The Big, Bad, Blonde Bahu Blog

The Dreams that "Dreaming in Hindi" Inspires

2012-01-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

A while back, I finished reading Dreaming in Hindi. It's been a while since I studied any Hindi. I did a little while my MIL while still here, but all my attempts to speak it were shot down (being interrupted and rudely corrected in the middle of a sentence you've spent time trying to construct is not helpful, in fact it is confidence shattering--most people do better with SOME positive reinforcement every once in a while), laughed at, or dismissed.

Anyway, I was really down, stressed, anxious, and depressed for a while--not about language learning, obviously--other things, but now even my therapist says she can hear hope in my voice, which is a great relief to hear. It's hard to be motivated to learn when you are down, so I'm slowly trying to get myself back on the language acquisition bandwagon. Lately and I've been very unhappy, but I've been having little daydreams lately about maybe someday being able to go away to India and study Hindi on my own--or a least go away to the University of Wisconsin and study it on my own for eight weeks. My therapist said something lately that made me almost want to cry. We were talking through a stress relief exercise in which you have to imagine yourself in a safe place. When I got to that safe place, that place free from danger or hurt, she said, "in this place, you don't have to be anything for anyone." I know it's not possible to go to a place and not have to be anything for anyone, but I would at least like an experience of India in which I got to be, well, able to at least be something else.

Right now, neither UW or a solo trip to India is financially possible, but I can dream. I would love to be able to go to India on my own and learn the language free from all the bahu baggage and lecture uncles. I would like to go out and see India through my own eyes rather than filtered through other people and their opinions. I would like to have my own experiences of my husband's country. It's just a dream, I know. And maybe it's kind of East Pray Love without the whole leaving your husband thing, but I would like to do some kind of study abroad for grown-ups someday. I never had the money to do it in undergrad, but I would still like to do it.

Until then, I guess I should get back to Rosetta Stone...

When Stress Catches Up With You

2011-12-23T12:49:00.000-08:00

So, I know I haven't posted in a while, but this will be a short post. Good news: MIL has gone back to India. Yay. It was such a relief to be able to just be in my own home without feeling like I was living in a panopticon.

Bad news: the stress caught up with me. The stress of a LOT of things, not just the MIL visit, caught up with me and I crashed. I'm slowly rebooting, but I should have seen this coming. I had been crying at least every other day for a few weeks and I was stressed out by a lot of things, but last Friday I woke up and my body let me know that I was depressed. I'm trying to slog through it--so much of it is a waiting game. I'm not particularly articulate or insightful right now, but I am glad to say that I can make sentences, which is helpful. I'm glad it's let up a bit for Christmas.

Welcoming a Stranger To My Strange Land

2011-11-22T11:50:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, way back when Mr. 4B and I were still dating, I was over at the apartment that Mr. 4B shared with four other graduate students. There was the lovely South Indian man who always made me tea and showed me how to cook a few things. There was the tiny little man who never spoke to anyone and eventually got deported. There was the man who lived in the living room. And there was the guy we always called, “the immortal Christmas pants” (he might need his own post at some point). I was there during some school break and found myself alone in the apartment (everyone was at class) rooting through a box of books that was at the apartment—the inevitable discards of someone who had since gone back to India and didn’t know what to do with his possessions. In that box, I found a little book published by AT&T about how to adjust to life in America. As an 18 year old, I found it funny, and probably a little shocking, to read so many things that seemed to me at the time to be really obvious.

I wish I had kept that book, but these are some of the things that I remember from it:

-Do not finish women’s sentences or try to try to speak for them in class.

-In America, it is not polite to comment on anyone’s skin color or make beauty judgments based on someone’s fairness.

-Americans generally only close doors in the house if there is a reason. If a door is closed, knock before entering.

Over the years, I have learned how essential that little manual probably was to someone’s adjustment to the U.S. and how difficult it really is to get settled in an entirely foreign place. Of course, to someone new to the US, nothing in that manual was obvious--it was a list of strange and foreign customs.

Over the past couple weeks, we’ve been lucky enough to help someone out a little bit while he adjusts to life in the US for the first time. I seriously think that God took pity on me and dropped two Indian Catholic priests into my life to make my life easier. On Diwali, the pastor of my Church (Indian man) came over for food and brought another Indian priest over with him. It turned out that this new priest had only arrived in the country about 16 hours earlier. He was completely jet-lagged and falling asleep on the couch, but I think it was a relief for him to be in someone’s home eating familiar food and hearing familiar accents. Of course Mr. 4B and I are especially sympathetic to the plight of a stranger in a strange land and want to help him out as much as possible. My MIL, as I have learned, loves cooking for men (you know how everybody has that Grandmother or aunty who just LOVES to cook for the boys? My MIL is one of those). So even though these men are priests from my Church, nothing makes her happier than cooking huge amounts of food for them. (Honestly, I think it’s the only time I’ve ever seen her genuinely happy).

Over the past few weeks, he has been over to our house a few times to eat, have some chaha, and watch Hindi TV. We’ve taken him to get adapters for his Indian appliances and to look at cellphones and laptops. Father F. has a lot of work to do and a lot of decisions to make. He has to get a driver’s license, buy a car (the diocese will help him with that by giving him a loan), get a cell phone, and buy a laptop. On top of all this, the diocese hasn’t told him where he will be yet. He is just hanging around at the rectory.

The thing about Father F.’s situation that really pulls at my heartstrings, however, is the cultural difference of being a priest in India versus what life is like here. Honestly, I have had very little exposure to what the lives of Christians are like in India. I’ve been a tourist in places where there are a lot of Christians (Goa + Kerala), but since my husband’s family only ever moves within Hindu circles, I don’t know much about Christian life in India. I actually never even went to mass in India because I didn’t want to create hassle and drama. Father F. told me that where he is from, which is a small, rural place, everyone lives within a 5 KM radius of the church and the priest can just walk to, and into, anybody’s house. I have heard before that in India the priest is treated like a king.

I had assumed that over the past few weeks he had been over to many American’s houses and that people has made him welcome, but I was surprised to learn that I was wrong. He has only been to one other house besides ours. I guess everyone was just assuming the same things: "someone else must have invited him", and "he must be busy," and "maybe he won't like American food, so I won’t bother."

It really made me think this past Sunday when I heard the lines in the Gospel, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” (Matthew 25:43), how hard is it to be new to a place and how lonely it can be, and how we don’t always reach out when we really should. Also, it made me think that it’s kind of amazing how much a tiny little connection—just being married to an Indian, gets me “in” with so many other Indians.

I, for one, was incredibly grateful that Father F., as well as the parish pastor whom we shall call Father X., were here to break up the strangeness of having my MIL in the house. I know that my MIL was happy to have two extra guys to cook for and that their presence made her feel useful and welcome. And I felt proud to see how generous my husband was in sharing his time, knowledge, and experience with someone so new to the country. The past few weeks have really shown me the extent to which my house is a sort of odd halfway point between India and America, even if it just seems normal for us.

Living Within the Soap Opera (Duh-duh-dun!)

2011-11-18T14:17:00.000-08:00

So, I know I haven't posted much recently. I had a lot going on that I was having trouble processing and didn't feel like writing about it quite yet. I don't think I'll say anything about the really hard stuff, other than to say that the stress of having my MIL in the house has been taking its toll on both me and Mr. 4B.

On my MIL's side, there have been outbursts and dramatic speeches and walk-outs. For the most part, she's just really bored and getting irritated more easily by smaller and smaller things.

But Mr. 4B said something a few weeks ago that was really an "Aha!" moment for me. "I wish she didn't watch those stupid, stupid soap operas. Seeing them, I can see how the crap going on in them directly impacts her behavior." It didn't take very long for me to say, "Oh, wow, you're right."

It makes a lot of sense. In her mind, if you have a problem, you should stand in the middle of the room and yell and make a speech and cry (soap opera logic). People you might not get along with are your worst enemies and MUST be plotting against you at all times (soap opera logic). Everyone is a clear-cut villain or a long-suffering victim (soap opera logic).

(Watch with caution--you will feel you IQ dropping as you watch this clip, but it might be worth it for the fake slapping fight)

I am not a soap opera person. If you are, I'm sorry, but they are just not my cup of tea. And you probably have seen enough movies and TV shows mocking the formulas of soaps to have a good sense of humor about your guilty pleasure. My MIL has no such ideas about her "serials." She takes them extremely seriously, watches them religiously, and get really into them. When Mr. 4B jokingly sings the theme song to one of them ("Pinjaraaaaaaaa!"), she gets very defensive. The plots are so off the wall that at first I didn't understand that they weren't parodies of some sort. They show where my MIL gets her ideas about how to behave, as well as the unfortunate truth that she seems unable to understand that in the real world, people do not behave like they are on soap operas.

The most ridiculous one she watches is about a woman who is tricked into marrying a blind man, so to get revenge (which is, of course, always the way to do things, right?), she pretends that she has been paralyzed from the waist down. Yeah, I know, a real Pandora's box when it comes to physical disability issues (Oh, so marrying a blind person is such a horrible thing that a sighted person would have to be tricked into marrying him? Oh, so it's OK to pretend to have a severe disability if you are doing it to get back at someone?) , but also it shows lying, tricking people, and being passive aggressive as virtuous ways to get what you want. The people in it can't act very well, either (well, I guess that's the case with soap-operas around the world), so that adds another level of insanity. Every tiny action, whether it is handing someone a cup of tea or trying on a new necklace, is invested with drama and over-the-top music. I sometimes wonder if my MIL has a soundtrack running through her head to add drama to every moment of her life. "Hmm...should I make some chaha? Dun-Dun-Dun-Duuuuun!"

As much as I don't like it, I have learned that my MIL's true language is the language of melodrama. I didn't like doing it, but the other day I decided to speak her language--and I don't mean Marathi. Instead of letting her see me feel hurt when she did some vindictive little thing (I don't even remember exactly what it was anymore--some kitchen thing), I literally threw my hands up, said, "Really? Really? This is how you behave?" and walked out of the kitchen. She was NICE to me for the rest of the day. It was really strange. I guess I just have to pretend I'm an actress in a soap opera around her so that I am operating in a manner she can decipher. I hate that.

Anyway, the past week or so has actually been OK. Mr. 4B and I go out and do things together to get out of the house and we've managed to sneak in a few meals outside the house (Mr. 4B: "I am just really craving some Burger King"). I have the gym, the laundry room, church, and dog walks as my escape. The silver lining to this visit is that Mr. 4B now wholeheartedly agrees that an 11 week visit was WAAAAY too long.

Week Five Update: Giving in to Gross

2011-10-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Recently, my fellow bloggers at A Little of That Too and Kay in India mentioned the television shows they watch that are sort of like guilty pleasures. For me, the show that I kind if wish I never watched is the highly problematic reality series Hoarders. It's one of those things that if you are home alone you might turn on while doing something else, but then you will find that you can't look away. Over the course of about forty minutes, you get to watch as the crud-filled houses and apartments of highly emotionally disturbed people are cleared out. It's a program you should never watch while eating (or even if you plan to eat in the next few hours). Also, you feel horrendously guilty about the whole thing while you watch it. You wonder if this is "tragedy porn" or if you are taking part in the exploitation of someone else's misery.

But then again, it is the only show I've ever watched that has made me want to clean my entire apartment and put together a give away bag the size of my sofa. And, yes, I'm sure that part of the appeal is that while watching it you get to have that truly terrible and truly wrong feeling of "oh, well, at least I'm not THAT badly off." It's not all bad. I mean, the show does attempt to show these poor, broken, miserable people as human beings who deserve a second chance.

What does this have to do with week five of my situation? Well, thinking about some of the people on Hoarders made me realize something about my MIL's behavior that is helping me a lot. No, my MIL is not a hoarder. She is really quite tidy about her own things (as opposed to me--I'm not very organized), but when it comes to cleanliness, she is used to living alone. I was thinking about how the hoarders just stop caring about filth because most of them live by themselves and, for whatever reason, don't think of their own filth as, well, filthy. My MIL lives by herself. If she doesn't want to wash a spoon, well, it's only her mouth that it's been in. If she wants to leave sticky handprints everywhere, it is only her hands that have touched things. She's the only one who ate off of that plate or who sits on that toilet seat. She also doesn't have to clean up right away. The bai will come and clean things up. Same with the bathroom issue. At home, she is the only one using that bathroom. No one else has to use the spaces that she uses, so she can leave them however she wants.

To me, that makes the situation make a lot more sense. She's just not used to having to live around other people anymore and there's some of the "my mess is clean" attitude at play. It is hard for me to let the kitchen be dirty because I feel like I had to teach myself to keep it clean and it was hard work. Still, the other day, I was very, very, proud of myself for just opening up a drawer, pulling out a dirty knife, potato peeler, and set or measuring spoons, washing them, using them, and washing them again as though this were normal.

Letting the Aunties Win?

2011-10-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

So, this post will either be laugh-out-loud funny or will get me flamed. We'll see what happens.

The other day I was talking to a friend and he mentioned that one of his friends, an Indian man, was divorcing his Anglo-American wife after only one year. The first thing that crossed my mind was, of course, "oh, that's so sad! Only a year!" and then the second thing that crossed my mind was, "that's letting the aunties win!"

Yeah, I know. I'm embarrassed that I thought that. But, truly, in all honesty, don't you sometimes get that feeling when you see a fellow mixed couple break up? Yes, yes, I know some relationships just aren't meant to be or aren't working, but do you ever feel that after everything you've fought for and fought through that these thing just HAVE to work? I mean, how awful is it to see someone lose something that you fought so hard for?

I just have this image of the mean old aunties, the ones who told our spouses and in-laws third-hand stories of love matches ending badly, clicking their gossipy old tongues with glee and saying, "didn't we tell you so, yaar?" over their chai/chaha and biscuits? "These goris are not good wives." Isn't every one of these stories of a divorce just adding to their canon of cautionary tales against the horrors of marrying "out?"

But then I check myself. I know that the auntie's horror stories are going to be told no matter what. Other people's personal tragedies will be fodder for reinforcing their worldview.

In blogland, I often refer to people who present their mixed marriages as without problems as "sunshine, sparkle unicorns, and rainbow" bloggers. I usually don't read their blogs, but I get that part of why they need to hide their difficulties is anonymity and part of the issue is probably fear of feeding into the scary mythology out there.

Of course, my wish would be that mixed marriages didn't have to be justified, proved right, and defended at all costs against those that love to see them fail. Still, does anybody else have this same kind of reaction when they hear about someone else's marriage failing?

Mental Train Wreck Days

2011-10-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

So, starting last week, I've been a bit of a train wreck mentally. I guess low-mood pockets could be likened to pain flare-ups. I can feel it when my mood drops. I get a bit of a headache and I have no energy. Sometimes my body hurts in ways that it normally doesn't. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I just feel like I'm going to cry all the time. If I cry during insurance advertisements, I know I'm screwed. I got there sometime last week. I went to church on Sunday and they were doing an anointing for people with illnesses. I thought I would go up, but as the time approached, I knew I was about to cry, so I didn't go up. I felt angry at myself for for not being able to "control" (if that's possible) my emotions, and then things just got worse. I was in a bad mood all day. I went to the gym to try to make some endorphins. Forty-five minutes of cardio yielded about two and half hours of OK mood.

Today sucked a lot and involved a lot of crying and a lot of yelling and other crap I don't want to go into. I know that my low moods are hard on those around me and I can't necessarily expect them to understand. I'm sure it's &^%ing annoying to sit around while Ms. Irrational cries during a nature film. But I promise that it sucks about 90 times more inside my head right now.

So that's where I am now. I won't go into anything else right now. I get to go out tonight (whoo-hoo!) so that will be a welcome break.

Week Four Update: "Live" versus "Stay"

2011-10-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

So, we've started looking for a house. It's a huge step in anyone's life, obviously, and I wasn't planning on it happening quite so fast, but I guess it's a good time to buy (interest rates are low). We went out with the realtor and looked at a few houses, and so far we have found a couple that we both really like. They would both require a little work, but they both definitely meet the basic criteria of my dream house post. They both have enough bedrooms for one of them to a guest bedroom for the MIL's "short visits," a place that can be an office, big yards, reasonably sized kitchens (not big enough to have a farm table in or anything, but better than apartment kitchens), and two bathrooms.

I cannot wait for the days of two bathrooms!

So, the funny story starts here. A couple days ago, something was really nagging at me, so I mustered up the courage to be the sort of person who knows when to put her foot down. When we were driving around in the car looking at the outsides of houses, my MIL was with us. She was in the front seat giving her "normal volume" commentary in Marathi. I just felt so irritated. I was trying not to feel that way, but something about the fact that she was giving her opinion about something so huge in our lives really bothered me. We're adults. We're married. This is our house where we are going to live for at least the next five years, so the decision should be left to us. I started worrying that maybe she would think she got to come along with us to look at the insides of houses. I had to just come out and make it clear that this was not a decision that the MIL got to have input into. Nuh-uh. No way. So I sat down my husband and told him, "You're mom does not get to come with us when we look at houses with the realtor."
To which he said, "Oh. So you don't want her there?"
"No," I said. "I mean, it's not like she's going to live there."
"She's not?"

This is where my heart stops beating and the words, "KILL ME NOW" run through my head.

Then he says this, "She'll still come visit." And then I realize that he is using the Indian English meaning of "live." For those of you reading this in India/Pakistan, when Americans use the word "live" we mean "permanently reside." We use the word "stay" to mean, "briefly stay somewhere." For example, we might say, "I stayed at the Ramada Inn while on vacation," and we would say, "I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico," if that was where our house was. For those of you reading this in the US/UK/Australia/Canada/other places, you should know that when Indians say, "live," they mean "stay briefly." When they say "stay" they mean "reside permanently." It is completely opposite and can be extremely confusing. It turned out that he was using the Indian meaning and I was using the American meaning so the crisis was averted.

