my children are all more close to – Maa for such things, for such topics. So they always spoke to her, and she only told me that much that was…

Maa: Screened!

<general laughter>

Baba: Yeah, little bit. I always got a filtered version.

GG: Okay, Maa, what do you remember Aditya telling you about me?

Maa: In 2006 when he came, he told me. And I told him it is okay, make your studies properly, and then you can do whatever you feel like, I don’t mind. And what else…?

Aditya: Nah, we talked about it when I was in Madras, right?

Maa: So long time back… That time I [hadn’t yet met] her, right? So I told [him] that I did not know what type of girl she is. I was not very keen… Hmmm… I am very scared that time, because he should complete his studies and things. Because in our [country], in India, a girl or boy’s future is very… We are very concerned about their future. All parents [are this way]. So I was a little scared that he may not—

Baba: – do well in his exams or things like that.

GG: Is there anything you wish Aditya had told, that might have helped your fears more or your concerns?

<general confusion over the meaning of the question>

Okay, before you met me, maybe you had some concerns… Was there anything that Aditya could have told you, that could have helped those concerns?

Baba: No, I don’t think with me [there were any concerns].

Maa: Yeah, I was concerned. Because he told [me] that you have some health problem. So I was concerned if it was very serious type. I don’t know anything. So I thought that health problem was very very… <worried hand gesture>.

I have a genetic blood-clotting disorder – which I only found out my freshman year while dating Aditya – which will be a lifelong concern, although it is perfectly managable with a little daily medication and awareness. At that time, however, it was a new-ish thing, and neither Aditya nor I were sure of how serious it would turn out to be. Luckily, it falls more on the side of, say, adult asthma or a severe allergy in seriousness than, for example, diabetes.

Aditya: See, part of the problem – the reason I spoke more to Maa than to Baba – [was] because I always did feel that… Baba and I had talked about things in passing, not detailed things… I always felt that Baba would be supportive, no matter what decision I took, you know? Like I always say, Sachin gets all this advice before he goes in to bat, and once he goes in to bat, it’s up to him, he has to make the decisions. And I always felt that Baba would be supportive over whatever decision I took. I was more concerned about how Maa would react. That’s why I talked more with Maa about it than with Baba.

GG: (to Maa) Does that surprise you?

Maa: No, [I’m] not surprised. But I was concerned when he said that she has some health problem – that was why I was concerned. But when I have seen you, I told him, that she is the best for you.

GG: Okay. Anything else that you thought when you met me for the first time?

Maa: I felt that you were very, um, that your approach was very nice. Your way of talking, your behavior, I liked it very much. Even I told my relations in India, “She is a nice girl.”

GG: So, on some of the blogs I read, some of the Indian parents aren’t very happy about their sons or their daughters dating an American. So people give out various advice, like “you should do this when you meet them”, or “you should do that”. For instance, one of the things that they advise is that you should dress up very nicely, maybe wear a sari when you meet the parents for the first time.

<Baba makes a wincing face>

Maa: I am also no. Even to Bhabi, I told [that it was not necessary] … You are an American girl, but even to Bhabi…

Baba: If my daughter can put on trousers, can go [out] in skirts, what is wrong with my daughter-in-law – someone else’s daughter [doing that sort of thing]. That is how I look at things.

Aditya’s parents are typically very pleased when I wear Indian-style clothing, but I have never felt any pressure – even while in India – to wear Indian clothing instead of jeans and a t-shirt.

Maa: Even to Bhabi I said that, you can wear whatever you like in my house. One thing I told her, when people from village come –

Baba: Yeah, social functions that is, it is better that you put on sari. It is not a compulsion [compulsory] to put on saris, she may put on salwar kameeze also. But [with a sari] that is easier to blend in, because everyone else will be in sari. If you come in sari you will feel a little [more] comfortable.

While I think you can fit into Indian cities just fine in Western clothes, I felt more comfortable – and slightly less conspicuous – wearing salwar kameezes or saris in more rural towns.

Maa: And, nah, one thing I told Bhabi, when people from villages, remote villages – we have got relations there – so when they will come it is better to wear saris. Because they will come for half an hour, for one hour. They will see that this girl is settled in [well] with this family, and their impression is good for the daughter-in-law.

Baba: Because I feel, that people should talk good about our, my family, and of course my daughter-in-law is part of it.

Maa: Even my daughter follows the same thing, it is not [just] for my daughter-in-law.

Aditya: Did you have any concerns, that, you know, other people, people who would be visiting from remote villages… Did you have any concerns that they would see the relationship as a bad thing, and would think less of the family?

Baba: Actually, in our family and among our relations, I have got the impression that generally I do right things. Therefore, in my house, if something happens – what I have accepted – generally the general impression is that that is right. So I never had any doubt that if I am comfortable, and if my daughter-in-law is comfortable with me, that others would have anything to say. So that advantage I have. In my family or my relations, I have a different, I would say, position. And it puts my daughter-in-law in a little elevated position.

Maa: In our family nobody told anything. Even neighbors… Well, I’m not really sure, I’ve never had any concerns [about what they say].

Baba: I have the one advantage that often, when things go wrong, and two parties speak, and to one party I have said okay, the other party, they also accept it. So that way, I know that if I have accepted something nobody would say or make a remark that would be negative.

Maa: Everybody says that, “If he agrees, than it is okay.”

