“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.

South Asian women in intercultural relationships

More than one reader has written in asking whether I knew of anyone in an intercultural relationship where the paring was Indian woman and [blank] guy, since some of the difficulties these couples face can be different from those seen by a South Asian dude and [blank] gal. I personally don’t know any of these couples in real life – not seriously committed, anyways – but I do know that there are a few readers here who of these pairings (obviously – since more than one person wrote in!). So, if you’re interested in starting a discussion on the particular problems faced by these couples, speak up – this thread’s for you! Alternatively, if you’re a bit too shy to discuss the topic here, you can email me (gorigirl.admin.com) or use the contact form on the Got a Question? page, and I’ll pass along your contact information to those who were enquiring.

The following websites and article might also be of interest to couples where one person is an Indian woman. I’m only showing the pick of the litter – you can find more on the Intercultural Resources page:

• MasalaCouples – a livejournal community featuring South Asian mixed marriages and relationships where I know there are a few couples of this paring.
• Bucking tradition and following the path of my heart – an article written by a young Indian woman about dating outside of her race.
• Marriage of True Minds – an article from beliefnet discussing the intercultural relationships and weddings of three South Asian women
• The United Colors of Desi -  an article discussing intercultural marriage with a few couples of the above type profiled.

Nepalis in intercultural relationships

Another reader is looking for couples where one person is Nepalese. She writes:

I was wondering if you have any readers or friends who are in an intercultural relationship that is American-Nepali. A lot of reading material out there talks about South Asian relationships that are American-Indian, which I enjoy and extrapolate all that I can from, but it would be nice to have others to talk to that are in the same situation. There are SO many Nepalis in the US these days, I am sure there are a lot out there!

So, same deal here – I don’t know of any Nepali-other couples (all my Nepalese friends are currently loving the single life), but perhaps one of the readers here does?

There also aren’t a lot of resources – that I could find – out there for interracial/intercultural couples where one partner is Nepali. This site, aimed at explaining Nepali culture to Canadians, has a few interesting bits, including some recommend fiction, but nothing focused on intercultural relationships. On that topic, I could only find this article, called Cultural Crisscross, which is nice, but not very long. If anyone else knows of articles that might be of use, be sure to comment below.