Anyway, PHEW!

P.S. Sorry I've been photo-less lately. Maybe I can sneak some photos sometime this week.

Khup Awaaz!

2011-10-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

As I write this, I am in the bedroom (door open so as not to incite any "she stayed in the room all day" drama) with earplugs in. My MIL is in the living room watching a Marathi soap opera and listening to Hindi songs at the same time. The other day, I came back from an appointment and found her reading a book while a call-in astrology show was on. Thinking that she didn't want to see the program (she can't turn it on or off on her own), I asked if she wanted me to turn it off or change the channel. She was completely baffled by the suggestion.

At her house, I quickly learned that if you were watching TV, someone else might just come in and start having a loud cell phone conversation. If one person was reading a book, it was nothing for someone else to come into the same room, turn on the TV, and then get on the phone. And then start watching some old music videos on a laptop. And then someone would come in and start trying to have a conversation on top of it all. If someone is doing a pooja or getting married, there is nothing wrong with turning on the TV and watching some cricket.

I am trying my best to be polite to her while she's here, but I forget that some things that to me are common courtesies are completely foreign concepts to her. Last week, I tried to ask if it was OK for me to turn on TV. She was, after all, in the living room first, so I thought I should ask. Maybe she didn't understand that I wanted to turn it on to watch it myself. Maybe she thought I was asking if I should turn it on for her. I'll never know. But somewhere in there she got pretty mad. Then a friend reminded me that if I was in India, I would have just strolled into the room and turned on the TV and neither asked permission or thought anyone would mind.

I don't like it. I don't like more than one set of sounds occupying the same space. I am very sensitive to sound and volume, they are some of my biggest stressors. A few months ago, I went to a panel talk on how people with Autism function in the classroom. When the panelists talked about the stress caused by sound and light, I found myself nodding my head. Loud noises (yelling especially) send me into fight-or-flight response. I have a hard time filtering out one conversation or set of words or sounds when they are are being drowned in another. A word from another source comes swimming into the sound stream and I lose track of the one I was trying to listen to. It all gurgles together in nonsense. The other night, I just walked out of the living room because the TV was on, my MIL was playing Hindi songs on her laptop, and she and my husband were having a loud ("it's just normal volume") conversation on top of it all. It was just too stressful.

But I guess it's just part of how people manage in India with limited space and people living on top of each other. Just like people somehow manage to go through the day without being alone or out of view of others for more than a few minutes, they have figured out how to manage a half dozen strains of noise coming at them at full volume. From an Indian point-of-view, it's "how could you be so selfish as to expect others to not do what they want to do for your personal comfort?"

For the next few weeks, my earplugs will be my friends.

Week Three (ALMOST one third of the way through!)

2011-10-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

So, we've made it through week number three! Yay! Nearly one third of the way through the visit. If this is your first time reading this blog and this is the first post you've encountered here, you might think I'm petty based on the report below, but actually that I only have petty things to report shows that the week has gone well. I continue to clean the toilet every day (an exercise in humility and gag-reflex strengthening), sometimes twice a day, but some progress has been made on the gross kitchen front. Don't get me wrong--if I left for a week, I would come back to the sort of kitchen that would make me lose both my lunch and my security deposit--but things aren't as bad as they were.

I came back to the house the other day from doing laundry and found her putting away the dirty dishes from the half-full dishwasher. OK, I do tend to rinse things off before putting them in the dishwasher, and rinsed off seems to equal perfectly clean in her mind, but there were cookie-batter-coated mixer blades in there. I was able to tell her that the stuff was dirty and mercifully she did not explode at me. She laughed it off and left me to pull all the dirty things from the cabinets and drawers and put them back. But for my own sanity, especially since I'm not a naturally neat and clean person and have had to work to reach the place where I am (hardly Martha Stewart), I wipe down all the kitchen surfaces and handles every evening. It is becoming normal. I just hate days when she decides to make some elaborate thing for breakfast or lunch because the clean-up required severely impedes my productivity.

Other than that, I set up her Marathi TV (an internet service--we have a TV hooked up to a computer) for her every day. We did buy a Bollywood package on cable, but as I clicked through the available movies, she would just complain that nothing was in Marathi. Now, she can watch Zee Marathi and ETV Marati all the time and is therefore happy.

Most days, the only major bone of contention is lunch. I would prefer to eat when I want to eat--especially when I am getting work done. After all, I'm an adult and this is my house. If I come to a stopping point in my work and I want to go microwave some leftovers for lunch, I should be able to. If I do this, however, she gets very upset. I have no idea if it's because I'm supposed to be making her lunch or what (I have done that on a couple days--but expectations are extremely unclear-some days she is fasting and just makes her own food, et cetera), or if she wants to get lunch for me (she did that once), or if all eating (well, all eating done by me--she eats what she wants when she wants it) somehow needs to be communal or what, but there is a solution. My husband told her that I'm on a diet (which is true), and that I need to have protein shakes for breakfast and lunch (also true). But if I deviate from the protein shakes at all, that's when I get in trouble. She gets all offended. So, no snacks for me (hmm...I could store some nuts and dry fruits in the bedroom for when I need them, I guess). Oh well, I guess it will help me lose the weight.

For most of the day, I sit in the bedroom, earplugs in, door open, and she watches soap operas and call-in astrology shows. It's not bad. I only shut the door when she is doing her pooja--which somedays lasts upwards of two hours. I just shut the door because she's really loud--those of you who go to church know what I mean-the old ladies who sing really loudly and off key with no volume control but you just smile and nod. I know I'll get flamed for this, but from a Christian point-of-view, the fact that she does her prayers out in the open in front of everyone, especially when she has a room to herself, thereby forcing others to change what they are doing, feels very self-righteous. I was taught never to do anything like that and that if you wanted to pray, you should go into your room and close the door (Matthew 6:6). Needless to say, I would never go to her house and begin to loudly yell novenas in the middle of her living room, but I guess what she is doing goes along with the watching cricket during a pooja thing: no one is expected to stop doing anything because someone has decided they are going to do a competing thing in the same space. I could probably waltz into the living room and start vacuuming and she wouldn't care, but I have no plans to try that. Why would someone be bothered by competing sounds? I think it's in the same category as turning on a TV when someone else is reading or doing work or playing music while someone else is watching a movie. All those things drive me UP THE WALL and smack of extreme disrespect, but to my husband and his mother they are normal.

There are some things that I tried to do in advance of her visit that did not play out as I planned. I guess she sees no reason on earth why I would plant flowers other than for her deadhead them and put them on her gods. I love my garden and I grew some of the flowers and herbs from seeds, so I intentionally went out and bought red chrysanthemums that I didn't care about and planted them so she could freely deadhead them. I even had my husband tell her specifically which plants she could cut from, but of course that doesn't matter. I have to watch while my little flowers shrivel up on top of her idols. No, I'm not mad. I should have known better than to expect that she would respect any boundaries I set, so mildly disappointed. Oh well. An exercise in detachment?

So, nothing major going on here (Thank you, God!). I seem to be making it through. I'm grateful for dog walks, my iPod, the gym, the second bedroom, having a church to go to, and the internet service that we have for Marathi TV.

Hard to Even Think About (Week 2 Update)

2011-09-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

When I look back on my earlier posts, the ones from almost a year and a half ago, I know very well that the person writing those posts would not be able to endure my current situation. This visit is not easy in any way, but being a little older and a little wiser (especially in terms of knowing what to expect) has made me better able to cope. A couple new things have come up over the past week:

1) "She doesn't hate you anymore."
I was informed, in the most unkind way possible, that my mother-in-law no longer hates me. I tried to tell Mr. 4B how stressed out I was, and he lashed out at me saying that it was all my fault and that I had nothing to be stressed about. Well, he is still very naive when it comes to his mother to say the least, but I am willing to believe him. I just wish that he had found a way to rely this information other than framing it in terms of "you are the one who is bad because you should just know that this woman no longer hates you." Apparently, I was supposed to take the lack of outbursts, insults, or open criticism to mean that she no longer hates me. I am happy to accept that she no longer hates me, even if I only have his word to go on, so I have let me guard down a little.

2) I don't know any freaking Hindi.
Remember my posts about how much more Hindi I've learned? Well, forget those. I spend about a minute and a half trying to compose a sentence in my head, but when I say it, I am not understood. When I try to do Rosetta Stone, the words form a bottleneck and by the time I hit the end of a sentence I can't remember the beginning. I did a few sections of Rosetta Stone this week, but not as much as I had been before the visit.

3) "I will clean this every day, but I shouldn't have to because this isn't normal for Indians or Americans."
Today, one of the readings at mass was about putting others before yourself. I mean, I guess the readings are about that every week, but this one seemed to be aimed directly at my heart this week. There is something going on with my mother-in-law BEYOND being unhappy and insecure. If it's what I think it is, it is hard to even think about.

The are some major cleanliness problems going on that were not major issues before. I won't go into detail about the bathroom stuff, because even in the anonymous world of blogging it seems cruel to bring up something like that, but suffice it to say that I need to scrub the toilet and toilet seat once a day. This has not been a problem in the past. She actually has a Western-style commode in her house in India. So I don't know what's going on. I don't know if she is aware of how dirty it is after she uses it. I'm guessing not. I mean, unless she thinks that cleaning the toilet is just so beneath her that she would never do it (which is possible), a normal person--especially someone as proud as she is--would make some effort to take care of the situation. It is not something I can ignore, as it is necessary for me to clean it in order to be able to use the toilet. Yes, I will continue to clean it up every day and I'll do it happily, but it is not normal in either of our cultures to have to do that.

Then there is the kitchen. Labels are being ignored. Let's leave that at that for now. That could just be her stubborn and proud nature, though the labels were put up in order to allow her increased independence in my house. The worrying behavior involves putting away dirty dishes. I noticed it on the first day she was here. She took a spoon out of a drawer, used it to stir her tea, and then replaced the spoon in the drawer, thus getting all the other spoons dirty, too. Every day, I open drawers and find unwelcome surprises: a knife covered in cilantro leaves or onion juice, a cutting board with tomato juice stuck to it, a glass put back with chappatti dough fingerprints all over the outside of it, a bowl put back with a rice stuck to the bottom of it. At first, I thought that this might just be the result of not having a bai to clean up after her. After all, that is what she is used to having, so I have started to be very vigilant about going in and cleaning up the kitchen after each use.

I've seen other worrying behaviors like dropping pieces of food on the floor and then putting them on a plate without rinsing them. I am very worried that she is having a problem related to dementia, but it is hard to know without having her talk to a doctor. Of course I don't want that to be the case, and it is possible that these behaviors are the result of something else (severe colon problems and maybe some visual/perceptual problems), but the signs seem to be pointing one way. If that is the case, we will have to find a way to deal with it.

And I've saved the best for last...

4) Lots and Lots of Gratitude
I am very grateful for having a friend here who speaks a little Marathi who can come over and visit with my MIL. He has even volunteered to take us out on a little excursion one of these weekdays when I am home with her. So, that is a huge bright spot in my life right now, and I am so happy that God put such a person in my life.

Week One Update

2011-09-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

Right now, I'm just grateful for my mother. I can call her and tell her what is going on and she, instead of dismissing the stressful nature of my situation, just tells me "that would drive me up the wall, too." After I talk to her, I feel less insane.

Well, It's been a week since MIL arrived. I'm not holding up as well as I hoped that I would, but it's not too bad. I'm not looking for sympathy--don't worry--but I could used some strength to get through this. I am trying very hard to be good, but that doesn't seem to go very far. When she looks at me in a way that says, "I hate you," I try not to give any hate back, but that's about as far as it goes. She and I apparently bring out the worst in each other. I know I can't please her. I know I can't make her like me. I know I can't get her to trust me enough to allow me to do anything for her or to let me clean or cook without monitoring me and trying to control whatever I'm doing. But I don't think it's human to just be able to accept that and act like it doesn't matter.

As for me, I am grateful for my dog and for the gym, but the stress is getting to me both physically and mentally. I've been dropping things and I feel tense all over and I do sometimes have to cry. I don't have a great memory to begin with, but my attempts to learn Hindi lately have only resulted in bottlenecks. I turn on my laptop, try to do some Rosetta Stone, but the words just pile up and I can't remember the beginning of the sentence by the time I hear the end. I was happy to get away and go to mass, but even then I couldn't really concentrate.

Anyway, I keep telling myself I'll get through it. We're trying to find projects for her so she can feel useful and in control of something, and I've basically ceded the kitchen to her. There are LOTS of small annoying things that I won't get into, as well as several middle-sized annoying things, and I know I shouldn't let them bother me, but as much as I hoped this visit would be better, it's not. It's just going to be longer than the last visit.

Only A Couple More Days

2011-09-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

OK, only a couple more days until the MIL arrives. She'll be here for about three months. At the same time that I am nervous, I am choosing to remain hopeful that this visit will be OK. We've set up a bedroom for her, complete with one of her favorite plants, and tried to make the room as welcoming as possible. We've also purchased a cable package that includes "Bollywood on Demand."

Most importantly, perhaps, I spent much of yesterday labeling my kitchen in Devanagari script. I labeled the cupboards according to what is inside of them, labeled the frozen things in the freezer, and also labeled all the jars of flour, rice, and dal, the and ziplock bags and enamel canisters of spices. She will be able to find the towels, the soap, the different utensils, cutting boards, and pans. Two of my mother-in-laws most dominant personality traits are stubbornness and independence. She is very proud, so I think she finds it truly humiliating to have to ask for anything. On her last visit, she would actually wait for Mr. 4B to come home and have him take her to the store to buy something (more than once a duplicate of something already in the cupboard), rather than ask for help. I hope that being able to find things without asking, and having things labeled for her in her own script (if not her own language--I mostly used Hindi, though I threw in Marathi where I knew the words) will help make her feel more comfortable and therefore less prone to defensiveness or insecurity.

I can only be responsible for my reactions to her behavior. I am not responsible for the way she behaves. I'm going to have to keep telling myself that. My responsibility is to keep my reactions in check--file it under "crazy grandma" and remind myself that it is not about me--it's about her and her own unhappiness and insecurity.

Of course I have some worries. After all, I have the responsibility of being alone all day with someone who distrusts my every action. I've mentioned here before how my MIL uses my weight against me, and I am especially worried about that because I have put on quite a bit of weight due to some steroid treatments. I am trying very hard to lose it. I've been around her while on diets before, and she always turns them into something to use as an insult. While I am more prepared for it this time, that doesn't mean that her commentary won't hurt.

On this visit, I can feel grateful for the following things:

-I have this blog in case I need to write out my feelings
-I have my dog and I can always go for a puppy walk if I need an escape
-Mr. 4B and I are on the same page when it comes to responding to MIL's behavior
-I have an iPod loaded up with music and a gym in the apartment complex
-we have two bedrooms this time!
-we have Hindi TV for her
-I've gained quite a bit more vocabulary from Rosetta Stone lately
-I have my church and my activities there
-I have friends online who understand what I'm going through
-I know more about what to expect
-I have my India Cookbook, so my repertoire of desi dishes and breads has been greatly expanded
-my neighbor gave me a key to her apartment. If there is a major outburst or accusation, I will have a place to go

So, things really are OK. I might post some frustrated rants here over the next few weeks, but I am hopeful for an uneventful visit.

Yes, I Got Married Young. Yes, I Have My Master's. Yes, I Still Believe in Love.

2011-08-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

I have not had a chance to think through the comments on my previous post and respond to them, so for now, just let me say that I appreciate them very much. Everyone has been very kind and thoughtful. I am overwhelmed when I think about her coming I need to be smart about it.

Anyway, I wanted to post on something that bothered me. Maybe this is "feeding the trolls," but it ties into something I've wanted to write about here. Recently, one of the youngest bloggers in the Desilink ring broke up with her boyfriend. His parents had been tracking him with a GPS, which is bizarre no matter who you are, and she was overwhelmed by it and called things off. Most people out there expressed their sadness over the break-up and offered her supportive words. Someone, however, who posted multiple times as "anonymous"--though pretending to be three different people, used the post as a soapbox to rail against gori bloggers in general, youthful relationships, and of course anyone even considering marriage at a younger age.

To that person, I would like to say that yes, I met my husband when I was young (I was 18), I got married young (I was 22--that's four years of long-distance dating, more than one "let's take a break and think this over," and four years of making sure this was the right choice), but guess what? I also finished my education. I actually completed my master's ahead of schedule. Did I suddenly launch into a brilliant money making career? Well, not as yet, but I am continuing to work towards my goals as a writer and my dreams and goal, hampered though they may be by my own fears and insecurities, are still alive and kicking. Additionally, my age has not hampered my husband's career in any way.

On average in the US, men marry at age 28 and women at at age 26 (2009 data). On average, college educated people marry later. Outside of religious groups, I think there is some stigma in contemporary US culture against young marriage. When people hear the words, "She married young," what they take it to mean is often, "She made a mistake," "She must have been pregnant," or "She probably just comes from a really strict religion." There is a sense of sadness expressed that some people, for various reasons (and I'm not condemning or judging anyone here--your business is your business) choose to settle down with Mr. or Ms. Right when they show up in their lives.