Baba: I knew that my children will not make a mistake or take a wrong position knowingly. And if even they have taken a wrong position knowingly, I would scold them in private, but I would stand by them.

GG: Baba, do you want to say something about the first time you met me? I came with Bear [my father’s golden lab]…

Baba: Yeah, what I remember, is that I had my own expectations. And I feel that I was quite happy that you met most of those.

Maa: But not all…

Baba: Hmmm, but, mostly. Because one this is that you were very easy-going, you were not stiff, you didn’t want to show off, that is what impressed me most.  Generally what happens is that, I feel, courtship is a process of selling.

GG: To Aditya or to you?

Baba: No, anybody. Why? You see, when it is not marriage, it is courtship… I am meeting somebody for two or three hours. I put on my best dress, my best perfume, comb my hair thrice, twice shave. That is because I want to create an impression. But in married life, what we find, early in the morning before brushing your teeth you meet your husband. So that is a completely different [thing]. Before you get into that relation,  you are trying to make an impression – like packaging of any consumer goods… The packaging is good, you accept it, only after opening do you know, uh-oh, mistake, mistake. <Baba shakes his finger>

<general laughter>

Okay. Therefore, generally, when somebody comes on such thing, my impression is that they try to impress. If elders are present in India that happens. Like when I went to meet Maa, the whole family was looking at me [to see] what I [would] do.

Maa: But, you know…

Baba: That is different! We will talk to you afterwards. You will get your chance, okay!

<general laughter>

Anything that is possible! The meals that the would-be bride has not cooked, they are produced as if she has cooked. The handiwork that she has not done, they will try to [show it off]. And if she has done, they will come running, “She has done it!” They will make her sit…

Maa: Earlier…

Baba: Okay, nowadays they don’t do it, but something like it still goes on. Therefore, I always say, that salesmanship part of it I wanted to eliminate. After that, the person I can meet, he or she is the right person. When you came, you came like a girl next door, you were very easy-going, you didn’t have the hesitation for the first time, meeting a foreigner, [meeting] Aditya’s father, and when you have got all those horrible pictures of Indian in-laws…

<general laughter>

Yet, after that, the way you came and reacted was quite good.

I wish I had arrived like the girl next door – instead, I arrived a bit sweaty from the mile & a half walk from my dad’s house to Dada’s place, where Maa and Baba were staying. But Bear got a nice long walk out of it, and I got bonus points for bringing the dog along.

GG: And so what expectation didn’t I meet? Maa said that I didn’t meet all the expectations.

Baba: No, that is what Maa has said. I have not said it as of yet.

Maa: That I will say after the interview. Off record!

I ended up badgering them into telling at least one expectation I failed to meet “on record” – but that will have to wait for the next part of the interview!

(Little do they know that if I am stymied in blogging about their dastardly actions of cleaning our house & cooking delicious meals I have no problem in getting irrationally upset about some other minor issue. For example: the fridge has been reorganized without my express permission, and the dishwasher was inefficiently loaded, resulting in one less cup being washed than if I had loaded it. I’m still reeling!)

Since I haven’t had a chance to sit down and think through a post lately, I thought I’d share with you the transcript I’ve typed up in spare minutes from an NPR segment called Intercultural Relationships: Can They Work?. I’m not a professional transcriber, so there may be errors – but I figured something was better than nothing for those of you who can’t (or don’t like to) listen to podcasts. The segment (and my post title) was developed from an article in East West Magazine. The article, which you can find here, is quite complimentary to the NPR segment, and I encourage you to read it as well as the transcript below. I’ve bolded the parts I find particularly interesting, and will post my thoughts on it tomorrow in the comments section.

[Begin transcript]

NPR: It’s time for a regular visit with one of our cultural coaches. Today: “You’re marrying him?” Wedding season is around the corner; brides and grooms will be blushing their way down aisles across America. So what better time to ask an expert about what you might need to know if you’re heading to commitment with a person with a different racial or ethnic background? We got this idea from our friends at East West Magazine; the April/May issue has a feature called “To hug or not to hug” about how to handle that all-important meeting with the parents.

And joining us now from Phoenix is Anita Malik. She is editor of East West Magazine. And from her office in Poughkeepsie, New York, we’re pleased to be joined by Lubna Somjee, a psychologist; she’s quoted in the article. Thanks for being here ladies!

Anita, why did you commission this article? You must have been hearing about this from readers or perhaps from personal experience?

Anita: A little bit of both. Actually, simply put, interracial marriages and couplings are growing at a very increasing rate and we tend to focus with that a lot with the magazine, but had never done anything where – how do you deal with this within your own family and with your parents? And that was something we were hearing from readers, that, you know, it’s great to know that the statistics are there, and that this is happening, but how do we deal with it in our own lives, with our own unique circumstances?

NPR: And Dr. Somjee, you are offering tips – or you offered some tips in the magazine – but in the years in which you’ve been practicing, and you’ve worked with couples around these issues, are there some classic cultural clashes that you’ve seen?

Dr. Somjee: Yes, I mean, I’ve definitely seen some classic cultural clashes. Although many times, people have been able to sort of work through them. One of the classic issues is when neither parties have sort of prepped themselves for what to expect when they meet the parents. They think they have, but they really haven’t. Although most of the time those meetings have gone fairly well, in spite of.

NPR: Is that really the case? I just wonder whether, over the course of your practice, do most of the couples that come to you, do they eventually stay together, or do you see couples breaking up because of these differences?