If a women gets married early, she is judged for jumping the gun without first experimenting and trying out her options. I have nothing against people who go on lots of dates and try meeting lots of different people, but I found "the one" early. I am grateful I was never part of college "hook-up" culture (not that I didn't feel tempted on one or two drunken occasions); I had someone who was waiting for my phonecall at the end of each night. I didn't leave him behind because he came at the "wrong" time in my life. I didn't decide to play the field in hopes that "better" love would come along. When love shows up, you don't get to say no to it because your are worried that people will say you went to college looking for an MRS degree. If marriage is part of your vocation in life, and love has sought you out, you follow it.

Full disclosure: Mr. 4B is older than me by nearly a decade. That was definitely something I worried about before we got married. After all, he knew more about the world and was more advanced in his career than I was (I was still in grad school), and he would always be the one in the position to "school me" on things. The age difference can definitely lead to some feelings of inadequacy/inequality, but in reality, maturity is not an age so much as it is a state of mind.

No, early marriage is not for everyone, but we rarely hear it praised. While there are some things I wonder about (i.e. I never had my own apartment), I do not regret the age at which I got married. My husband has seen me grow as a person, and we've grown together. All the stuff about figuring out how to run the house or when to do what was done together since neither of us had really been through it before (nor was either of us so stubborn or stuck in our ways to be inflexible). So, that's just my two cents. You get married when you are ready to to devote your life to someone else--not when you've reached your career goals or when you have enough money for a designer wedding.

I don't think that I'm stupid or naive for still believing in love.

Thinking About the Next MIL Visit: Looking for Generosity, Patience, and Humility in My Own Heart

2011-08-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was thinking that maybe God put my MIL in my life so that I could the ugliest side of myself. Then I wondered if that made any sense. I already have quite a stockpile of self-loathing--why would I need more? The truth is, my relationship with her is the most difficult one in my life. When I think about her upcoming visit, I am overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. I'm sitting up thinking: how can I make this easier? What will make this better? What I want to do--even if my husband thinks it's stupid ("Are you turning into a Jesus freak?")--is to rely on God to help me through her visit. Maybe that is why she is in my life--to teach me to let go of myself and my own ego and rely on God.

I need things to have reasons behind them, I suppose.

The following things are true about me: I am profoundly over-sensitive, easily hurt, easily over-whelmed, impatient, and sometimes selfish.

The following things are things I WANT to be true about me: to forgive more easily, to let go of things more easily, to not be bothered by things that don't matter (I don't mean turning into a Vulcan--some things SHOULD bother me), to be more other-directed, and to be more patient.

My mother-in-law is coming for Diwali this year, and I am desperate for the visit to go well. For me, that means a visit free of any MIL outbursts, threats, drama, unnecessary criticism, and, of course, tension so thick you couldn't disperse it with a grenade. For her, it means a visit that makes her feel welcome and a visit that provides her with as much opportunity to spend time with her son as possible.

So, I am trying my best right now to try to think about how I can make this upcoming visit easier for her. I know more than I did on her previous visits, so I can be more prepared. Also, she will have her own bedroom this time. And to a certain extent, I think it means that I will temporarily need to be a position of accepting the hierarchy that expects to be in play.

Still, I, as the person with no real job at the moment, will be home with her all day long. I do have things I can do to get away: walking the dog, going to the gym, and working on writing, which is sort of my job right now. I can always retreat to the laundry room. I can also go to church. If I really need to, I can go to the adoration chapel and just be and try to recharge.

To make her more comfortable, I will label everything in the kitchen in Devanagari script. I know the feeling of being lost in someone else's kitchen and feeling like a helpless child, so I think that will help. We will set up a nice room for her, and maybe we will get cable so she can get some Desi channels (any suggestions welcome).

More updates to come. If you pray, please pray for a drama-free few months for me. Thanks.

What I Would Wish For Every Relationship in Your Life

2011-08-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

I didn't write this list. I stole it from somewhere. But it resonated with me so much that wanted to tattoo it on my body or paint it in big letters on my wall. My marriage has definitely been under a lot of stress over the past few months. A LOT of stress. I won't go into details, but I am grateful to be on the other side of it at last. Stress ruins so many things. It destroys your physical health; it lowers your ability to cope with problems; it hurts your memory and your impairs your cognitive ability. Things are MUCH less stressful right now and slowly becoming more normal, but while were under so much stress, I read this list and just cried. The part of my brain that immediately screams out "disaster is imminent" (you all have that voice in your heads, don't you? Please say that you do), left me to spiral downward into despair. Our situation has since improved, but this list has a lot to teach everyone. So, beloved reader, I wish you all of these things in all of your relationships:

- The right to emotional support
¨ The right to be heard by another and to be responded to with courtesy
¨ The right to have your feelings and experiences acknowledged as real and valid
¨ The right to clear and informative answers to questions that concern you
¨ The right to live free from criticism and judgment
¨ The right to live free from accusation and blame
¨ The right to encouragement
¨ The right to live free from emotional and physical threat
¨ The right to be respectfully asked, rather than “ordered”
¨ The right to goodwill from others
¨ The right to live free from angry outbursts and rage.

Still Dreaming of Dreaming in Hindi: An Update on My Hindi Acquisition

2011-08-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

This is a very joyful post for me as I am pleased to report that I just finished the first level of Rosetta Stone Hindi!

Yes, I know that getting through Level 1 is barely a drop in the bucket in terms of language acquisition, but for me, it represents a lot of progress. It means that for the past few months I have been steadily learning a little more each day, and it also means I've stuck with it consistently--which is something that has always been a problem for me. I will start out new projects/diets/exercise plans/organizational schemes, only to lose my motivation after the initial excitement is over. So, for me at least, getting this far makes me feel that I've made significant progress.

So, let me tell you what I love about Rosetta Stone Hindi and what I absolutely can't stand about it.

Things I LOVE:

I can do as much or as little of it as I am able to do on any given day and I can work at my own pace
If I didn't do well on a lesson, I can go back and redo it without any negative consequences
the way the program is set up requires you to figure out how certain things are working. While I still haven't quite figured out all the pronouns ("me" versus "mujhe," for example), I like the "Aha!" moment of figuring out how a sentence works
It is both visual and audio, which is important for me. You have the written words in Devanagari as well as images to help you better understand and make sense of the content. I've never done well with audio-only recordings as I'm a very visual learner.
It is actually fun and addictive (as it claims to be), so you are motivated to continue
You get an audio companion as well, so once you've completed the lesson and have the visuals in your head, you can play the audio while you're gardening or cleaning the house for reinforcement
There is no mean aunty standing over you and telling you "it is easy, na. You should be knowing this by now," or giving you dirty looks for daring to ask questions (Hallelujah!)

Things that drive me up the wall:

Sometimes, I don't think the voice recognition is all that great. Sometimes it will tell you you had the wrong answer and then if you simply yell it loudly, it will tell you that you got it right. Also, I've occasionally said a completely wrong answer, but am told it is correct. Thank goodness the program writes out what you *should* have said after it gives you the all correct.
The writing portion. I cannot stand it. It says it will take about five minutes, but since I cannot figure out how to combine characters on their system, I've have wasted hours trying to spell out simple words. I now skip the writing portions.
Also, and I know this is partially my fault for being used to saying things a certain way, but I often spend more time pronouncing English words with a Hindi accent than on pronouncing new Hindi words.

Also, I went out and bought a copy of Katherine Russel Rich's Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language. I love the title of that book because I often have dreams in which I can speak and understand Hindi fluently--well, that and stress dreams about not remembering Hindi words and being lost somewhere in India! (Please, beloved readers, tell me you have these dreams as well!) I'm only about 50 pages in, but every time I sit down to read a few more pages I am inspired to return to my Hindi studies. That, and I love having a sort of companion to inspire me on my journey. I will probably write more later about this book once I finish it.

Until then, it's time to start Level 2!

Empty Phrases Your In-Laws May Occasionally Use

2011-07-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is currently dealing with the problem of her in-laws making some over-the-top threats. I know it never feels like it when you are hearing the words, but my experience is that these threats never mean anything. I've heard many of them from my own MIL as well as from other people's in-laws. The most common varieties include:

"I am never going to speak to you again."
"You will never be welcome in this house again."
"I will never see you again."
"Don't call me ever again."
"I am going to get back on the plane and fly back to India right now!"
(addressed to their son) "You may come and and visit me, but she is never allowed in my house again."
"I am never coming to this country again."

The thing is, I have never known any of these threats to turn into reality. Within a few weeks, the threat-giver in question will, more than likely, be giving you a call and informing you of his/her/their imminent arrival. You, on the other hand, will wonder what exactly happened and which memo you missed.

What are some of the empty threats you or your friends have been given, only to see them disappear as though they were never uttered?

I am Happy I Did That

2011-07-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I did it. I went to confession for the first time in eight years. I think I lucked out because the priest was AMAZING. He was very kind and really made me feel like everything was OK and that I was OK. I'm so grateful that things went so well. Of course it was emotional and I was scared, but afterwards I really did feel that some of my burden had been lifted. I walked home afterwards, sat by the river, and said a few prayers, shed a few tears, and, I think, felt happy. So, now my challenge is just to incorporate what I've learned into my life and not make the same mistakes again.

Nervous Nelly

2011-07-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

Well, right now I'm a nervous Nelly (like being a "negative Nancy" or a "cranky sue"). My life is strange right now. I've been a little down, but I'm glad that some things in my life are changing and that I am, I hope, changing for the better and growing up a little. As I get further into my twenties, I think I can stand myself a little more, if you know what I mean.

So, last week I went ahead and e-mailed the priest about coming in for confession. He said I could come in later this week. I wanted to schedule a time because I haven't been in so long that I've forgotten the protocol, so I didn't want to just go in at the regular time, wander into the booth, and make an ass of myself. I don't know. I am just so nervous. Of course I know the main thing I need help with: forgiving others and letting go of the past, I will just have to avoid the temptation to try to explain of excuse myself too much. I just need to lay it out there that hey, this is what I did: I hung onto stuff and couldn't forgive other people. It was wrong and I am sorry for it. I don't want to keep doing it. Somehow, I think that going will help me out and will help me get past this stuff. We'll see...

A Very Brief History of Mother-in-Laws

2011-06-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

For the last few months, I haven't really had to deal with my MIL. Other than a few rather bizarre phone interactions, she tends to disappear to the back of my mind unless I hear my husband talking to her on the phone. With distance and time, people can become abstract, and it's easier to think about them--but what you are thinking about isn't necessarily "them." if that makes any sense whatsoever.

I thought I would take this opportunity to write a short history of mother-in-laws in my family and my husband's family and talk about the patterns of behavior that have colored these interactions.

I should start out by saying I am a big believer in cycles of behavior. You know, that illogical tendency we have to simply repeat the patterns we've seen in our own lives, whether we approve of them or not or WANT to repeat them or not. Someone explained it to me like this once:

If a woman grows up with a mother who had seven kids, but always complained that she only wanted four, we would think that the logical thing for that woman to do as an adult would be to try not to repeat her mom's mistake. We would think that she would only have four kids, right? But since we repeat the patterns we've experienced, it is more likely that she will go on to have seven kids and then complain that she only wanted four. I know it doesn't make sense, but unless we see the things we are doing wrong in our lives and make a conscious effort to change the patterns, we are likely to repeat them.

When I think about the women on my mom's side of the family, I see this pattern clearly. My maternal grandmother has zero confidence in herself and neither does my mom. I didn't grow up around women with confidence in themselves, so I, quite honestly, often go through my day feeling incompetent and clueless.

But when it comes to patterns, I often wonder why women inflict so much pain on one another.

My mother is a great resource for me because she, too, had a mother-in-law who did not think she was "good enough." My father's mother wrote letters to my mother telling her that she would pay for them to get a divorce. She offered my mother $5000.00 (this was in the 1970s) to divorce my dad. Worst of all, my father's mother had this idea that she would somehow (I have no idea how--this clearly had nothing to do with logic or reality) gain custody of me and my siblings.

Yeah, I know. Makes anything my husband I experienced seem like nothing.

Up until my father's mother died, my mother had to deal with a woman who thought she was absolute garbage--not even fit to raise her own kids. My dad, who is a strange man by any estimation, was stuck in the middle. His mother doted on her sons and believed that they were perfect and could do no wrong, My mother's encounters with her were about criticism, misplaced anger, and outright insults. When we went to visit our grandmother, my mother stayed at home.

My mother's story has another side, though: my dad's stepmother. My father's parents divorced in the 1960s and my grandfather remarried. My dad's stepmother accepted my mother and never judged or criticized her. In fact, she was nothing but supportive when it came to my parents and their child-rearing practices.

My mother-in-law, however, never had a fairy step-mother to make up for her mother-in-law. I don't know very much about her mother-in-law, but I do know that she was downright mean to my MIL. After my husband was born, my MIL's MIL came to the house and expected to be waited upon. When my MIL was recovering from abdominal surgery and was not supposed to bend, her MIL would place dirty dishes ON THE FLOOR at the end of the meal and make her pick them up.

So, why do women do these things to each other? Why can't we see when we are saying "I went through hell, so you have to as well" and stop ourselves? Why can't we learn from our on pain and chose not to inflict the same pain on others?

More on Forgiveness: Looking Back on Things as Part of a Learning Process

2011-06-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

So, as those of you who read this fairly often know, I'm trying to get away from the past, forgive myself, and forgive others. For me, this means looking at things both in terms of faith/belief and in terms of psychology/better understanding of people's relationships. It's funny--when you are focused on an idea, messages about it keep popping up everywhere. My husband recently decided to re-watch the series The Wire, and I walked into the room when the Steve Earl character is telling Bubbs "you gotta forgive you own self." The other day, I was thinking about my first trip to India and how scared, frustrated, hurt, and upset I was for much of the time. There was so much going on that nobody had warned me about and that I was in no way prepared to handle. I was also still very young (I'm thinking about a post just on the topic of getting married young). Then I thought about my second trip to India and how much easier it was for me and so on and so forth.

I've thought about the things I enjoyed on my trips:

drinking green coconut water
being outside in the country
going out and seeing animals I had never seen in the wild before
pleasant interactions with people
walking on the beach
looking at the crescent moon over the ocean in Goa
riding in a train with the window open
standing in the open door of a train in the early morning in Karnataka
eating idly and coconut chutney for breakfast in Kerala
walking barefoot in the sand near the ocean
finding the shell of a Sea Eagle's egg
fruit stands of geometrically stacked oranges
quiet hours of reading to escape the heat
visiting a tea plantation
getting away from the house for a quick glass of wine or a cold beer
the bang of coconuts falling onto a metal roof
red, red, red. Hibiscus blossoms
climbing around sun-warmed stone ruins
the pleasure of dumping a bucket of water over your head in the shower

And of course, yes, there were many unpleasant things, and most of the unpleasant things were the result of individuals behaving unkindly and other circumstances that were beyond my control. Most of the things I enjoyed were not city things. If they were, they were bright moments of the natural world bursting in upon the jumble of the city.

Thinking back on my experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly, I am starting to have a sort of "duh" moment. You know, the sort of thing you knew intellectually but never really "got." And that is that being in India, being an outsider in an Indian family, being able to walk down the street in an enormous Indian city and handle everything that comes at you--that's all a learning process. Of course I look at things like learning Hindi or learning to eat rice with my fingers and learning, but I think I expected (and, to be honest, people had the expectation of me) that I would be able to just show up and know how to handle India. And in retrospect, I see how incredibly silly that was.

Yes, I know it sounds silly if this is something you figured out quickly, but for me, it's new. And I think that idea that I expected too much of myself on my first visit to India (the one that included the wedding and all accompanying baggage) will help me forgive myself for all the terrible feelings that were going through me at that time.

But I think that for me, and maybe for everyone, being an outsider in India and having interactions with in-laws is a learning process. Some people learn more quickly than others. Some have had more opportunities to learn than others. Some have better teachers than others. I'm someone who has learned a little, and I will have many opportunities to learn more.

If Daughter-in-Laws Had a Patron Saint...

2011-06-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

It would have to be Saint Monica. I was reading about her recently and though she is not the patron of daughter-in-laws in any official sense, that doesn't mean she can't be that in my mind. She is considered the patron of married women as well as of abuse victims. Those of us with difficult in-laws, or even women who struggle with other issues like needing confidence to pursue their own faith with a mixed faith marriage, can find some comfort in her story.

Monica's life was definitely much more oppressed than most or us can imagine. She was married at a young age to a very difficult man with a violent temper and was forced to live with his equally cruel mother. Though she lived in a difficult situation where her faith and her efforts to be a good person were openly mocked, she stayed strong. Because of her example, both her husband and mother-in-law eventually changed their ways. She is perhaps best known as the mother of St. Augustine, though she should be revered in her own right.

I know that this and my most recent post have both been on a Christian wavelength, but I don't think that you have to share a religion with someone to find inspiration or strength in her story. Her story is definitely one that you can turn to for strength and inspiration in tough times.

[painting by John Nava - not used with permission]

Returning to the Idea of Forgiveness: Forgiving Yourself?

2011-06-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this post will really be about anything--just some of the stuff I've been dealing with lately.

Lately, I've had a lot of time to really navel gaze and try to figure some things out about myself. You know how you'll hear southerners say they "gotta git right with God" sometimes? Well, I think I need to "git right with" myself. I've realized that I have very low self-esteem, I have very little confidence, I don't like myself most of the time, I don't trust my own judgment, and I really do care too much what other people think. Some of that is just part of being over-sensitive (which I am), but I don't know where the rest of it comes from. Maybe it comes from a distorted view of what it means to be humble--the emotional equivalent of self-flagellation--I don't really know.

The truth is, I think that my poor view of myself and my own value has contributed a lot to how I've reacted to my MIL in the past. Clearly, she is not a happy, healthy, well-balanced person. Had I not been so wrapped up in trying to safe-guard my own feelings in the past, I *might* have been able to respond to her not as a threatening, disapproving, angry figure, but as someone who was scared, upset, insecure, and feeling threatened. I still don't know if I'm a big enough person to do that.

The thing is, whenever I go to church or read the Bible and come across something about someone forgiving an enemy or an aggressor, or read about a saint who intentionally put herself in the path of those who disliked her or called her names, I can't help but relate it to my own struggle with my MIL. I ask myself why I can't find a way to forgive her for the past the try to rebuild the relationship anew, but I find a lingering fear of her standing in between me and my ability to forgive.

I've thought about taking it to confession, but I don't know if it would work. I've considered more than once just going in that booth and saying that I've held onto feelings of hatred, rage, resentful, and fear for years now and that I don't know how to get rid of them, but I haven't built up the courage--mainly because those feelings haven't left and I don't entirely know how to make them go away.

So right now, just to start with, I wonder if I can forgive myself. I really wonder if I can let of the scared, resentful, worried, fearful person and say, "hey, you know what? It's OK. You're OK. You're not the same person you were then." I hope I can, but I don't know.

How NOT to Learn a Language

2011-06-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

And just to show that this method, which shall from this point forward be referred to as the Aerobic Spandex Method (ASM), does not work from an English into Japanese either, try to repeat what they are saying here:

My how I wish there was a Hindi version of this...

I'll Be Back...

2011-05-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

I'll probably be back in a few weeks. Everything OK--I've just been internetless for the most part for a while now, so I've been derelict in my blogging duties. I'll be back to reading and commenting other people's blogs and posting here ASAP.

Thoughts on Food IV: Food Preservation Differences

2011-04-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

It’s nice when things have clear explanations. People’s personal psychological problems, the complexities of cultural differences, we way different people understand religion, and the politics surrounding identity and mixed marriage do not have easy answers. They just remain unanswerable—things we can learn about, but never come to any sort of conclusion. Fortunately, one area of difference is pretty easy to explain: the canned food confusion and the fear of frozen foods.

The last time my MIL was in the U.S., a tiny little thing happened that made me think about a major difference between how food is preserved in the U.S. versus in India. I was about to leave the apartment in the morning, and my MIL came up to me and presented me with the can-opener. I had no idea why she was handing me a can opener. After all, I was standing there with my jacket and shoes on and my backpack slung over one shoulder. Why did she think I needed to take the can opener with me, exactly? I stood there for a minute, and then went in the kitchen. Maybe she just needed to know where it went. I pointed to the drawer where it went, but she grabbed my wrist and pulled me towards the countertop where there was a can of tomatoes. “Open,” she said.

I opened the can, threw out the lid, and then hurried out the door, hoping that I would make my bus. I left with a kind of, “Well, that was weird,” look on my face. It wasn’t until then that I realized that she had never before used a can-opener.

I’ve occasionally gone to an Indian American house and seen unopened cans of tomatoes and beans sitting in the fridge. Of course, the whole point of canning something is to keep it shelf-stable, but if you are not used to cans, you might not quite believe it. Mr. 4B doesn’t have any issues with canned food that I know of, but he and I have had a few odd moments involving the freezer. “We need to use those [insert name of frozen item here] that we bought last week. I don’t want them to go bad.” “They are frozen. They will be OK for a while. At least a month or so.” “Uhh, I don’t feel good about that.” (On the other hand, he doesn’t always have the best sense of how long fresh things will last either).

So before you laugh at me, Mr. 4B, our NRI friends, or the MIL, I ask you to picture the two food situations where we grew up:

MIL’s Kitchen and Buying Habits:

My MIL has a fridge, but compared to the fridge in a US home, it is quite petite. It is probably about 40% of the size and does not include a freezer. Things like chocolate are kept in the fridge to keep them from melting. To keep butter from going bad in the heat, the perishable milk solids are removed to create ghee, which is significantly less perishable. Milk is brought to the door every other day in a tiny little bag (I don’t know if it has been pasteurized, but it certainly isn’t meant to be stored long in the bag). I imagine that people with little kids have multiple packets of milk delivered—possibly daily.

Rather than shopping for a week, she goes to the vegetable market every few days and buys one or two things. Clearly, this is impacted by things like not having a car and not having a lot of food storage space.

So imagine how bizarre my parent’s kitchen and buying habits probably seem to her:

Shopping is a weekly event. Foods like onions, potatoes, garlic, and carrots are purchased in large bags and kept in a lightless part of the basement (it stays relatively cool down there year round as it is just cinderblock without heating or insulation—it’s like an old school root cellar). Things like canned tomatoes, canned beans, canned fruit, and bottles of beer are also stored in the basement pantry. Milk comes in a one-gallon jug. The freezer is filled with frozen foods. Fresh fruits and vegetables generally go in the refrigerator crisper drawers.

To someone who always lived in a hot place, this probably sounds like a recipe for rotten food. In addition to temperature differences, I think the differences in food preservation have to do with the growing season (which is part of temperature differences, but you know what I mean). In cold climates, you can start some greens, herbs, onions, and members of the cabbage family early, but without preserved food, people in cold places would have gone without vitamins for most of the winter. In India, it is not that much of a problem. Even if some vegetables aren’t available year-round, others will be.

In my parents’ basement in the Midwest, there is a giant zinc-coated pressure cooker. No, it isn’t used for cooking daal. Back when they had fruit trees (fruit trees don’t have a very long span), it was used for home canning. It was pretty fun growing up to go just go out back and eat apples off the trees. We (me+ siblings) actually enjoyed sitting around peeling them with our mom to get them ready for canning. So, not only did we have sun-ripened apples fresh from the trees fall and peaches speckled with sun spots in the summer, we had fruit pies in the winter without buying produce shipped up at considerable fuel costs.

As far as canning goes, I realize that preserved food doesn’t taste as good as fresh produce, but it can be a good way to reduce and waste. We buy most of our tomatoes, some of our beans, and a few other things in cans. It can mean not having to buy out-of-season vegetables at higher prices and makes shipping easier and more cost-effective as nothing spoils in transit. It also means I get to have coconut milk and fake meat from Taiwan (yay!).

The freezer and the fridge are still awkward territory. For example, if my MIL in India decided she wanted some tindora (tondli bhaji) for dinner, she would just go to the vegetable market and buy the amount she wanted. If Mr. 4B and I buy some tindora at the desi store and don’t eat it that night, it often goes bad. Neither of us has any sense of how long those things last.

Mr. 4B is also a little wary of leftovers, too, so that can be another area of food waste (partially my fault as I tend to cook for about six people by default). Sometimes, trying a new recipe that is supposedly for two can mean having leftovers for four. Even if leftovers are carefully stored in a labeled container in the freezer, they don’t really get eaten. (“How old is that?” “A week.” “I think you should throw it away.” “But I froze it.” “I just don’t want to eat week old food”). I’m lucky though, as I do know some women whose husbands will not eat leftovers at all. They insist on having everything freshly prepared every night—no using that leftover rice to make biryani for them.

So, non-Indians, if your in-laws don’t know how to use a can-opener or are nervous of buying milk by the gallon, they have a reason.

So, have you ever had worries from your ILs that you bought too much food? Issues surrounding leftovers? Or, do you have a giant freezer case in your basement full of frozen parathas and butter?

Thoughts on Food III: Calling All Pav Bhaji Connoisseurs

2011-04-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

I just realized that this blog is now more than a year old. I started it last year some time around Good Friday, so, Happy Anniversary Blog! I really have learned a lot from this blog, especially when I have put something out there that is really just a big question.

I looked back at some of my old posts, and I saw that I had two posts called "Thoughts on Food." One was about my irritation with the assumption that I must not like spicy food, and my other post was just kind of a rant about how some people are not interested in trying new foods, but instead eat the same darn things over and over again and insist on making annoying nationalistic arguments that their food is the best. So they don't see the point in EVER trying anything else (it's kind of like meeting a New Yorker who has never left New York but wants to tell you all about how New York is better than any place else in the world. You've met that guy, right?). So, I thought that I would post a couple other things about food.

I'd like to start with a question: HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR PAV BHAJI?

I might have mentioned this before, but when it comes to food, I'm not a Maharashtrian. I am much much more of a South Indian. I love idlis, dosa, rasam, sambar, and coconut chutney with a lot of green chilies. Sure, I've tried making bajri , tondli bhaji, and a few other very traditional recipes, but they just aren't things I I fell in love with. Many of the things my husband pines for are just not my favorites (poha, don't get me started on the freakin' poha!), but I do like a lot of the Bombay street food he used to eat on his way back and forth from undergrad (when he was growing up, Mumbai was still Bombay, and in our house we use the names interchangeably, as I find many of the city's residentts do. So, please, I don't want to get into an argument about it. That is NOT what this post is about).

Here is what Pushpesh Pant writes about Mumbai street food in the introduction to The India Cookbook:

The city of Mumbai was given in dowry by the Portuguese to a British Prince. A small fishing village at the time, it grew rapidly under British rule. It has acted as a crucible to blend diverse ingredients and and techniques into a unique cuisine, and the food in the city is possibly the most impressive illustration of its eclectic cosmopolitanism.

Mumbai is a fast-paced city, and sustains its millions of inhabitants on fast food. Pao Bhaji [sic] (Mini Loaves with Tangy Vegetables, page 139) is to Mumbai what hamburgers and hotdogs are to New York. Pao is a squarish small laof of bread served with bhaji, a mixed potato and vegetable mash drenched in pureed tomato and liberally spiced with onions, green chillies, and ginger. The bhaji is cooked in front of the customer on a large griddle, which also toasts the bread. It is served with liberal amounts of butter to create the illusion of richness for the poor man who may be surviving on one meal a day. [p. 23]

Here is a video showing one the street vendors outside of Victoria Station cooking up a huge batch of Pav Bhaji:

Indeed, as Mr. Pant wrote, the key here seems to be butter. Lots and lots of butter. But when it comes to making this special treat at home, recipes vary greatly, and, believe me, emotions run high and the "aare Bhap aare"s go flying. What I've made at home so far has been good, but never on par with the real thing. Right now, getting the perfect pav bhaji recipe seems about as daunting a task as finding the secret formula for Coca-Cola.

So, let me present you with just a few of the recipes I've tried recently (and which explain my recent weight gain).

Here is the ingredient list from The India Cookbook:

1 kg (7 medium) potatoes
2 teaspoons garlic paste
180g (3/4 cup) ghee or vegetable oil
360g (2 cups) chopped tomatoes [about one can]
160g (1 cup) chopped onions
6 green chillies, deseeded and chopped
1x4 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1.5 teaspoons ground turmeric
1 teaspoon red chilli powder
180g butter
2 teaspoons garam masala
2 tablespoons chopped coriander
3 tablespoons lemon juice
12 Pav (mini-bread loaves) from the bakery*
salt

[*this ingredient kind of shows why the India Cookbook is not for beginners. If you have never eaten this and have no idea what these breads are supposed to be like, you are just left wondering what on earth to make or buy. Chances are, most of his readers don't live near a bakery that makes these specific breads! I usually either make plain white bread rolls or use those heat and serve rolls that tear apart. Still, I think he should have included a recipe for the pavs themselves. ]

Mr. 4B did not agree with this ingredient list, though at the moment I can't recall why (maybe it had to do with the lack of garlic or the use of garam masala?). When I read him the instructions on the box of Pav Bhaji Masala, however, he just ended up dictating a recipe to me from the living room. I don't really remember everything that went in it, but I think it was just onions, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic and ginger pastes, butter, and pav bhaji masala.

Here is what the MDH Pav Bhaji Masala box tells you to do:

Boil 200g potatoes. Peel and dice. Also boil 150g dressed vegetables like carrots, peas, etc. In a deep pan fry 100g finely chopped red onions in 60g butter until golden. Add coarsely chopped 100g tomatoes, salt, 15g Pav Bhaji masala. Transfer the boiled vegetables, 1/2 cup water and on high heat mix and mash then for ten minutes. Then apply butter on bread slices or slit baps, roast and serve together.

The Shah Pav Bhaji Masala instructions caused an even greater outcry from Mr. 4B as it called for cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, and peas. Though that sounds quite healthy, it is, apparently, sacrelige. So, if you have an excellent recipe, please pass it along.

On a side note, I was wondering if anyone has tried this cookbook on Indian street food. I'm considering getting it, but I'd like to know if anyone has found if useful/not useful. I'm betting it has another version of pav bhaji in it...

The Intercultural Marriage Dream House?

2011-04-13T08:31:00.000-07:00

Some days I feel so misanthropic that I go back to my teenage idea of my dream house. When I was 16 or 17, this was my idea of a dream house (mind you, I also vacillated between the idea of being a contemplative nun and living on commune where I would be in charge of rhubarb production):

"Why is that misanthropic?", you may ask. Well, I dreamed that it would be on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on a plot of at least 40-acres of woodland. I would be snowed-in from November to September and would only see people when the fire department came out to supervise my controlled burns of jack-pine or mixed-oak savanna. I would do all kinds of nutty things involving rain barrels, geo-thermal heating, and home-canned food.

When the idea of marriage came into the picture a little further along, my idea of dream house changed from a shingle-sided cabin on dirt road to a place another person might actually want to live. I had an idea of a little bungalow on a more modestly-sized piece of land. It would still have room for fruit trees, a vegetable garden, an herb patch, and lots of dog-running space. And, of course, a compost pile (yes, I actually ache when I have to toss onions skins and potato peelings into the the trash shoot of the apartment building).

Sara at A Little of That Too recently did a post on the intercultural dream house, so I thought I would, too. (And no, this post is not insinuating that I somehow deserve the house of my dreams or that I expect to get it--only what my ideal would be). When you are married to someone from a culture where in-laws have a very different role in your life than what you ever expected, even if you are lucky and your in-laws like and accept you, your idea of your dream house changes in some fundamental ways. Sara's idea of a dream house was a little different than mine as is was intended for year-round multi-generational living. For me, my new idea of a dream house means striking a balance between my own need for privacy and work space (and gardening space--oh do I ever need gardening space) and my husband's need for work space for his creative projects, room for kids and dogs, and yes, room for MIL to come and visit.

Both Mr. 4B and I suffer from a certain amount of claustrophobia, so our dream house would have a big kitchen--or at least a kitchen big enough for more than two people to be in at a time and big enough to store our spices.

Our dream house would have a basement that was big enough and nice enough to renovate into a suite (bedroom, bathroom, sitting room with TV, maybe a small area for early morning tea-making) where my MIL could stay when she came to visit. That way, she could have her own space and independence during her long visits.

I know by now that nothing will ever make my MIL like or accept me for who I am. My goal for the future is to make sure my future interactions with her are less stressful and less dramatic. Ideally, creating a space for her on her visits would ease some of the tension.

So, my idea of our dream house would have three bedrooms, an attic or other unused area that could be converted into two little offices, a big kitchen, and a basement that could be made into a friendly, welcoming space for our visitors. The yard would be blooming from March through November and providing us with plenty of fresh, sun-ripened fruits and veggies, and yes, I would never have to throw those peels into a trash can again.

So, those are my dreams for a perfect home. What are yours? If you are an NRI, has your idea of a dream house changed since you moved to the US? For those of you who are planning on having your in-laws live with you long-term, how has your idea of a perfect home changed over the years?
So, what is your idea of a dream house?

Well, That's One Way to Handle It...

2011-04-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, you see a truly dramatic solution to the problem of a love match versus an arranged marriage. The man in the photo below, a 23 year-old Pakistani, married both the 28 year-old to whom he had been engaged since childhood and the 21 year-old he had fallen in love with. Oh, yeah, and he married them both within 24 hours. Talk about a compromise.

I wonder what they are all thinking about in this picture. Are they all sitting there thinking, "Well, this wasn't exactly part of the plan, but I'll work with it?" In the US, we only really think about polygamy ("plyg" for short) in terms of the FLDS living out on their compounds in their ankle-length pastel dresses, so I was surprised to learn that there are some Muslims in the US who practice polygamy under the radar.

This situation makes me wonder how commonly polygamy is used as a solution to the the tug of the heart towards the one one loves and the tug of obedience towards one's family. While I don't really think polygamy is a good idea (seriously, if you live in place where the gender ratio is two women to every man, then we can talk), I hope these three people each get at least some portion of what they were looking for in matrimony.

A Muslim Cosby Show? Canada Has One!

2011-03-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, The Daily Show (satirical news program in the US) included a segment on whether the U.S. could use a Muslim version of the Cosby Show. I was too young to really care about the Cosby Show when it was on TV, but it is still famous for representing an African-American family as normal and ordinary. The Daily Show segment features Aasif Mandvi showing a program called the Qu'osby Show to a test audience of Americans with strongly anti-Muslim views and skewed ideas of what Muslims do with their spare time. The show that Aasif and his Daily Show co-writers came up with did not test well as the audience wanted Muslim stereotypes (i.e. secret terrorist uncle in the sandbox).

I'm not Muslim, nor is my husband. Plenty of our friends are, though, and I find solidarity and sisterhood with fellow bloggers who are Muslim. Also, as a religious person, I find it worrisome (uh, that's putting it mildly) that members of an entire religious group can be the subject of a counter-terrorism hearing. Any of your who are South Asian or in a relationship with a South Asian know very well that ugly, negative stereotypes about Muslims impact how people look at you, whether you get pulled out of line at the airport for a security check, or whether you will have to have your car searched when the police pull you over for having a tail light out .