Dr. Somjee: Most of the couples I see do stay together, but I would not say that it was very rare that some couples would break up. For example, a young couple I worked with had an interracial union and met each other’s families, and it wasn’t until they met each other’s families that it sort of punctuated for them how different their backgrounds were. And they came home, and for the first time had a much more serious, in-depth discussion of how their culture impacts their every day lives and realized how different their views were on a lot of things. And unfortunately, for that couple, their differences were irreconcilable.

NPR: Anita, you mention in the article, I’m sorry, which I know you didn’t write, but, you know, you edited it, that in every culture meeting the parents can be kind of fraught with anxiety, but in the Asian culture, in couples where there may be an Asian or Asian-American partner, it can be particularly stressful. Why is that?

Anita: Asian immigrant parents typically have a very set view of who their children should marry. It’s a different type of relationship, but every family has their own traditions, and sometimes a lot of that becomes very, very specific to what the parents want. It’s just a very different child-parent relationship. It gets a little bit more tricky, and so it can be difficult.

NPR: What were some of the scenarios that were described in the article? I thought it was hilarious, actually…

Anita: There’s a lot of humor to this too, and I think that’s the important lesson: that you need to be able to actually laugh at yourself when you make – you’re going to make faux pas when you meet the parents. But the title of the piece actually comes from one scenario where both parts of the couple were Asian, from two different countries. And one family was very warm… the parents wanted to hug everybody, and the other family couldn’t really handle the hugs. And so that became an issue between the couple, and they finally came to a point where they said, “Well, this is how my family is going to be, and this is how your family is going to be, and they’re going to have to work it out.”

NPR: So, Dr. Somjee, help us here. In a situation like that, where the parents are meeting for the first time, what advice do you offer to make it go smoothly? Or maybe, maybe making it go smoothly isn’t the whole point of the thing, just to be honest. I don’t know – tell us.

Dr. Somjee: When you’re meeting someone’s family, knowing what their ethnic background is, or their racial background or religion obviously is important, but it’s only a first basic step. And really, the most important thing to understand is, what is that family’s relationship to each of its cultural variables. Otherwise you kinda get on a slippery slope in terms of making assumptions to stereotyping.

NPR: So how would that information best be acquired? Do you try to be very explicit with the partner and say, “Alright, are your parents huggers or not? Will they expect me to bring a present? If so, what kind?”

Dr. Somjee: There’s a couple ways to do that. One is, you know, get a sense of what the expectations of the meeting are from your significant other. Is it going to be a casual or formal get together? But the other piece of it is, your significant other is often steeped in their own culture so things that may be commonplace to them, they may not even think to tell you. And I think one of the best ways to get information from your significant other is through storytelling. Try to have your significant other tell you stories that illustrate different occasions in your family, or different traditions in the family.

NPR: I have an email that I wanted to share with both of you, ladies. And it says:

“This might be a good question for your coach. I just had a second date with a lovely professional woman who was born in and raised in Sapporo, Japan. She now works in the same East Coast city that I do. Our third date is this weekend. I’m a professional African-American man. What should I know about the Asian approach to dating? Is there such a thing? The first date ended in her bowing, when in Rome, I thought, so I bowed too. The second date ended with a hug & a smile, so I hugged her and smiled back. So far, so good I’m thinking. We’re able to talk for hours… but what do I need to keep in mind?”

So, who wants to start, Anita, is this a common scenario among readers?

Anita: Yeah, I think so. Apparently she’s a little more traditional. It sounds like she actually has immigrated from Japan and not necessarily born here and in that case, I think he just really needs to ask her. But I would say, speak to her about how her family would feel… ahead of time.

NPR: Interesting. Dr. Somjee, what do you think?

Dr. Somjee: Part of it depends on, are you dating to date, or are you dating to marry? Because if someone is asked that question & is scared off by it, at least you know where they are in terms of their dating and what they want from it.

NPR: So what I’m hearing you say is, “ask the questions sooner rather than later”.

Dr. Somjee: Absolutely.

NPR: I’m so glad I’m married.

Anita: Hard, isn’t it, this dating thing.

NPR: It is hard! You all have my respect. Dr. Somjee, I understand you are also interculturally married. If it’s not too personal, can you offer any guidelines from your personal experience?

Dr. Somjee: Yes, I’ve been married and in a relationship with my husband for about ten years. He is white and I am South Asian and I actually come from a community where arranged marriages are absolutely still the norm. So when my husband was to meet my parents, I prepped myself… and I prepped my parents.

NPR: What about persons who perhaps weren’t welcomed so warmly into the fold? How would you advise them to move beyond that?

Dr. Somjee: One thing is, you know, you may have an opportunity to meet the family again and again. And if so, take advantage of those opportunities by getting to know them better. You know, unfortunately, there may be some families who ultimately say, “You know what, we cannot do this. No matter how nice you may be, no matter how much we like you in general, this is not something we can accept in our family.” And at this point you as a couple have to decide whether you’re willing to take the risk, and those are hard questions you’ll have to ask yourself before you even start this process.

NPR: But, hard questions that have to be asked.

Dr. Somjee: Yeah.

[End Transcript]

I’d love to hear everyone thoughts on this NPR piece, and the accompying article from East West Magazine. Good advice, bad advice? Is “ask questions sooner rather than later” a good policy to follow? Anyone tried storytelling as a way to learn about family customs?

(And no, it’s not all small stuff – but there’s more small stuff than the amount of complaining would suggest.)

I was inspired to write this rant piece after reading a blog post over at Diary of a White Indian Housewife called Indian Men Being Hand Fed By Mummy, that, well, surprised me with the attitude of cultural bias or ethnocentrism it seemed to be expressing:

I’m fully aware that Indian mothers often hand feed their sons until they are quite old. However, I was shocked (and even a little appalled) that an adult man could still be getting hand fed by his mother!
…
Now, I’m wondering what is normal in India in relation to this kind of behaviour. What will happen when the 30 year old Peter Pan man, who’s still being hand fed, gets married. Will his wife be expected to take over feeding duties? Or will his mother keep doing it? Or, will he finally become a grown up and start feeding himself?

I generally love Sharell’s posts, which is why I was so surprised at the overtones of ethnocentrism in the words above (do be sure to over to her site to read the full post in context – and note that the post is tagged “culture shock”). Ethnocentrism, by the way, can most simply be seen as an attitude that judges other cultures relative to your own. And while it can be very difficult to shake these sort of prejudices and generalizations – as I’ve blogged about before – I do think it’s important to constantly evaluate our thoughts on other cultures to see if we’re letting our natural ethnocentrism run a bit too wild.

In this case, before you go all, “Dude, who does that?” on me about the hand feeding thing, take a deep breath, and run through the three point checklist of the official Intercultural Quirks Harm Test:

1. Does the behavior itself hurt anyone?
2. If you didn’t know the behavior was occurring, would it affect you in any way?
3. Is the behavior a significant disruption in your relationship?

This checklist works pretty well in helping me, at least, figure out when I’m being a bit too judgmental about a cultural behavior that really isn’t worth being bugged about.  (Of course, there are bigger, more problematic intercultural differences that you do need to address to keep your relationship running smoothly, but that’s not the topic of discussion today.)

So, being hand-fed by your mom after puberty. That’s the topic of discussion, especially since when I asked Aditya whether he still got this treatment, he got a goofy little happy grin on his face, and said “sometimes.” And, to just keep things fair and balanced, I’ll admit to behavior that shocked Aditya when I first told him: I only talked to my parents on the phone once during the nine months I lived and worked in Germany. And that once was on my 18th birthday. Yeah, my family kinda takes the whole American “adult child is independent from parents” thing to a bit of an extreme.

Is anyone being harmed by the action?

This is the key question you should ask yourself first – and no coping out by complaining about the psychic pain you feel when you see your spouse being hand-fed by his mother. Is anyone getting really hurt – either physically or emotionally? Remember to step outside of yourself and your cultural framework and look to see if there’s actual harm occurring or just your own assumptions about what is and isn’t harmful.

Americans might look at an adult being hand-fed, and think that he’s emotionally stunted and immature – while I’m pretty certain that Aditya and his mother just see it as way to be close and show love and affection. On the other hand, I’m pretty certain my parents thought they were showing their love by letting me stand on my own two feet while I lived in Germany, without them breathing down my neck with phone calls all the time. The lack of phone calls suited me just fine – but Aditya was horrified when he found out how little we spoke to one another. His family would be extremely hurt if he called them so rarely.

If you didn’t know it was happening, would the ripple effects still bug you?

Obviously, if you’re in a position to get your knickers in a knot about an intercultural quirk, you know about the behavior. But let’s go hypothetical for a moment, and imagine you didn’t know. Would the behavior still matter? Clearly, there are cases where it would – Aditya could expect me to feed him like his mother does, which would affect our relationship (negatively) even if I never knew his mother still hand feeds him. Or I could upset his family by talking with them on the phone as little as I do with my own parents.

However, if this odd cultural behavior of your significant other doesn’t clearly affect your life – if you wouldn’t know about it if you hadn’t seen or heard about it yourself – then it’s a bit silly to let your ethnocentric perception of the behavior to rule over your relationship.  In other words, I shouldn’t think Aditya is childish or immature just because his mother still feeds him – unless his actions in our relationship give me reason to think otherwise. Likewise, Aditya would be wrong to judge me as unloving or uncaring about family members just because I don’t speak to my family that often on the phone – it’s just that we don’t feel the need to talk much on the phone.

Is it something that irritates you, regardless?

Okay – so the behavior isn’t damaging or hurting anyone, and the behavior alone doesn’t affect your relationship – so how could it still be causing a significant disruption in your relationship? Well… people are funny creatures. Sometimes certain things just bug us, even if there’s no actual harm that they cause.

This isn’t a cultural quirk – just a personal one – but, for example, Aditya has a remarkable ability to hide his socks around the house in the process of taking them off at the end of a long day. I don’t know how he manages to end up with them wedged between the two bookcases, or bunched in the technology odds & ends basket, or in a feat of what must be magic, hidden beneath the 50-pound bag of dog food in the closet, but, somehow, he does it every night after coming home from work. It drives me spare! It’s not like it harms anything, since, really, what’s one more misplaced item in the mess of dog toys and papers strewn across our chaotic household? It’s completely irrational for me to be bugged about it, especially since he’s quick to pick it up when I point out a misplaced sock to him. But, nonetheless, it’s one of his most irritating habits to me – and so it’s one he’s working on changing, simply because I’ve let him know how much it happens to bug me.