While I watched the Daily Show piece, I kept thinking, "Hey, Canada already has that." In Canada, there's a sit-com called Little Mosque on the Prairie. I've seen a few episodes--illegally I think. It includes a young Imam, a feminist hijabi, a gori-wife, and a North African Muslim woman among others in a small Canadian town. While criticism of the show includes the show not being very funny, it does present Muslims as ordinary Canadians who deal with a variety of religious and social issues.

So, would America benefit from a "Muslim Cosby Show?" Would a show like "Little Mosque on the Prairie" help create more positive representations of Muslims on TV?

Taking on The Way Others Speak: A Sign of Respect? Maybe...

2011-03-28T06:36:00.000-07:00

The other day I was in the car listening to the Diane Rehm show (Public Radio discussion program--not sure the audio is available outside the US). The guest, author Robert Lane Greene, was on the program to talk about his new book, You Are What You Speak. At first, I thought the author was saying something controversial that I would deeply disagree with: that there is no such thing as standard American English and that anyone who believes in the value of decent grammar is a mean old stick-in-the-mud. My husband immediately began elbowing me (hey, keep your eyes on the road!) because he thinks I'm a "grammar grouch." Often, when we are watching TV and someone on a show says something ridiculous like, "Well, my dog and myself were walking to the store," I flinch and say, "Damn woman, learn how to use some pronouns." (Of course, I would never do that to a person who was in front of me.)

As someone who works with college students to make sure that their papers are appropriate for the university level, this is obviously something I've thought about a lot. Sure, many of my students speak variants of non-standard English when they are outside the classroom (i.e. Spanglish, Chinglish, African-American Vernacular English [AKA "Ebonics"], or other variants), but when they write their academic papers, everyone needs to be able to read each other's work. Of course I don't believe that these rules apply to fiction or poetry, but when it comes to academic papers, students have an advantage when they can write in the language of academia and understand how language works.

So, as the author continued to speak, I worried that he was saying that we should just throw the rules of language out the window. After a few minutes, however, I realized that he wasn't saying anything new. All he was saying was that while there is standard American English, there are also dozens of variants with their own consistent grammatical rules. OK, absolutely nothing new there. He went on the say something very interesting, however. He said that when you are around someone who speaks differently from you, and you take on certain aspects of the way that person speaks, you are showing them respect.

When you are married to someone who grew up using a different variant of English (British English, Indian English, et cetera), you find yourself occasionally using language the way they do. For example, I once confused a bus driver by asking not, "May I get off here?" but, "May I get down from here?" An American would never say, "get down from here," but an Indian would, as we have HUGE differences in how we use prepositions. I've noticed this trend in friends who live abroad and suddenly have just the slightest accent or change in the arrangement of their words. I was glad to learn that this habit is not simply the the result of having been exposed to something different, but a a genuine expression of respect for the way someone else speaks.

On another communication note, I saw a segment this weekend on Fareed Zakaria about a book called Don't Get Me Wrong on global gestures. Perhaps, like me, you've found yourself at the grocery store responding to a question with an Indian head bob and a raised palm. I wonder if taking on someone else's gestures functions the same way as taking on aspects of the way they speak. I'm guessing that the answer is yes. I'm curious to get the book, because I would like to know what my body language means to others.

So, have you occasionally found yourself unintentionally speaking like someone else? Have you ever taken on someone else's gestures without even realizing you were doing it? Is it different around people you don't like? I'd like to hear about it.

"You Know, the Souders."

2011-03-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

As I may have mentioned before, my mom is pretty funny. While she is definitely my favorite member of my immediate family, sometimes we will get about ten minutes into a phone conversation and I will have to stop her and say, "I really have no idea what you're talking about." Just the other day, I was talking to my mom and she said, "Oh, did you hear that the Souders are building a cultural center out on County Road Q*?"

Sometimes my my mom will start talking about the personal details of people in our hometown without asking if I remember the person she is talking about. Sometimes, even if she asks if I remember a person, for example Mrs. So and So from church, and I say no I don't, she goes ahead and tells me anyway. So I was sitting there holding the phone racking my brain trying to remember who on earth the Souders were. Did I have a gym teacher in middle school named Souder? Were the Souders the people that had moved down the street from my parents recently?

I was pretty sure that I was supposed to know who these Souders were, so I went on to ask what was going to be at this cultural center.

"Oh, you know, their temple. Their Guru-walla."

OK. Now I got it. "Oh, Gurudwara. Their Gurudwara. The Sardars are building a cultural center on County Road Q! Oh, that's great!"

"Yes, the Sardars!" she said.

Then I talked to her again a week later and they were back to being the Souders.

Anyway, I thought it was funny.

*yes, I did change the name of the road in case you are looking to drive down County Road Q in search of this thing!

Representing Mixed Marriage (or, Your Racist Grandma is NOT Cute)

2011-03-06T09:36:00.000-08:00

While Mr. 4B was watching the World Cup via satellite, he saw an ad that immediately struck him as extremely racist. It's an ad for Bharat Matrimony:

Now, imagine if this ad was the other way around. Imagine if racist Grandma was an old white lady in a matching turtleneck and sweatshirt instead of sari. Now imagine that she was sitting on the couch and was told that Chandra is coming to meet the the family. Racist grandma hears the name Chandra and exclaims, "Chandra? Indian?" and looks like she is going to have a heart-attack. Then, when Chandra comes in and turns out to be a white American, she acts all nice and relieved. If such an ad were made, it would immediately be condemned as racist. In the Bharat Matrimony ad, racist grandma is shown as not only acceptable, but the person whose approval should be sought.

On the other hand, like most people in mixed marriages, I am always a little bit happy when I see the occasional advertisement or product that shows mixed race or mixed religion marriages as positive and normal. Around the Christmas/Hanukkah (guess how many ways I had to spell "Hanukkah" before Google accepted my spelling? Five!), I was very happy when I saw that the Hallmark Card Company had made a series--not just one!--of cards for mixed Jewish/Christian couples. It's things like that that, for a moment at least, make you feel like you accepted by the mainstream. Lately, I've seen ads for dating services like E-Harmony that make sure to include couples of a variety of races, including a mixed couple. I fondly remember a Mastercard advertisement about a white American family going to the airport to meet their their son's Japanese fiancée's parents (below, finally found on some Russian site!). I also remember a Toyota (maybe?) ad featuring an African-American mom and an Asian-American dad and their cute daughter. Of course, I can't find that ad either, only posts that refer to it. When I see an ad in which a mixed race family is just shown as normal, it makes me think that American society in general is more willing to accept mixed couples and families as something other than "exotic."

Meet the Family

Of course, there is more to representation than a few ads. We've all sat through the occasional Bollywood movie that chooses to represent the white (or otherwise non-Indian) woman as a slutty, anti-Indian-culture foil to an idealized Indian woman. Not only do such representations help fuel the fears of aunties by showing all non-Indians as sexually promiscuous, they put Indian women up on a pedestal of traditionalism rather than showing them as complex human beings with flaws, quirks, and desires. Mercifully, there are plenty of other films, though not always mainstream, that allow for more complexity. (For more on the topic of women's representation in Bollywood, please take a look at Nita's thoughtful post here).

So, I'd like to know, what is you favorite positive representation of mixed marriage that you've seen in media or advertising? Or, conversely, what's the ugliest representation you've seen? How do you think that these representations reinforce stereotypes or change minds? Has your mixed relationship made you more sensitive to the portrayal of mixed families in TV and the media?

[Here is the link to the NPR Morning Edition piece on interracial couples on TV that @MCK mentioned in her comment below]

And now, just for fun, to the counter the Bharat Matrimony ad, we have Ludakrishna's take on Shaadi.com:

Posts Might Be Less Frequent for a Bit...

2011-03-03T06:29:00.000-08:00

Hi. Just wanted to let you know that I might be posting here a little less often for the next 2-3 months. I've got some work I need to focus on, so I need to prioritize my time (OK, do my best to prioritize my time). I'll still be around commenting on other people's posts, and of course, tweeting in support of other blogs. So, don't write me off or pull me from your blogrolls. I'm still around! -BBBB

The International Unnecessary Drama Manufacturing Association, PLC

2011-02-23T11:34:00.000-08:00

Are you having a pretty good week? Things seem to be going smoothly so far? Are you perhaps looking for someone to throw a wrench into things? Maybe you are planning an event and you are terrified that things are going to go off without a hitch. Are you planning to go on a trip or make a purchase and you don't have anyone to provide unsolicited criticism or guilt? The International Unnecessary Drama Manufacturing Association, PLC can help. For just the cost of a plane ticket, we can provide enough drama to make any event, no matter how big or small, into a full-blown scene. For the simple cost of an international phone call, we can add stress and guilt to any evening.

At IUDMA, we hire only the most experienced drama manufacturers. The aunties on our payroll spend hours a day watching soap operas, spying on their neighbors, and dreaming up wild scenarios in which the people around them are out to get them.

Here is a sampling of the services we provide:

Hysterical Scenes

The hysterical, over-the-top, melodramatic scenes our manufacturers provide are sure to ruin any large event or just send the entire family away from the dinner table and into separate rooms. No matter what the situation, one of our experienced drama manufacturers will find a way to make it all about her. You don't even need to provide a slight, as our experienced drama manufacturing professionals know how to be insulted and affronted by anything you do or don't do. Our professionals are standing by to ruin weddings (groups of aunties are available as well for added impact), family dinners, holiday celebrations, backyard picnics, and even other people's birthday parties with screaming, yelling, insults, abuse, accusations, and hitting.

Passive Aggressive Visits

Are you looking to ruin a longer period of time? Perhaps a few weeks or months? Maybe you would like to spoil a family vacation. If so, our passive aggressive visitor service is just what you are looking for! We will send an auntie (age 60+) to stay in your very own home. While staying in your home, your very own passive aggressive visitor will complain about how you never come to visit her, how no one likes her, how lonely she is, and how everything back home in India is so much better. As part of our deluxe package, she will also criticize the level of cleanliness in your home, provide back-handed comments about the food you make, and then criticize your weight while acting offended that you don't want more bread and ghee. Your passive aggressive visitor will rearrange certain elements of your house, complain when you leave the house without her, and complain when you try to take her out of the house ("Fine, I'll go. But don't expect me to enjoy it."). Your passive aggressive guest will occasionally threaten to fly back to India tomorrow or say that she is never coming back again in order to get her way. If you order now, we guarantee that your passive aggressive house guest will throw in at least one complimentary hissy fit, tantrum, or public scene per week. Book now!

Accusatory Paranoid Phonecall/E-mail Service

Our customers are just raving about our new phone and e-mail service. Sign up for our service, and, out of the blue, you will receive angry phone calls accusing you of various crimes and insults. Occasionally, the call will have something to do with an actual event, but we guarantee that the accusations against you will not be rooted in reality. Our service professionals have been sitting around their apartments for months now thinking up things you might be doing to slight them, so call now for the most original paranoid accusations! We've also started an e-mail service. Subscribe now, and your inbox will be filled with strangely paranoid e-mails from an auntie about how you have abandoned them and must be going out clubbing and drinking every night. This service is sure to take a good evening and leave you cranky, bewildered, and unsure of the mental health status of the drama manufacturer in question.

Call now, and we will send you a free series of e-mails in which you are compared to someone else's son, who is a very good son and just bought his mother plane tickets to Tahiti and make $250,000 a year. Are you a daughter or daughter in law? No worries! We have a special series of e-mails just for you about other women your approximate age who already have several male children, never use ready-made rotis, and who get up to go to the temple every morning.

If your day is going pretty well, you clearly need an infusion of unnecessary drama. Remember, you don't have to do anything to create drama. At the International Unnecessary Drama Manufacturing Association, we can pull drama out of thin air.

Women, Culture, and Equality: Part Two--The Keepers of Culture?

2011-02-22T10:46:00.000-08:00

So, just thinking about this stuff a little more. In my previous post about this subject, I put forth a few questions about women's role in preserving culture, how the idea of women's role in creating and passing on culture might make our in-laws more anxious about us, and the way women are critical of each other. These ideas came up again in my rather anxious post on how to raise bilingual kids who understand the basics of two religions. In that post, the idea of women's negativity and criticism towards one another, especially when it comes to raising kids, came up. Also, in the post, fellow blogger Sara hit the nail on the head with the idea of how she worries she'll end up being the "cheerleader for Indian culture" in her household.

I'm not an anthropologist, so I don't know if I even know the real definition of culture. My sitting-here-on-the-couch-thinking-about-stuff definition would be that it's the way we are taught to think about the world and relate to it, from the way differences in language and grammar change the way we think about the world to the way we relate to other people. Culture varies from household to household. It's the books we read, the music we listen to, the paintings we like, the type of food we eat, where we eat, when we eat, and how we eat. It's whether we care about nature, or fiction, or food, or dogs. We can't pass down a Hindu worldview or Indian manners beyond the outward expressions. We will only be able to create the best world we can within our own house--one that expresses the things we value.

I'm sure a real anthropologist would hate me (and this whole blog) for sometimes trying to think through my personal experiences/anxieties in terms of culture, but here I go again with individual experience and how it frames the way I see the world. Growing up, my mom really was the one who passed down material culture. Sure, my dad instilled us with some concepts (for example, how to cook really, really, unhealthy foods), but when it came to creating and maintaining traditions, celebrating holidays, and teaching us about religion, it was ALL mom.

Our mom was the one who dragged us to church (even when we didn't want to go), sat down with us and helped us with our CCD homework and projects, showed us how to make the food for Christmas, Easter, and Saints' days, and taught us the words to songs. Even though lots of Christians talk about men as the spiritual head of the household, it is often woman of the household who takes on the role of religious educator. At our house, it was Mom who sat at the head of the table, opened up the Bible, read us the day's passage, and then led us in prayer. I don't think that is unusual.

So, how does this affect the way women, especially mother-in-laws and aunties, treat younger women--gori and otherwise? Now, I only know a few white men married to Indian women, but from what I've seen, their in-laws are not so hard on them. They feel less pressure to take on aspects of Indian culture and, of course, they don't get comments like "What are you going to do about kids? Send them to live with your in-laws?" Is this because women are seen, traditionally at least, to take on most of the child-rearing responsibilities? Now, of course, women seem to be nasty to each other all over the world when it comes to raising children, looking after their houses, cooking, and almost everything else. Does much of this criticism stem from a sense that women are the ones who create the culture and the home?

In your house, was mom the one who taught you about holidays, music, art, and religion? Was it half dad half mom? Do you think you'll end up being the "cheerleader for Indian culture" in your house?

God's Own Country: Kerala

2011-02-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

Kerala's motto is "God's Own Country" (hence the photo of Church of God in India). My husband and I have a pact: if we ever have to live in India for any reason, we will live in Kerala. Not Mumbai, not its Suburbs, not Pune. Kerala. (Well, that and I get to keep as many street dogs as I can feed--though after reading this he insisted that he had only stipulated "one street dog," like I could stop at one?)

I haven't really done any posts about my excursions around India, mainly because I worry about having my secret super-hero identity revealed. So, when I talk about Kerala, I'm going to talk very generally. When people ask me about my time in India and what it was like, I usually just say, "You should go to Kerala. Kerala is awesome." I think we had fun there for several reasons:

1) we were by ourselves as tourists and not being monitored by aunties, so I was able to relax
2) they have giant bats there:

3) nobody there spoke Hindi or Marathi, so for the first time in that first trip Mr. 4B and I were operating on the same playing field. I didn't have to rely on him to translate everything, because suddenly people spoke either Malayalam and English or just Malayalam.
4) it's not so crowded and I think, a lot more laid back
5) the landscape is amazing
6) it's full of gorgeous birds (first place I ever saw a hornbill outside a zoo)
7) much of the food has lots of coconut in it (yay! I might need to make a post about how much my personal taste runs towards South Indian food: give me coconut chutney, dosa, idli, upma, and rasam any day!)

8) oooh, did I mention that there were giant bats?

As some of you know, I am not a big city girl. My dream home is a tiny little house with a great big yard with room for a vegetable patch, an herb garden, berry bushes, a bird bath, and a couple of fruit trees (not to mention sufficient dog running space). Mr. 4B does not mind my vision of our future house, as long as I grow the foods he enjoys eating (sadly, this means no eggplant for me).

Most of my time in India is spent in the world of nosy neighbors and staring men, so I am always happy when I get to see the beautiful side of India. My time spent in my husband's home city is a mixture of stress and boredom, as I am usually confined to the apartment under the watchful eyes of my MIL. (Yes, there is a little bit of "why do you want to go out? Isn't sitting around my house watching TV good enough for you?" guilt there.) Walking around the perimeter of the society means being watched by bored aunties who suddenly appear at the windows the moment I step outside. Waving or trying to be friendly is met with a scowl. Going out to the shops means having to wait around the corner so my husband and MIL don't get charged "American prices." And at a moments notice, I will find myself being taken out to the houses of lecture uncles, or someone else who is equally unhappy to see a white woman with an Indian man but eager to tell me about it. In between household tasks or shop visits, I use my time in the big city to get a lot of reading done. (I actually look forward to having so much reading time!) or I stare longingly outside the window and wait for a bird to land or a squirrel to come by. What I love to see is the natural world. Not cities or crowds or malls or skyscrapers. So I love it when I get to see the natural India.