So, far be it for me to say that you should never get your knickers in a twist over something irrational. But don’t let yourself pretend that a dislike of a particular difference – cultural or not – is based on something rational when it’s not. You might really dislike seeing your spouse hand-fed by his mother; maybe it just weirds you the heck out. That’s fine – I’m not going to judge you on that. But just because something weirds you out doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. And so, if you can, just ignore those little things that irritate or worry you. (Obviously I can’t with The Misplaced Socks. Proof #3152 that I am still not a demigoddess. But we should all keep trying.) If there’s no harm – either to the people doing it or to your relationship through the ripple effect – then just take a deep breath (spend it ranting for a few minutes in the forums, then take another deep breath), straighten out those underoos, and live and let live.

“Are you going to wear sindoor today?” You should! – you look so beautiful when you wear it!”

And, almost always, I mumble something that amounts to “no, not today.”

It’s not that I don’t like sindoor in and of itself. The fine, red powder – which is traditionally worn daily by married Hindu women at the front of the center part in their hair – is fine in my books. It’s not a custom I grew up with, but I don’t think it looks bad – just different. And, yeah, sure, I have a tendency to smear it all over my forehead within an hour of application. Whatever – I do that with my eyeliner & mascara most days too, making raccoon eyes a signature Gori look.

No, my problem with wearing sindoor is that most days I’m headed into work. Where there are a fair number of Indian people. And none of them wear traditional Indian clothing, except for the occasional short kurta – certainly there isn’t any sindoor-wearing going on amoung the married ladies! One older Bengali coworker even expressed amazement that I followed the “old-fashioned” tradition of wearing a loha – a gold-plated iron bangle that serves as a wedding ring among Bengali women – on my left wrist daily.

On the other hand, though, when we have people from the Delhi office visiting headquarters, they love that I wear bangles, that I have kurtas in my regular office clothes rotation, and that I occasionally wear sindoor. (Sidenote: when one of said Delhi office coworkers messaged me with a software question that started with a “yaar, how does one…”, I was pretty thrilled at the implied familiarity. Of course, I couldn’t answer his question, since our computer software is acutally composed of ancient cryptic riddles in text files, not understandable data.)

On the third hand (yes, yes, I know), the last time I wore sindoor to the office, my boss wanted to know if I needed a band-aid for the cut on my head. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Does anyone else have problems with this?

I think I’ll be sticking to wearing sindoor strictly outside of the office from here on out.  Or put in for a transfer to Delhi.

What does gori mean?

The following was derived from Aditya’s lengthy comments on the etymology of the word gori – be thankful that I’m sparing you all of the tangential diatribes that developed during our conversation.

Gori is a Hindi adjective that literally means “fair” or “light-complexioned”. The i at the end of the word is a feminine conjugation, so gori is often used as a noun, with the subject being understood without explicit reference. In this slightly looser interpretation of the word, gori can mean “pale female”, “fair woman”, or even “white girl”. The masculine version of gori is gora, which can be translated as white man. Since I’m awfully pale-skinned, at least in the winter, gori can be rightly used as an adjective to describe me, or as a noun in reference me.

How is gori used in real life?

In the comments section referenced above there was a bit of discussion on the connotations that “gori” carries. I’m not Indian, I don’t speak Hindi, and I’ve not spent much time in India, so I can’t answer this question adequately from personal experiences alone. I’ve heard the word used in a positive manner to reference the female lead of a Bollywood film. I’ve also heard both gori and gora used in a neutral manner to describe white Europeans and Americans. Aditya occasionally uses it (positively, I hope!) as a pet name for me, particularly when we’re looking over old photos where the camera flash has emphasized the differences in our skin tones.

I’ve also heard that gori or gora can have some negative connotations. Aditya maintains that, without context attached, it’s a neutral word – I think he compared it to the profession of engineering, which can be seen as a great job with wonderful prospects, or a career which only boring, socially-stunted people are attracted to, but is really just, you know, a job. Another Indian friend wrote to me about gori, saying that

In Indian context it refers sorta playfully/even a little pejoratively at times to a pretty or attractive girl, depending on context. Otherwise it becomes a euphemism for white people or foreigners, also perhaps a little pejoratively.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the connotations, if any, that gori might have – like I said above, I don’t have the background to present myself as any sort of expert on this.

Finally, in any discussion about the word gori as used by Indians, it should be pointed out that in India (like in many other countries), fair skin is considered beautiful or ideal by many people. The image attached to this post is from an advertisement for a bleaching cream that Indian woman use to lighten their skin. For a good discussion of this issue (I personally don’t want to get into it right now), check out this blog post.

The reasons why I chose Gori Girl

There were a few main reasons that made me think that gorigirl.com would be a good choice for this blog.

The domain name was available

Finding a short, easy-to-remember domain name that is somewhat related to your website topic can be a difficult prospect in the current internet economy. We’re no longer in the good ol’ days of 1998 where most words – or at least phrases – were available. Nowadays the rights to a good domain name can be sold for a lot of money (pizza.com recently went for $2.6 million), so speculators purchase names en mass in the hopes that some company will eventually buy it off them. When I was in the planning stages for this blog Aditya and I bounced a few names around, and Gori Girl, as the first name we thought of that was still available, won out.

“Gori Girl” is a good signal of the blog’s content

The name might be a bit confusing, but, then, navigating intercultural relationships can be too! First off, the gori sounds foreign to English ears, because it is, of course. People familiar with Hindi (or other Indian languages) will realize that the content has something to do with India. But by attaching “girl” to the gori (and yes, essentially saying girl twice), the title becomes a little slangy, and more than a little Western. This blog is about the mingling of cultures, so it seems appropriate that the title mingles languages. Plus, at least to my ear, “gori girl” rolls off the tongue in a way that sounds casual and fun – which is the attitude I try to project here (when I don’t let the little academic in me run wild talking about theory).