Armed with my binoculars and my copy of The Book of Indian Birds, we headed for Kerala. The moment we stepped off the plane, we felt relief. It was just us. No one was giving us guilt trips for trying to spend time alone together. We got to relax and be tourists. Our trip included staying in a small hotel in a backwater, going out for birding expeditions in both a bird sanctuary and a tiger preserve, and drinking lots and lots of green coconut water. I had never tasted it before, though I knew its health properties. It is essentially nature's Gatorade, as it provides electrolytes. I was surprised at my first taste of it, as it is just slightly salty, slightly sweet, slightly coconutty, and a bit tangy. We had a few of them every day.

For a westerner, being in Kerala is probably easier to handle as you do not have to see so much poverty (it has the highest rating for human development of any Indian state). Nor do you have to see children working when they should be in school. Kerala stands out for its high literacy rate and for actively promoting conservation. Also, it has a very diverse religious culture and boasts the oldest church in India and the oldest Synagogue in Asia.

For us, our trip was a chance to experience new things together and enjoy getting to be outdoors. We rode in boats, hiked through jungles, walked along rivers, and explored marsh areas. Our guide in the tiger reserve is high on my list of my favorite people I've ever met. He pointed us in the direction of giant squirrels, endangered monkeys, dozens of songbirds, and the traces of where a sloth bear had been digging through a termite mound. When I think of Kerala, I think think of waiting excitedly on our balcony at night to see a group of hundreds of flying foxes go by, searching the tree-line for a Black Baza, drinking wine in a hammock, looking for frogs by flashlight, eating fresh cardamom pods at a spice plantation, and walking along the road and seeing red hibiscus blossoming everywhere. So, we'll be going back as soon as we can.
[Photos in this post are by Mr. 4B]

Why I Love My Local Desi Store

2011-02-20T10:45:00.000-08:00

In the US, international food stores have come a long way. At the turn of the twentieth century, Italian grocery stores were often called "spaghetti supply shops" and were considered a bit "exotic." Nowadays, even smaller cities have Hispanic food stores or an Asian grocery shop. Even with the lousy economy, many such businesses are thriving. I'm really spoiled when it comes to international food stores. We happen to live in an immigrant-rich area and we have large international supermarkets, Thai stores, Korean stores, Chinese stores, and other shops within twenty minutes of driving distance from our house. But I really love our local Desi store.

When my husband first came to the US, he started patronizing one Indian store in particular. As a young, cash-strapped graduate student, the Indian store was a place for him to go and get the little items that reminded him of home (of course, he could not cook particularly well when he arrived here, but that is a story for another time). Whether it was for a stronger bottle of Vick's Vapo-Rub (I guess the Indian-produced version has a higher potency) or just some Egg Curry Masala, he took the bus there every few weeks. After a few years, the store was bought out by someone else and began to sell meat. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem; after all, we shop at plenty of stores with butcher counters. Unfortunately, this particular new owner did not seem to keep the meat in a very sanitary manner, and upon walking in, you were met with the stink of raw beef fat. So, we needed to find a new Desi store stat.

After trying out nearly every Desi store within a twenty minute drive from our house, we have taken to patronizing one shop exclusively. We go there for spices, a good portion of our produce, rice, frozen coconut, ready-made paratha, dosa batter, and or course, fresh curry leaves, which we seem to need a new package of every week.

Sometimes people in mixed marriages are a little uncomfortable at the Indian store. Maybe you've had the awkward Desi store experience (I know I have!). Sometimes the people who own the store are the ones who make you, as an interracial couple, unwelcome. The shopkeeper who just stands there and stares at you. The twenty-something woman behind the counter who just can't stop giggling and pointing. Yes, even the clerk who never says a word, ignores your questions, and even hands your credit card or change to your husband rather than you.

Sometimes it's the customers who make you want to never return. The auntie who follows you around and watches with great consternation as you select each item and place it in your basket. The group of male graduate students who follow you in amazement (OK, those people are also at the regular supermarket, too). The auntie who just walks up to the counter and starts piling up her groceries even though there are six people in line. (Actual exchange: Shopkeeper: "Madam, please, these people were waiting." Auntie: "So what? They can wait longer. They don't mind."). Then, of course, there was the time we walked into a Desi store we had never been to before and were immediately presented we at least six inches of some guy's bare rear end. He was wearing low-rider jeans without underpants and decided it would be a great idea to stand bent over a bin of vegetables.We turned around an left, but my husband spent the rest of the night ranting about how he would never in his life be able to remove that image from his mind. Yes, such people are no fault of the shop owners, but how the shop owners react to such people can make all the difference.

Our local Indian store is a family-owned business in a small storefront. It's well-organized and easy to navigate. Best of all, the owners don't mind non-Indians shopping there--our money is just as good there! They always talk to us a little bit and let us know that we are welcome (SOOOO important!). They welcome Jamaican and Caribbean customers and will special-order products specifically for those customers to keep them coming back. They have lots of good, fresh produce that seems to be selected with care, including vegetables, fruits, and herbs that are hard to find elsewhere. The store where we shop is unique in that carries healthier options like brown Basmati rice and reduced fat paneer (my favorite new oxymoron!) And of course, we go there for packages of fresh curry leaves.

The prices at my local Indian store also make us happy (yes, Mid-westerners and Maharashtrians both have a reputation for being cheap. We fit that stereotype well). If you want to buy cinnamon sticks at the regular grocery store, you can plan on spending six dollars for a few sticks in a little jar. At the Desi store, you can buy a little plastic bag of about twenty cinnamon sticks for $1.59. The store always surprises us with little extras that we didn't plan on finding there, like bulk yeast, textured vegetable protein, or vegetarian gelatin that we would normally have to go to a health food store to find.

Lately, as we cook our way through Pushpesh Pant's India Cookbook, we've been going to our favorite Indian store at least once a week to get some new spice or type of dal for a new recipe. We know by now that by being a mixed couple, we stand out. For example, when I go to church by myself, no one really notices me. I'm just another young woman sitting by herself. When we go together, the priest remembers us and makes sure to say hello (we think this is funny). By now, the two uncles who run the shop know who we are because we stand out, and I think they know that we keep coming back because they make us feel welcome.

On a side note, my parents recently learned of the grand-opening of an Indian store about thirty minutes from their house. My dad called me up to tell my how inexpensive the whole cardamom and nutmeg he got were. My dad loves to cook extravagant meals, so I was pleased that the opening of the new store was gave him something to be excited about (he works long hours at a stressful job). He was planning to make some nice curried chicken for my mom (aww). So, hooray for the wonderful Desi stores of America, the wonderful people who staff them, and the products that they make available to us.

Kids' Stuff

2011-02-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

We don't have kids yet, but we both want them in the future. I am very, very, very lucky in that neither my own mom nor my MIL had kids before the age of thirty, so I still have several more years before either of them will have the authority to put any pressure on me. (Let me reiterate that I am so, so, so, lucky in that matter--I can work towards being physically, financially, and emotionally ready before we have kids. Most people are not so privileged). I was reading Cha Na Coffee's post on raising multi-cultural/lingual kids and it felt good to know that I am not the only one out there who worries about how on earth she is going to manage.

When you are a mixed-race, mixed-religion, international couple, the awkward and judgmental comments about your kids, how you should raise them, and of course, what they will be like, begin long before your children are even a sparkle in your eye. I'm sure I'm not alone in having been asked, often by someone you barely know, "So, what are you going to do about kids?" On one occasion I actually wanted to tell my interrogator, whom I had literally only met three minutes before, that I planned to scout out a wolf den in Yellowstone and leave my infant children in it to be raised by the pack. Of course I didn't, but I did find an excuse to get up and go talk to someone else.

I know from friends who already have children, as well as from asking my mom some questions lately, that people, almost always women, are ready and waiting to provide some unsolicited, often condescending or judgmental advice to mothers of small children. Even though I don't have children yet, I've already received a few thoughtless and insensitive "suggestions," the most unsettling of which was a from a woman not much older than me who said, "Of course you should send your kids to India to live with your in-laws, just when they are little."

Um, no.

When I think about everything parents need to do to raise their children as good people, I panic a little bit. You are responsible for so much and in control of so little. Of course I WANT to raise kids who know about both Hinduism and Catholicism, and I want to raise bi-lingual children, but I wonder if, like so many things we plan to do, we'll plan and plan and plan and then not carry through what we planned to do because the burden of the every day will take priority.

I grew up with a couple friends whose parents came from other countries. Unfortunately, their parents just kind of assumed that their kids would pick up their parents' mother tongue from being around them. They also assumed that their kids would kind of know about religion without ever really doing anything about it. Result? Mono-lingual kids who really don't know or care about their parents' religion. They are fine people and very intelligent, but they do resent the lack of training in language.

I'm working on learning Hindi (my goal: be proficient in Hinglish). I would like to be able to work on Hindi words with my future kids while we're in the kitchen cleaning up or driving to the grocery store or whatever. I would like them to watch Galli Galli Sim Sim and pick up poems and songs to help them better know the language. I know I will get crap from in-laws and aunties for not teaching them Marathi, but as I've said before, I just don't have the resources available to learn it. Oh well. If nothing else, Hindi and Marathi at least use the same alphabet, so that's something. Still, whenever I see a product that might be potentially helpful for integrating Hindi into a kid's day, I make a mental note of it.

When it comes to religion, I am so grateful that there is such a thing as Hindu Sunday School. I grew up going to CCD every Sunday. Afterwards, we went to mass. When it was time for sacraments like first reconciliation or first communion, we had evening classes (from which I only remember making projects with felt and glitter). We also had our Godparents to help make sure that faith was part of our lives. So, lots of structure. Mr. 4B grew up with Hinduism all around him, but he couldn't really answer questions about it or explain the meaning or purpose of something. Hindu Sunday School would seem to provide that bridge. Here's what the article from Hinduism Today says about Hindu Sunday School:

Sunday school is an American institution. Long ago, immigrants of Western religions faced the challenge of passing on their heritage to generation after generation, and they figured out a system which is now the primary mode of religious instruction for millions of American children. The whole country is scheduled around attending church on Sunday. While the parents worship [in ] the chapel, the kids attend "Sunday school." The Hindu parent-teachers who launched this program decided to take advantage of this established church model, and it worked.

So, wherever we end up living, we will have to make sure that there is a Hindu temple or association that offers some type of class like this. Will there be moments of confusion? Probably, but it's better that they actually have access to the information they need to find whatever their paths to God may be. Maybe our hypothetical kids will hate us for taking up so much of their weekend with both Catholic Mass and Hindu Sunday school, but at least they will have some foundation for understanding both faiths.

So yeah, those are my neurotic worries/plans. How do you plan to raise your kids to be bi-lingual? If you are interfaith, how do you plan to teach your kids multiple paths to God?

I did spend some time Googling (is that really a verb?) around for Hindu Sunday Schools. I didn't find a directory, per se, but here is a listing of some programs by state. If you know of another program, please let me know and I can include the link, or contact information for the program (maybe even in a separate post?) There are definitely more out there and I will add them as I find them:
California
-Downey (LA area) *not Sunday School but summer camp
Connecticut
-Middletown
Florida
-Boca Raton/Miami (thanks to a reader!)
Illinois
-Lemont (Chicago Area)
Maryland
-Lantham (Washington, DC area)
Michigan
-Haslet (Lansing area)
Minnesota
-Maple Grove (Twin Cities area)
New Jersey
-Mahwah (includes link to Bal Vihar page and cultural classes offered at temple)
Ohio
-Solon (Cleveland area)

Passive Aggressive Casserole

2011-02-12T10:40:00.001-08:00

My parents really like Mr. 4B. He has been a fixture at their house for Christmas every year for the last five years at least. Some of you already knew that my mom is pretty funny. (remember her take on Buddhas and Ganeshas for sale at Marshall's? "Oh, good. Let's use other people's religion as home decor.") Sometimes, however, her sense of humor edges into the passive-aggressive.

Before his first visit years ago, I gave Mr. 4B plenty of warning about the town I am from, but his first visit was a surprise to him all the same. When I said that my parents' house was messy, he didn't envision my dad's basement full of hoarded papers/documents/books. He didn't expect one bathroom for six+ people to have a door that doesn't really lock very well. He knew there was a garden out back, but as a city boy, he found it quite novel to go outside to cut herbs and pick tomatoes and peaches. He didn't expect to have to drive around for twenty minutes to find a place that was open and serving coffee on a Sunday. He knew the dog slept on the bed, but he didn't expect to wake up with my dog ON TOP of him. I told him I was from a small city (it is considered a city--it has street lights and everything), but that didn't stop him from referring to it as "the village." I don't know that he expected their to be "nothing to do." (More later on the Amish, Halloween, the Church of the KKK as a novelty tourist attraction, ice-fishing, and dive bars). By now, he is used to going there and even has aspects of the trip he enjoys (though he occasionally needs to go walk the dog with me and tell me that "your brother is insane," "your sister needs to get her act together, "your sister needs to shut up," or "your dad just needs to cheer the hell up.")

My parents do their best to make sure we have yummy food available whenever we are in the mid-west, even though they are meat-eaters. A couple years ago, however, I mentioned a item of "fine mid-western cuisine" (this is a purely sarcastic phrase, mind you), called hashbrown casserole. It's basically a heart-attack in a casserole dish. You can make it any number of ways, but it is essentially hashbrowns mixed together with with stuff to make them stick together and then thrown in the oven. You can make it with a can of cream soup, a carton of cottage cheese, eggs, or a few cups of plain yogurt (or some combination of these things) and no matter what, you put cheese in it. Some people add peppers, onions, or other veggies in it. If you are feeling especially naughty, you add a stick (yes, I said a stick) or butter, crumbled crackers, or corn flakes. It's a cheap, quick, ordinary sort of food that people make when they just need to whip something together. It can also be used and an extremely inefficient vegetable-delivery-tool for children who will only consume vegetables when drenched in butter and cheese (and people are mad at Michelle Obama's health programs for kids?).

It's on par with mac and cheese or the infamous green bean casserole. Because casseroles (AKA "hot dish") can be made ahead of time and then reheated, they are the food of choice to bring to potlucks, church suppers, and giving to people at a time of bereavement or need. (Though a friend of mine once wrote a short essay called, "When You Get a Divorce, No One Brings You a Casserole." Moral: if your friend is getting a divorce, please bring her a casserole because she is miserable and lonely and in desperate need of comfort food).

Well, one day after lunch, which was a lasagna with olives and mushrooms, my mom overhead Mr. 4B telling me that lunch was "very bland" as we did the dishes. My mom's response? "Well, if he wants bland, I'll show him bland." Result? The next night, we ate hashbrown casserole. Result? Mr. 4B thought it was incredibly delicious and ate two huge slices, leaving his vegetables untouched, as per usual.

Anyway, I thought it was funny. Is there is an ordinary, every day, boring sort of American food that you never appreciated until you desi partner "discovered" it? Do you have a funny story about it? I'd like to hear it.

(Photo is stolen from another website)

On Teaching Children Religious Respect

2011-02-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

So, I'm feeling pretty down right now. I'm semi-mobile, drugged out of my mind, and in pain. I had to have someone else walk my dog today. OK. Done whining. Moving on...

A couple weeks ago, we were driving a few hours from our town and we saw one of those bumper-stickers that makes your stomach hurt. It was on the back of a big, brand-new, black truck and it said, in all caps, "EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MUSLIMS I LEARNED ON 9/11." I assume that this was someone's oh-so-clever take on the title of the book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Of course, I was appalled at first, but as I got a few miles away from him, I felt sorry for whomever was driving that truck. I felt sorry for him because he felt the need to broadcast his willful ignorance. Not only did he choose to reject all of Islam based on the idiocy of a few Muslims, but he was proud of it. I want to reiterate that: he was proud of it. He was proud of having done no research or inquiry. He was proud of being willfully ignorant and choosing to block billions of people out of his life based on their religious affiliation. Oh, yeah, and there was a kid sitting up front in the cab.

Yes, I know that there are thousands of such bumper stickers out there (this sticker even got a mention in this TIME article). I grew up in a place where the letters to the editor in the morning paper weren't about political issues affecting the city, but about whether the U.N. was a socialist plot or a communist plot, whether black people should be grateful for being brought over as slaves (I'm not making this up), and of course whether or not Catholics counted as Christians or not. (The consensus was no). Even if I'm used to it, it still bothers me. I mean, imagine somebody driving around generalizing other religious groups based on the worst acts committed in their names: EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CHRISTIANITY I LEARNED DURING THE SPANISH INQUISITION! Yeah, not useful. I spent the next 30 minutes or so just thinking about the state of political rhetoric in America and what would happen to a child who grew up hearing such things each day from their parents.

But later that night, I stumbled upon something that made me feel a little better. I was at the local Catholic Bookshop, which is conveniently located next to our local sex shop for easy one-stop shopping, and I found a series of children's books designed to help kids understand their friends' religious beliefs. They made me really happy, actually. Alongside such amusing titles as My Sister is Annoying (I sooo could have used that as a five year old!), I found My Muslim Friend and My Jewish Friend.

The note on the link above gives this synopsis for My Muslim Friend:

'How are our beliefs different? How are they the same?' Mary, a Catholic girl, and Aisha, a Muslim girl, seek answers to these questions as each gradually learns about the religion of the other. Catholic children, their parents, and their teachers will gain a new understanding and appreciation of Islam - and, in doing so, may come to better understand their own faith.

Of course, the little boy in the cab of the truck will probably never get a chance to read this book. And if he did stumble upon it in the school library, what would he think? Would he have been so wounded by what he had learned from his parents that none of the information would make it into his brain? Who knows.

As of yet, there isn't a kid's book called My Hindu Friend. If somebody wants to write it I'll be glad to illustrate it.