Being “the white girl” has been a big – and confusing – part of my life

For those of you who haven’t read the relevant sections of this blog, I grew up in Silicon Valley, California, which is an incredibly diverse area, with a lot of first and second-generation immigrants from Asia. I’m used to being the only white person around – “the white girl” if you will. The shopping center around the corner from my house? All Chinese or Taiwanese shops, except for the British pub. The high school “academic-y” crowd I hung out with? There were three other people besides me who were white Americans – and two of them were guys. Everyone else was Asian or first-generation Eastern European immigrants. And this wasn’t because I just liked hanging out with “the ethnic people” – it was because there were only “ethnic people” in the honors or AP classes I took. Even the extracurriculars I took – marching band, math club, volunteer tutoring at a local elementary school, Junior Engineering Technical Society (yes, nerdy, I know – I once aspired to be a boring, socially-stunted engineer) – were filled with non-white people.

This upbringing has made me quite aware of race, but in a way that’s different from what you’d expect. For instance, I’m more comfortable being the “token white person” than being surrounded by other white Americans. (It took me a couple of months to figure out why I was feeling slightly on edge at my predominantly white Midwestern college.) My white friends and I would joke about becoming eggs – white on the outside, yellow on the inside – but, frankly, if you didn’t incorporate part of the pan-Asian culture of the schoolyard, you were going to be left out of a lot of conversations, events, and fun times.

But the oddest part of this all is that I’m not even entirely white. Yes, my skin is quite pale in the winter – to the point where I look a bit ill if I don’t make sure to regularly put on tanning moisturizer. But in the summer I can get pretty good tan going – which comes from my Mexican grandfather and the bit of Native American blood sloshing around from both sides of my family. Unfortunately, my grandfather and grandmother (who is a French-Canadian immigrant) didn’t want to their children to be anything other than American born-and-bred. The end result is that the cultural part of my heritage from their side was wiped out in a single generation.

Writing as Gori Girl reminds me that, while I’m seen as white by strangers, I’m really a rather mixed-up person, just like the name. Yes, I’m white, but I’m also brown on the outside when the sun shines (enough that I get chatted up in Spanish during the summer), and I’ll always have a yellow-brown tinge on the inside.

So how does this relate to intercultural relationships?

A person in an intercultural relationship is going to pick up some of his partner’s culture, just like I picked up on the culture of my friends’ as a child. It’s inevitable – I touched on this idea briefly in a post a couple of day’s back. However, how much is picked up will depend on a lot of a factors, including each person’s personality, comfort levels, the surrounding dominant culture, and, of course, each person’s desires. Some couples will end up creating a relationship where one culture is dominant, while others will work towards some sort of compromise, picking from the best of each.

Personally, I think that a compromise is the way to go – but it’s a careful balancing act. My grandparents’ actions, while quite typical for the time, went way too far in one direction – they submersed themselves in the American culture surrounding them, leaving my mother, aunts, and uncles with very little to connect them to their family history. And my grandparents lost a little part of themselves too.

I don’t want that to happen with Aditya – and it’d certainly be easy enough, given that we live in the US, and are not particularly involved in any Indian community. Although he is quite Indian in outlook, he “passes” very well as an American, even though he’s only been in the US for six years – so well, in fact, that I can often forget that I’m in an intercultural relationship. He speaks with an American accent, knows most of the cultural references (his English Lit major and love of TV helps big time here), and appreciates a lot of American things. Case in point: it took over a month for him and his coworkers to realize that his avatar for their office wii (yes, I know…) was white, while the other Indians in the office had dark brown avatars.

So I’ve made efforts to incorporate Indian things into our household to keep “US-ness” from running us over. And, in some ways, this is an expression of my own Asiannified background too. But just like my grandparents, I need to be careful to keep from throwing everything into of myself into his culture – and that means keeping around those both the American AND pan-Asian things from my childhood that I appreciate and enjoy. And I share them with Aditya, just like he shares his culture with me.

So for all of you who are embracing your partners’ cultures: I absolutely applaud your efforts, but do be careful to not forget yourself in the process.

Many people subscribe to the idea that your personal life is nobody’s business but your own – as long as you aren’t maiming others, anyways. While I generally agree with the sentiment this idea expresses, I also think it’s important to realize that, like it or not, your actions affect a wide swath of people. In fact, at the margin, your actions affect the entire world.

Let’s all pause for a moment to ponder that grandiose thought while breaking out into The Circle of Life.

Everyone back? Good. I brought up this topic because being in an intercultural relationships has a tendency to disrupt the “social equilibrium,” if you will, of the people around you. In almost every country and region an intercultural relationship is the exception, not the norm. So while being in any relationship might affect those close to you – my dad still hasn’t gotten over the fact that I’m no longer his little girl – intercultural relationships are both a regular ol’ relationship and something of a challenge to the status quo. As if romantic relationships weren’t tough enough on their own!

In this post I’m focusing on how intercultural relationships, in particular, affect those around us. I’ll start out by laying out a (non-comprehensive) list of the type of people who can be affected by your intercultural marriage or relationship, continue with how these effects ripple out through the social web of life, and then finish up with how much you should really care about it all. This post developed as I thought about how parents can react to their children’s intercultural relationships – I’ll be applying the principles and theory I develop here to that post, which will be the next “serious” one.