Women, Culture, and Equality: Part One of Who Knows How Many

2011-02-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

Well, I’m not feeling very well today, so maybe it’s time to sit around (I’m more horizontal, really) and write a great big disconnected post. This might end up being the first of several depending on where it goes. I hope we can continue to have a good dialogue about these issues.

Reading the responses to my last post on identity, including separate blog posts (Lucky Fatima’s is here, White Hindu’s is here and Desi Blonde’s is here [please not that I do not agree with what she took away from the post--she seems to have read something different from what everyone else did]) has certainly got me thinking a lot of issues of women and culture and where we (wife of Indian/partner of Indian = WOI/POI--thanks Sara!) fit. At the same time, Jubee’s post at My American Life on identifying as a feminist, Sara’s posts at A Little of That Too on having your habits, likes, and dislikes attributed to your marriage partner’s ethnicity, and Samba and Cyn’s posts on meddling aunties, all got me thinking about these issues in a different way. For the most part, I have these questions. My inner curious academic (imagine a little fat owl hanging out in the library trying to hide the fact that she has a bag on M&Ms hidden under the table—that’s my inner academic) is not expecting a definitive answer to any of them; she just wants to think about them/explore them:

Why do women feel pressure to take on aspects of their husbands’ culture in ways that men do not? (For the next few questions, you have to accept my premise that women DO feel this pressure more than men. Feel free to disagree.)
Is some of this pressure related to insecurity about passing down culture, and if so, what does that say about women’s role in preserving traditions?
Are women considered the guardians of culture? Is it more threatening to traditional parents for a woman to marry into their family because they fear she won’t train the children according to their culture?
When we (WOI/POIs) take on very traditional, gendered, behaviors and practices, are we hurting Indian women by trying to live up to an outdated idea of what a woman should do and how a woman should behave?
When aunties and uncles praise us for doing the things they deem traditional (and therefore automatically good), how should we respond?
To what extent are these expectations put on us by other women?

So, clearly there is a lot there. I will try to address as much of it as I can in no particular order, perhaps over the course of a few posts. I will also bring in some people’s responses/thoughts from other posts to back up my thoughts.

So, let’s start with the idea of appearances and performing the role of the good girl. What does it mean to be a “good girl” and what does it mean when WOI/POIs try to fit into the “good girl” box? The other night, I went over to another gori wife’s house for dinner. Because the hostess usually wears a kurta when we go over there, I took the opportunity to wear a new silk kurta over a pair of black dress pants. Of course, when I arrived at the house, the gori hostess was wearing a salwar kameez and all the other ladies, who were either desi or desi-American, were wearing jeans, high heels, and blouses from Ann Taylor-type shops. When I took off my coat, they all laughed at the fact that the goris were dressed up in Indian clothes and I, of course, made a joke about desi-ing it up.

As the evening went on, one friend mentioned my mangal sutra (my post on that is here) and said that if I ever meet her mom I have to take it off or wear a turtleneck because she would get crap for not wearing hers. I explained that it doesn’t have any negative connotations for me, plus it’s small enough to wear, so I see it as a small concession to all the stuff my MIL and the aunties would like to see me doing. For her, it meant giving in to traditional ideas of what a woman should do. For me, it’s just my Asian street cred. The conversation turned to the aunties (who seem to be the universal oppressor of everyone) and how if an auntie is talking about a “nice girl” she is talking about a doormat. I had to stop myself from saying “whoa! Déjà vu!” because Sara had used the same words to describe her MIL’s idea of a “good girl” or “nice girl” in a comment earlier that day.

The first time an auntie called me a “good Indian girl” I was about twenty years old. I was staying at a desi household in the Midwest with Mr. 4B and I decided to put on one of my salwar kameezes one evening for dinner. When I came downstairs, I got the instant auntie seal of approval from the household MIL, while the wife in a family, a desi, was compared to me unfavorably because of what I was wearing. She was just wearing jeans and a nice top. So there I was, taking praise and compliments for looking like the type of person—performing the role of the “good girl” if you will—that an auntie or uncle approves of, while an Indian woman got auntie flak. Yuck.

On Jubee’s post, this is what I wrote about the problem of being praised for traditional gendered behavior:

...Back to the original idea of why so many of the POI/WOIs are feminists, I kind of wonder if those of us with difficult in-laws MUST define ourselves as feminists in face of the pressures we face from our in-laws. When you have in-laws who want to squish you into a “traditional” box to make you acceptable, you have to punch pretty hard to get out of that box. Around my husband’s aunts and uncles, I see myself praised for acting in a subservient manner, and it freaks me out. I am praised for looking “pretty,” criticized for being “too fat” (size 12), praised for how much I like little kids, praised for cooking and sewing, and criticized for my A.D.H.D. approach to housework and total inability to knit. They aren’t interested in who I am as a person, what I did my degree in, what my hopes for the future are, or why my husband loves me. In the face of that, I feel a stronger need to define myself as a feminist. It’s probably not true for everyone, but being judged against such standards of what a woman “should” be, you are more interested in preserving yourself and valuing the freedoms you have.

And this is what Sphinx, a commenter on Fatima’s blog, had to say:

I think my feeling about some non desi women married to desi men is, while not exactly what you describe, slightly resentful for a similar reason. I find it a little annoying that some women choose to adopt a lot of Indian/South Asian customs without questioning the appropriateness or the history behind the customs. For e.g. some customs (this is more common in the Indian/Hindu context) are what I consider demeaning or unequal to women. For e.g. fasting on certain days for the long life of the husband, referring to them with a respectful term, touching the husband’s/ elders feet which are usually only performed by the woman and not reciprocated by the man. A lot of south Asian women see these as promoting inequality and would like to be able to refrain from participating, and usually don’t participate or only do so under pressure. With this background when I see the “gori” wives participating in what to them are just some exotic customs, being a desi feminist I resent it just a little bit.

So, what to do? When I am in India or my MIL is around (which are the times when the pressure is the heaviest—approval is only given to the “good girl”) I can hardly stand up and give a feminist speech. Most of my husband’s family doesn’t speak English and I would just come off as a self-righteous jerk if they did understand it. Also, I fully understand that Asian feminists (including Asian American feminists living in immigrant communities in the U.S.) face the problem of being called “westernized” whenever they speak their minds about women's issues and I want to be sensitive to that without being condescending.

When I'm in India with my husband's female relatives, I can only guess at how feminism fits into their lives as most of them do not rebel against practices some people probably find regressive. Women my age in my husband's extended family call their husbands "aho," sometimes touch their husband's feet, do the "waitress thing," fast for their husbands, do not expect their husbands to participate in housework, cooking, or child-rearing, and do other things that feminists would at least question. To an Indian woman with feminist inklings, what does it mean to see a white woman with power, options, and opportunities putting on a sari and rolling out the chappatis? I can't answer that.

Ok, I’m inching past 1500 words here. I’ll just post this now and I’ll probably write a little more later. As always, thoughtful responses that don’t dismiss other people’s problems/thoughts/feelings/insights as “a lot of nothing” are appreciated.

(More completely fabulous posters are available at Archie McPhee)

Hey, Stop Throwing Snowballs at My Swastika!

2011-02-08T06:50:00.000-08:00

A couple months ago I was home alone reading.

"Thud!" Something hit the door. The dog jumped up. It wasn't a knock, it was more forceful than that.

I got up and looked out the peephole of the door. Nobody there. The dog stared at the door as though she could figure out what had just happened by looking at it long enough.

Huh, I thought. This is an old building and stuff is always breaking. No big deal. I sat back down and returned to reading about some medieval saint and the various tortures she inflicted on herself.

"Thud!" There it was again. This time, I got up and opened the door. No one was there, but there were two big white blotches stuck to the door and lots of snow on the doormat. The dog sniffed at the snow, surely gathering more information about the snowball thrower than I ever could. Seriously, why on earth would anyone throw snowballs at OUR door? It's the lady next door who is a high-end call girl (not that that is an excuse to throw snowballs at her door--we've seen her Russian pimp and he is scary) and it's the guy on the other side of us who keeps parking in the handicapped spot out front. What did we do? Were we playing the TV too loudly? Was it because I set off the smoke alarm with chilies I was frying the other day? What had we done to deserve the snowball treatment?

Because I'm from podunk nowhere, my mind headed in dark direction fairly quickly. I'm from a place where, at least until quite recently, interracial couples usually shopped at the 24-hour grocery store in the middle of the night, everybody knew where the KKK members lived, everyone was tired of reading semi-literate letters-to-the-editor from KKK members about their religious rights to send their kids to all-white schools, and the FBI was occasionally called in investigate a cross-burning on somebody's yard. Yeah, not normal. Even though we now live in uber-wealthy, super yuppie, high-income suburbia, my mind went there. I was sure somebody hated us for being a mixed couple.

I tried to go back to reading.

"Thud!" There it was again. Damn it! I opened the door within seconds. I heard footsteps running down the stairs. I tried to run after them. I even yelled, "Hey, what's the matter with you?" but I headed back rather than get myself into a fight.

Then walking back over to the door, I had another idea. You see, it was just after Diwali and our complex isn't the sort of place where you can put rangoli outside the door. The residents' association would have it swept up in minutes and we would end up paying a fine (I hate suburbia, can you tell?). So, we had little rangoli stickers on the front door, including two mini-swastikas. The rest were little feet, images of Ganesh, stylized stickers of the word OM, and some geometric/floral patterns. Walking back to the door, I saw that the snowballs had been aimed directly at the two little round swastika stickers. They were, more than likely, the reason we got snowballed.

It's funny how easy it is to just assume that people know things. I try not to assume that people are ignorant about things. I like to start out thinking that other people know at least as much as I do (which isn't much) and then go from there. I sometimes forget that other people don't see anything other than nazism when they see a swastika. They don't know that it, like any symbol, has a deeper, older history. In the words of Leonard Cohen, thank God it's not that simple.

I guess I thought that the context--all the little stickers with all the different little symbols, the fact that the swastikas had little dots under the arms and were fun colors--would be enough to indicate that no nazis lived inside. Still, Diwali was over and I didn't want anymore snowballs disturbing my evening, so I peeled off all the stickers and put them away for next year. I don't like the idea of not using the swastika stickers again just because someone can't use Google, but I wonder if I am the one being insensitive? Am I the one being obnoxious and self-righteous by putting the symbol on my door? When the KKK misuses a Christian symbol like a crucifix, nobody suddenly decides that racism and violence is its only meaning and then refuses to see it any other way, but the associations with the swastika, the one the nazis used, seems to have eaten up any other meaning for the symbol.

So, what's a nice Catholic gori who doesn't want to offend anyone supposed to do? Will using the symbol in its positive context out here in suburbia help at all, or will we get snowballed next year? I don't have an answer.

Here is a post from another WOI/POI on this topic.

Polyglot Navigation, Pain Meds, and Language Acquisition

2011-02-07T18:29:00.000-08:00

Since we got our GPS, Mr. 4B and I have learned to say "recalculating," "turn right," and "turn left" in Italian and Finnish. Both the languages are fun to speak (sing-songy, rolling off the tongue, pleasing to the ear in their musicality) and we often find ourselves speaking along with the robotic GPS voice as it tells us to turn right in 6.8 miles. The thing is, our GPS doesn't have a Hindi setting. If it did, I would have it on all the time. Hearing those same words over and over again would certainly help me. After all, entire days go by during which I have zero Hindi/Hinglish exposure and the GPS could at least remind me to study and get me to have something other than song lyrics and extremely formal questions in my language memory bank. While I get why they don't have it, since most Hindi speakers also know enough English to understand the GPS, but given that the GPS has Finnish, why not? Most of our Finnish friends speak English and Russian or English and Swedish as well as their mother tongue. They (the Finns we know) don't need to have Finnish on the GPS, though they like that we turn it on sometimes. Why not the same with Hindi?

So, on a less silly note, let me give a little progress update on Rosetta Stone and Hindi.

I continue to be amazed at how little Hindi I actually know. In spite of the classes (disaster!) and the tapes and all that, I really don't know much. In the average week, if I don't try I don't have ANY Hindi exposure. When the MIL skypes, I hear loud Marathi. When we go over to people's houses, I hear loud Marathi. Not helpful. (I probably have a serious psychological block against picking up any Marathi because I associate it with three things: meanness, people saying derogatory things about me right in front of me, and volume--intense, ear-splitting volume. Wish it wasn't so, as I am sure it has its beauties, but I don't think that damage can be undone). Other than movies, the most Hindi exposure I've had was on our trip to the Andamans, where people speak Hindi and were gracious (at least to my face) about my mangling of noun genders. After that trip, I felt that I could pick up about 35% of spoken Hindi around me. Oh, the delight of language immersion. I'm considering just playing Hindi movies, even bad ones, in the background while I do housework or exercise just so I can get my head in the rhythm of the language.

I really haven't been studying Hindi lately, though. I've been on a lot of pain meds lately for my spinal stuff, and they make me really stupid. They also impair my memory. There is a lot of "remember? I TOLD you like a week ago," going on in our house. Language doesn't really stick to Vicodin brain, unfortunately, but I'm taking less right now since I'm not working. I'm really hoping that I can get back into a habit of using Rosetta Stone every day again.

Lefty

2011-01-29T18:45:00.000-08:00

[This is just a short little post, though something longer is brewing in response to the "Trying Too Hard?" post and all its comments.]

These days, in the US at least, being a lefty isn't a problem. Maybe you will knock elbows with someone in class once or twice, and you will have to do some things right-handed (can openers, et cetera), but it's not a huge deal.

I was marking something down in one of my bird books when two of my husband's aunts came into the living room. The auntie gasped. She looked at her auntie friend to make sure she shared in her disapproval. Her friend shook her head and clicked her tongue. What was I doing wrong this time?

"You are always writing with your left hand?" the auntie asked.

What was I supposed to say? "Um, yes," I said. I mean, it's not like I could have said, "Only on special occasions," or "oh, I was using my left-hand again? Gosh, I didn't notice."

The aunties looked at each other and shook their heads once more.

I know that the left hand is sometimes considered taboo in India, as well as in some Islamic nations, as it is the hand people use to clean themselves with after using the toilet. Because of this rule, I try to abide by the eat-with-you-right-hand rule, even if that means literally sitting on my dominant hand to avoid the natural impulse to use it. All the Hindu rituals I've had to perform have all been with my right hand (I once "messed up" something I was supposed to be doing and put something down with my left hand and I got yelled at for a while--but hey, you force somebody to perform your religious rituals, you shouldn't expect them to know what to do and what not to do). Unfortunately, the taboo seems to extend to using you left hand to do anything--including writing. I later learned that it is still considered "bad luck" among many Indians to be left-handed.

Of all the kids in my family (we're Catholic, remember), I'm the only lefty. My parents noticed fairly early that my left hand was dominant. As a kid, I actually took pride in my left-handedness and the quirks that came with it (writing backwards notes, writing backwards messages on steamed-up windows). Of course, it came with problems. Though I do not consider myself dyslexic, I still have trouble remembering which way certain letters go. I cringe when I remember the humiliation of having to stand at the front of the class in second grade with the other lefty in the class while the teacher ripped our papers in half for having too many backwards letters.

I knew that one of my great-uncles was forced as a child to write right-handed, but that was in the 1930s. When he told me how the teachers used to hit his hands with a ruler, how he was punished for using his dominant hand, and how as an adult he is awkwardly ambidextrous, I was grateful to have been born in a more enlightened age.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that both my husband, who is not much older than me (I'm in my mid-twenties) AND his mother are actually lefties. They are still neurologically left-handed and do most things with their left hands, but they were forced by physical violence, just as my great-uncle was in the 1930s, to write with their right hands. If Mr. 4B wants to, he can write with either hand. He throws a ball with his left arm. If you see him or my MIL cut vegetables, you will see that they both use their left hands to hold the knife.

While I'm saddened that they both had to go through the difficult and humiliating process of being forced to be right-handed, I am glad to hear that this practice, at least in cities, is dying out.

Daisy With Her Prize Holstein, Kenosha, 1874

2011-01-27T10:27:00.000-08:00

This post is less about cultural differences than plain old family differences. A year or so ago, my MIL met my parents for the first time. She didn't meet them on her previous visits to the U.S. because she was still too deeply opposed to the idea of me, and, as I may have mentioned before, my parents don't have much money so they were not able to travel to India for the wedding. I don't write very much about my family on this blog because they are tech-savvy and could find this easily. We'll just say that my mom is hilarious, my dad is always tired because he works way too much over-time, and my siblings are all either moved out or in undergrad.

I don't know too much about what my MIL thought of the experience of meeting my parents or going to the midwest; I can only guess. (I might try later to write about her visit to Amish Country, but we'll see. Strangely, it lacked comedic value). But one moment that showed the differences between my American family and my husband's Indian family was the afternoon when my mom busted out the genealogy stuff. A few years ago, my mom inherited a lot of family photos, artifacts, and information. This includes Civil War photos with the uniforms hand-tinted blue and the cheeks tinted pink and photos of proud farmers standing with their ploughing teams.

As part of school projects in middle-school, my siblings and I had to copy out family trees that included stuff like "so-and-so, born in Utrecht 1624, died in New York 1679." I think that some of this is cultural. As Americans, we want to know where our ancestors came from. Since we are a mix of so many nationalities, we want a sense of what our history is. We want to know why our ancestors came here. Did they come by choice? If they did, what factors pushed them to come? When they got here, how did their lives change? In the 1960s and 70s, African Americans were inspired by the series Roots to find out where their progenitors originated. Many Irish Americans act more proud of being Irish than the actual Irish. With the advent of the internet, and now of genetic testing, people can find out where their ancestors came from with even greater ease. It's a fascinating story for any family. It means being part of a narrative of movement and change and form me at least, it helps me contextualize history. From a recent PBS series called African American Lives, many Americans of all races learned more about American history by watching as professors and genealogists traced the ancestry of individuals. It makes you feel connected to a bigger story.