So just who is affected?

I wrote above that everyone is affected, and I do believe that. I’m not trying to say that an intercultural or interracial marriage is a political event (now, at least), or that couples in intercultural relationships are dating to change the world through their example – almost all intercultural couples are in it for love, not ideological reasons, according to at least one study. The way people are affected, however, depends on their relationship to you. With that in mind, I’m going to break it down into different categories that helps me mentally organize these ideas – but remember that this is not meant to be comprehensive.

1. You
   Hah – you thought I’d just be talking about other people, right? Nope – an intercultural relationship is going to change you, and those changes are going to affect everyone you know. These changes can be fairly superficial – new recipes in the kitchen, foreign language films on the netflix list – or they can be deep and life-changing – a different religion, different priorities, or a home in a new country. And this is in addition to the typical mental stretching that happens in any relationship.While you’re probably okay with the changes that are happening due to your intercultural relationship – otherwise, you’d change or end the relationship – others around you might not be. Or they might just be surprised by the parts of your personality – parts that have always been there – that become more prominent in the light of your new relationship.Personally, while I don’t feel like any deep part of me was changed through my relationship with Aditya, there were a lot of minor changes that did occur. And at least some members of my family were alarmed by this – early in our relationship, one person even came to me to tell me that she was worried Aditya was planning to take me off to India and make me, uh, an Indian housewife with no rights, or something. *shrug* I have no idea where that came from.
2. Your Partner
   The guy or gal in your life is being stretched by your intercultural relationship, just like you are. And those changes can freak out his family, friends, and acquaintances too. Occasionally you might get blamed by your partner’s family or friends as the cause of changes they dislike or fear. It may be hard to hear, but in some ways, they are right to blame you – if she hadn’t met you, she probably wouldn’t have changed in just those ways, at least not at that time. But just because you’re the cause of those changes doesn’t mean that you’ve done something wrong, unless you’ve forced your partner to change in ways he didn’t want to. And at this point I put in the obligatory warning that you’ve heard from anyone and everyone regarding relationships: don’t get into one with the intention to change your partner. It just doesn’t turn out well.
3. Close Family and Friends
   There are a few ways that those who are close to you can change because of your intercultural marriage or relationship. First, their beliefs about the “proper” way different races or cultures should interact might be challenged. Maybe they’ll become more accepting of intercultural interactions – but maybe they’ll become worse. A relative of mine, for instance, once told me point-blank that he thought that I shouldn’t ever date a black or African-American man, since that would just be wrong. I actually did date a black guy after this comment, but didn’t tell this relative, since it was a very casual, short-lived thing and I wasn’t interested in a fight with said relative. I do wonder what would have happened if I had told the relative, though – would his thoughts on the matter have changed?Second, those who are close to you might also change their ways because of their new exposure to your partner’s culture. My mom loves all the little details she has picked up about Indian culture through her son-in-law. She’s also in line (after me) to learn some Indian cooking from Maa.Third, family and friends are affected by the changes in you and your partner (depending on whose family and friends they are). If your partner changes substantially, for instance, it may be that his parents and siblings feel less connected to him.
4. Extended Family and Acquaintances
   By “extended family” here, I mean family members who are not particularly close to you or your significant other – not the type of extended family where a third cousin is as close as a brother. These are people who are less affect by changes in you, and more affected by changes in your status as seen by others. Maybe your intercultural relationship convinces a younger cousin that is now “okay” to do that in your culture, so she starts dating the cute white boy she’s friends with. Or maybe simply knowing a person in an intercultural relationship makes an acquaintance think a bit deeper about race relationships. These are small changes, but in the aggregate they matter.
5. The people of your subculture, or those of your partner’s subculture
   These are people who don’t even know you, but share your culture. How could they possibly be affected by your personal relationship? Well, one example that springs to my mind is the dying out of languages around the world. When a person chooses to date or marry outside of their culture, often (not always!) they or their children lose parts of their native culture. Language is one example of this. The Jewish community’s efforts to maintain their culture in the face of a significant amounts of intermarriage is another example.
6. “Society”
   My general catch-all for people who don’t fit into those other categories. As I stated above, if you’re in an intercultural relationship in a place where it’s uncommon, whether you choose to or not, you’re making a general statement to society that intercultural relationships are okay. And bit by bit, this can change people’s opinions on the matter.

The Ripple Effect

But the changes don’t stop just here. As each person changes, it affects their relationship with everyone else. The social equilibrium has become unbalanced, and everything will shift about a bit to regain a new equilibrium. This is what I’m calling the Ripple Effect – the effects of your intercultural relationship will ripple through the social web of everyone around you. As your partner changes, for instance, his relationship with his parents will change – and this is something that they might worry about. And if your partner’s parents change, their relationship to their other children might change. Aditya’s parents, for instance, were softened up for my appearance by his brother’s intercultural marriage to a Punjabi Indian.

Other ripples that you might worry about are pressures from “society” or acquaintances or even extended family on your close family or friends for “allowing” your intercultural relationship. Your family is now the-family-with-the-intercultural-relationship, and others may see that as good or as bad.

A person affected ≠ a person who cares much

The vast majority of “society” that you pass on the street probably doesn’t care that they’re affected a teeny tiny bit by your intercultural marriage. Some close friends of mine couldn’t give a hoot that I’m in an intercultural relationship, even though it does affect them through me (mostly because of my Coffy Bite supply). I’m not sure if my brother has ever even realized that Aditya is Indian – he’s completely oblivious to (major) things like that. Just because someone is affected by an intercultural relationship doesn’t mean that they’ll care much – and even if they care, they may not say anything. It’ll depend on their personalities, their feelings and background in intercultural undertakings, and any number of other idiosyncratic things.

A person who cares ≠ you caring about their cares

Even if a person cares a lot about the fact that they’re affected by your intercultural relationship doesn’t mean that you need to care about their opinion. I’ve had a couple of random people tell me that I shouldn’t date outside my race, and that they were personally offended that I was doing so, and making it seem more acceptable to society at large. I don’t particularly care that they’re upset about this. I’m A-okay, in fact. I bet most of you are too!

If someone close to me was upset about the effects of my intercultural relationship on them, it’d be a little different, of course. I’m lucky enough that I’ve never been put into that situation – no one who’s opinion mattered to me has ever suggested that my intercultural relationship was affecting them negatively. Of course, these sort of situations do occur – we’ve all heard the stories of Indian parents, for instance, losing social status within their communities because of intercultural relationships. I imagine there might even be a few people who sniff at my inlaws for allowing their son to marry a Gori – luckily Maa and Baba aren’t the type to care about that, either.

Before I sign off on this huge post, I’d like to make one thing very clear: I’m not condoning racism in any way, shape or form. Racism is an evil thing, and people who have issues with your intercultural relationship because of their racist views should be told where to shove it, in my opinion. But there’s a difference between someone disliking an intercultural relationship because of the (true) negatives affects it might have on him or other entities he cares about, and disliking it because you’re a racist or just don’t like people of different cultures mixing. My point here was to make it clear that, because of the wide-ranging, rippled effects that your relationship might have others, there are legitimate concerns they might raise about your relationship. I personally believe that the benefits from an intercultural relationship – or heck, any relationship where two people love each – almost always outweighs any of the possible negatives, but others’ opinions might differ.

Seriously, though – where is the line between just doing things a little differently, and being from two different cultures?

Here on Gori Girl, we’re pretty open about the definition of an intercultural relationship (henceforth ICR). Since culture is a broad, nebulous thing, finding someone of a different culture to be in a relationship with isn’t that hard to do. “Relationship”, by the way, is also a broad, nebulous concept, but we’re not going to get into that. If you think you’re in a relationship, be it hetro, homo, platonic, “it’s complicated” on facebook, or whatever else, then you are, as far as I’m concerned. One concept at a time, and today’s focus is on the intercultural part of ICR.

The best succinct definition of ICRs I’ve found comes from the first essay in the book Adjustment in Intercultural Marriage (see the ICR resource page). In speaking about intercultural marriages – it works equally well for ICR – Dr. Maretzki states that:

By intercultural marriage, we mean the marriage which takes place between spouses of different cultural backgrounds. They may be different in their values, beliefs, customs, traditions or style of life so that cultural dimension are a relatively significant aspect of such marriages. (emphasis mine)

This is the definition I’ll have in mind whenever I refer to an ICR. It’s a bit complicated, though, so I offer the following as a good rule of thumb:

if you and your high fiber good friend are of different ethnicities/races, religions, or nationalities, you’re probably (but not necessarily) in an intercultural relationship.

Working off of the more formal definition, most people can understand why you’d count as an ICR if you and your partner differ in one or more of the above three traits. But why the “not necessarily”? Well, sometimes, a difference in one (or more) of the “Big Three” simply doesn’t affect the relationship much.

For example, my parents were raised in two different faiths by two very religious families: Dad grew up in a Protestant denomination, and Mom was Catholic. Although they’re both Christian faiths, many a bloody war has been started because of the differences between the two. If my parents had stayed very religious, I have no doubt that these differences would have been a significant aspect of their relationship – and thus they would have been in an ICR. However, their religious upbringings didn’t really “take” with either one of them, and by the time Mom met Dad in college they were both rather irreligious, if still nominally Catholic and Protestant. Although they were raised in different religious cultures, these cultural differences didn’t affect their relationship in any measurable way.

Most resources that discuss ICRs typically define them using nationality, ethnicity/race, religion, or a combination of the three. Since Aditya and I don’t share any of the “Big Three” traits (well, I’ve kinda converted to Hinduism – more on that in a future post), I’ll be discussing all of these issues in the future. However, if you and your partner are similar in the Big Three, but are nonetheless struggling with cultural issues, well, you count as an ICR too. Welcome to the group!

For those of you who only have milk-heating disagreements – my deepest sympathies are with you (you being those who righteously champion cold milk), but I’m afraid that milk preferences aren’t quite significant enough for the relationship as a whole to put you in the ICR category.

***Using microwaved whole milk on his cold cereal – #2 in a continuing series of Ways Aditya Ruins Good Food. #1 is in the About Page, if you’re wondering. Personally, I’m in the camp of ice cold skim milk, but I’ll condone 1%, or even 2%, as long as it’s kept cold. Putting your milk in the microwave to be warmed just crosses the line, though at least Aditya doesn’t like it super warm. True fact: when Kellogg’s came to India, they had to change the formula for their corn flakes so that they stayed crispy in the quite warm (we’re talking above room-temperature here!!) milk most Indians preferred to use.