In my family, that story has become integral to who we are. We like to tell the stories of what great-great-Grandpa did to keep the farm. As little girls, it was inspiring to hear about a great-great-great-aunt who saved up her money to take a typing course and become a secretary. Telling those stories helps keep the memory of these people, all them funny and quirky and messed-up in their own ways, alive.

In my husband's family, the narrative is very different. Everybody lived in the same place for hundreds of years. Sure, tens of thousands of years ago they came down from Central Asia via Africa, but that does not survive memory or narrative or oral history. My MIL's narrative is of staying in the same place and doing what worked for hundreds of years. She doesn't need a family tree with dates and places to know where she comes from. She doesn't keep black and white photos of her parents around. She doesn't need to.

So, when my mom got out her big acid-free archival boxes and put on her white cotton gloves, my MIL had a look of complete puzzlement on her face. My mom, with Mr. 4B as translator, tried to add them onto our family tree. And truly, I do want to have that information. I do want to know the names of the villages where my future kids' great-grandmothers came from. I do want to have pictures of them. But I don't know what my MIL thought of the idea of this. Maybe she thought it was just silly. My mom was asking for stories about these people, but she didn't seem to know any or see why on earth my mom would want to know them.

My mom showed her the Civil War pictures (this required Mr. 4B to explain what the American Civil War was. I wonder how he explained it? LOL), the World War I pictures, and pictures of elderly women hanging out on the front porches of their farm houses. With each picture, my MIL seemed more confused. Why was this strange woman showing her old photos of "Daisy with her prize Holstein" in Kenosha, Wisconsin in spring of 1874?

The truth is, I wish that I had a photo labeled "Sangeeta and her favorite milk cow, Pune, 1924." (Yes, I know that few people in India had cameras in 1924--just making up an example). But without someone to tell a story, I won't even get to know "Sangeeta's" actual name, what she did with her life, or what her story was.

(Thanks so much for the friend who provided the photo! While there's no cow, there is a silo, a farmdog, and two Wisconsin ladies!)

Trying Too Hard?

2011-01-18T09:22:00.000-08:00

Time for a really badly composed post! Sorry.

A while back, I read book of badly needed neologisms by Douglas Adams and James Lloyd. The book, called The Deeper Meaning of Liff, defined "Nokomis" as a person who dresses up in someone else's ethnicity.

OK, we probably all did it at some point. I know I did. It didn't last long, but I did go through a phase of trying too hard to be Indian-esque. I bought a lot of salwar kameezes and watched a lot of desi movies. I really wanted to go to India. I think everyone goes through this phase. You're in love, you want to know more about the person you are in love with. Imagination can only do so much. Maybe you do it to feel closer to the person you love. But how much is too much? At what point are you appropriating someone else's culture in an obnoxious way? Is there a limit? At what point are you just trying too hard to be something you're not? Honestly, it only took a couple incidents of being laughed at by Indians for me to stop wearing Indian clothes outside of Indian functions, the temple, or India itself. When people laughed at me, I suddenly became one of "those" women--women who exoticize India and try to be Indian.

I've been talking to Milwaukee Masala about this lately, and it's also been an issue that A Little of That Too has been dealing with. I don't want to be the white girl who is always trying to be Indian or to be defined as being just the white girl marred to the Indian. Some people, however, seem to want exactly that. I ran into one this summer, and it was really, really, awkward. In fact, I was a total bitch to her (it was in response to her being a total bitch to me, but that does not excuse it).

We went a wedding in the upper midwest this summer. The groom, the son of a family friend, was marrying an Indian American woman. The wedding was a great chance to see what a kind and thoughtful Indian wedding might be like and a good opportunity for us to catch up with family and friends. On the bride's side, one of the cousins came with his white wife. She came dressed in a sparkly red sari and enormous amounts of jewelry. OK, fine, whatever, I thought. Dressing up is fun if that's what you're into. I saw her look me up and down a couple times in an odd way for whatever reason. Again, OK, fine, whatever.

After the procession towards the temple, however, she took on the job of stopping people and telling them to take their shoes off. Even though she had clearly seen I was married to an Indian, I was wearing my mangal sutra as per usual, and had my husband right next to me, she stopped me and said, in the most condescending voice she could have mustered, "You know you have to take your shoes off." I gave her my best oh-bitch-please look and said, "Yeah, you think I don't know that?" She huffed and went off to tell a couple other white people to take their shoes off.

After the wedding, my mom wanted to see the temple itself, so we took her to walk through. While we were inside, the same woman in the sparkly red sari was prostrating herself on the ground in front of the various idols. "The fanaticism of the convert," my mom said when I told her about the shoe incident. I later found out that this woman had even changed her first name to something Hindu.

I guess she was free to do whatever she wanted, but it kind of weirded me out. Clearly, there is no one way to be in an in intercultural relationship, but as someone who strains against being defined by my husband's ethnicity, I find it troubling that someone would choose to be so, well, devoured by it. When people do that, it makes me wonder if they dated and married their husbands for the men they are, or if they were infatuated with an idea of the culture. I also wonder what the husbands think about it. Do they think it is sweet, or do they see the women they fell in love with trying to change themselves into a sort of idealized, retro idea of an Indian woman? I'd like to hear what you think.

Thinking About the Afterlife While Church Shopping

2011-01-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

Probably
Tags: SOUTH
PARK more...

Today, after a few weeks of not really trying, I resumed my church shopping efforts. I grew up in a town in which Catholics didn't have options when it came to going to church: the whole town was in one parish. You either went there or drove way out of town (which some people did--the sort of people who also wrote angry letters to the bishop when their priest said something they didn't like). Where I am now, I have several options. So far, I've been to: old people Episcopal Church, oh-my-goodness-why-does-everyone-here-have-children-under-four Episcopal Church, this-is-a-Filipino-church-what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here Catholic Church, a Greek Catholic Church, hippy-dippy Catholic Church, and snobby-rich-people Catholic Church. If I wanted to, I could even go to a (gulp!) schismatic church (the all-popes-after-Vatican-II-are-the-anti-Christ variety). Mr. 4B keeps threatening to drop me off at the schismatic church. He thinks I should go inside just to see what they do in there. But I digress...

Anyway, I had a good experience at a church in my diocese today. The thing about going to church, for me at least, is not that I agree with everything being said or that everyone there seems similar to me in age or socio-economic status, it's whether or not I can feel comfortable there. Praying and thinking require concentration, but they require even harder work when you are feeling ill at ease or out of place. The church I went to today had a nice mix of people from different backgrounds and on different paths in life, and more importantly, people actually greeted me and made me feel like they wanted me there (SO important when you are going to church by yourself!). I had a good enough experience that I hope to go back next week.

The sermon, delivered by a visiting priest, focused on vocations. By vocations, he didn't just mean people who take holy orders, but also people who have a vocation to be married or lead a single life. When he was talking about marriage, he repeated something I had heard before: "The purpose of marriage is to ensure that your spouse gets to heaven." That always makes me feel a little nervous. On the one hand, I think it's sweet. On the other hand, what about those of us whose spouses have a different idea--or no idea whatsoever--of the afterlife? Yes, I HAVE thought about this before, but it's not something with an easy answer.

No, I do not have visions of myself seated alongside Mr. 4B on a cloud playing a harp in the style of a New Yorker cartoon, but it does make me wonder. It's not something that is easy to think about, because it means thinking about separation and death, as well as confronting my own total lack of knowledge or certainty about the afterlife. I tend to think about "heaven" in the modern way, as a union with God, and "hell" as separation from God--they are both states that can occur in life. In heaven, you get to be with God, so I don't think that's too far a leap from some kind of Nirvana or cosmic-soul-soup. I like to think that no matter what we think it looks like, we are all talking about that same desire for union with God. So, clearly I don't have an answer of any kind, just questions. For now, if my job is to get my spouse into heaven, I have a loooong way to go on first fixing myself and trying to be better.

So, other interfaith couples, what do you think when you consider this question? Do you think you and your spouse will have an afterlife? If so, will it be together? How do you handle this question in your mind?

(*I know I'll probably get some oddball "actually, this religion is better than that one" comments, as well as "come join religion X, which is infinitely superior to religions Y and Z!" to which I say, please go do something more useful with your time.)

Loud Noises and Crowds: How to Have a Panic Attack During Your Own Wedding

2011-01-12T08:43:00.000-08:00

Ok, maybe this will be cathartic. I'm going to try to write about the worst part of my wedding. Yes, dear reader, DU will be there, but so will a lot of other people.

As I've occasionally mentioned on other people's blogs, I have an anxiety disorder. I started getting panic attacks in high school (nothing makes you quite so popular as passing out during gym class) and still get them as an adult. By now, I know what sets them off and I can tell when one is coming. In general, crowds, not being able to breathe, loud noises (banging, honking, screeching, yelling, babies crying, et cetera), and any type of situation in which I feel physically trapped, cause me to have shortness of breath, lowered blood pressure (hence the passing out), distorted vision, stomach pain, disorientation, and uncontrollable crying. Sound fun, huh? Well, anyway, as you can imagine, I don't have a lot of control over when I freak out, but if I can take beta-blockers ahead of time or anti-anxiety meds when an attack is happening, I can regain control fairly quickly. If you know anything about anxiety, you know that just thinking about or remembering an anxiety attack can be enough to induce one.

On day three of the wedding, after we thought we were done with everything we needed to do, two of the aunties and a man I will call the dhoti uncle (yes, he decided that he would wear a dhoti and no shirt to the wedding. And yes, he has a huge, round, hairy potbelly) went out and located a pair of tribal (that's the word they used--no idea if it's un-PC) musicians. Whatever this "ceremony" was, I am told that it has nothing to do with religion, but is just a cultural thing that you don't have to do. Of course we weren't told about this, we were just told that we had to do it. We were ordered to sit in the corner of the living room in front of a portable fire pit that the two tribal guys had set up. Then everyone else crowded in to the living room, packing all the rest of the space. Already feeling crowded, I tried to focus my attention out the window.

Dirty Uncle pulled up a chair right next to us and began banging a pair of cymbals together--right in my ear. Then the two tribal guys starting singing and banging loudly on their drums on the other side of the fire. We were instructed to start ladling cooking oil into the fire. Now, I don't know whose brilliant idea that was, but with each ladle of oil, we received a plume of filthy black oily smoke in out faces. They kept pounding on the drums. DU was slapping his cymbals together to no discernible rhythm. The room was packed with people, all of them clapping to their own avant-garde rhythms. The noise was too much. There was no way out. DU kept poking me in the shoulder and miming ladling every time we were supposed to make more black-grease smoke. I was crying uncontrollably. I didn't just want out of the room, I wanted out of the building, out of the city, and out of the country. I could barely breathe, but the banging clatter covered up the sounds of my gasping for air or sobbing. Mr. 4B was furious with me. "Stop it, stop it right now," he snapped.

"I can't stop, you know I can't."

He had seen me have panic attacks before. Once in a mall, once in a crowd. Both times he had been angry with me rather than sympathetic. Why did I expect compassion or understanding now?

Mr. 4B stopped the oil ladling all together, so DU nudged and poked me harder to keep ladling. There was no where to scoot over or move to get away from DU. At this point I was shaking so hard that I couldn't have held the ladle if I wanted to. The clapping and yelling continued. No one seemed to notice, let alone care, that I was sobbing uncontrollably, but eventually someone noticed that Mr. 4B was sitting with his arms folded and doing the required ladling. We were told we could have a break, so I wobbled over and through the crowd into the bedroom to get to my medication. One of the aunties followed me in and yelled at me to get back in there. Mr. 4B just stood there.

"Make...it...stop, please!" I whimpered. My sister pushed through the gaggle of aunties to bring me a glass of water. I swallowed the pills, drank some water, and tried to regain control of my breathing. I was still light-headed and big pink blotches kept floating across my field of vision.

"Are you done?" Mr. 4B said. He seemed to think that this was some stunt I was pulling or something I could physically control.

"I need to lie down," I said.

The auntie resumed her yelling. "You must go back. You MUST go!"

"NO!" I managed. "I...will...not...go back in...that room."

"You must go. It is a kind of culture. You must go."

"No."

The auntie started yelling at Mr. 4B in Marathi. His mother and two more aunties came over. They all squawked at once, but he yelled back. He later told me that he yelled at them for imposing this stupid ceremony on us and at his mother for allowing them to do it.

He was still mad at me, though. (To this day, I still don't know if he understands what a panic attack is like. He's come to doctor's appointments with me and had it explained to him, but he still seems to think it's something I "do"). I was allowed to finish drinking the water, but we had to go back in the room. I took 1.5 times my normal dose of anxiety meds, took several deep breaths, wiped my eyes, and returned to the living room. I climbed back over the crowd and sat back down on the floor. We both sat with our backs against the wall and our arms crossed and waited for it to be over. I leaned my head back and tried to focus on one breath at a time. When DU nudged me to pour oil on the fire, I smacked his hand. When he did it again, I smacked it again.

The crowd continued their clapping and banging just as before. Breathe in. Breathe out. Wait for meds to take effect. When it was finally over, Mr. 4B was seething. He yelled at the aunties more while I lay curled up in the corner or the bed (same one that was soaked with children's pee) and tried to recover while utterly zonked from the medication. It had been a horrible, horrible day. The aunties remained convinced that what they had done was wonderful and that we should have been grateful. Mr. 4B was mad at the aunties,at dirty uncle, at dhoti uncle, and his mother, but he was also mad at me. If nothing else, the wedding, and assorted wedding events, was over.

(P.S. I won't tolerate any posts making fun of people who suffer from anxiety disorders or panic attacks. I'm sorry to have to write that, but you would be surprised what kind of garbage people will say if you tell them you have this problem)

Old Coots, My Thighs, and Unsolicited Sex Advice, Part 3 (or, My Truck Stop Wedding Night)

2011-01-07T06:07:00.001-08:00

(This is part 3-if you haven't read about the Dirty Uncle yet, I suggest starting here)

Throughout the wedding preparations, the wedding ceremony and the reception that followed, DU continued to awkwardly insinuate himself into positions of importance. He was right there next to my MIL when they performed the aarti when we arrived at the banquet hall. He was even welcoming people, which made no sense considering this was not his wedding or his family. He stood there and tried to give me instructions while I had to do a ceremonial wheat-grinding activity ("You must pound harder! You know what I mean!"). He sat in the front row at the banquet hall and tried to boss people around. He insisted on being first to take photos with us (which would have been fine, I guess, since it would get him out of the way, but he stayed for about five sets of photos with five groups of people until some uncles diplomatically removed him from the stage). Even when we came back to the house, he stood right inside the door and tried to give me instructions on how to kick over the little pot of grain on the thresh-hold. Rather than kicking it into the house, I was basically kicking it into a goal between DU's feet.

After we came back to the house, we had several hours to kill before we had to do anything else. Everyone was tired, but there weren't enough beds for the adults to take naps, just the kids. Everyone got out of their fancy clothes and sat around for a while, and my sister and I did a funny dance to entertain everyone. DU pulled up a chair right next to where we were dancing and began to clap without any clear rhythm. (OK, fine, we thought). After we did our dance, some of the kids who were still up joined in and recited poems they had learned in school. One little boy even sang a song. We were all having fun and clapping and cheering for the kids and having a good time, but them DU said that my sister and should do our funny dance again. We shrugged, got up, and started to sing and dance again, but instead of just clapping this time, DU decided to join in. We tried to stay away from him, but he, even at eighty-something, still tried to put his hands on my waist. I tried to laugh it off and make it part of the dance to get away from him, but all the aunties could tell how uncomfortable we were. When we stopped dancing, DU said he wanted to do something else, but the aunties and kids began to disperse. DU had ruined the fun activity of the day by insisting on being center stage.

About an hour later, when we were getting ready to leave for our hotel, DU cornered me. Literally cornered me in one of the bedrooms. I was just packing some overnight stuff in my backpack. Why, in a house overflowing with people was their suddenly no one in one of the rooms? "I must speak to you," he said. I busied myself with my bags.

"No you don't," I said, throwing my backpack over my shoulder and trying to push my way past him.

His face became red and he pushed his enormous hand into my shoulder to keep me cornered.

"You will stay right here and you will listen to me!" he yelled.

"No, I won't. You are going to say something inappropriate and I won't stay to hear it."

"You will listen to me!"

I pushed his arm off my shoulder and stared at him angrily.

"All right. What?"

Clearly, he had prepared some kind of speech for me, but my reaction had thrown him off. "I have made all the arrangements for a hotel for you tonight. You are going to get in the car and go there. I know a lot about sex, so want to tell you things to do."

"Well, you won't." I said. I ducked under his arm and ran to find Mr. 4B.

"DU just cornered me and tried to give me some sex advice."

"Oh, God. He tried to do that to me, too."

"I thwarted him," I said.

"I told him to go to hell."

"Good, he will eventually," I said. All the aunties and uncles, including Mrs. DU, were sitting around the living room having tea, oblivious to what we were talking about. DU still had not come out of the bedroom. "What's this about him booking our hotel for tonight?"

Mr. 4B rolled his eyes. "I only just found out. My mom let him book the hotel for us."

"You're kidding."

"I wish I was."

When the car arrived to take us to the hotel, DU insisted on coming down with us and winking and slapping us on the back. My MIL came to the car window and told Mr. 4B something.

"What did she say?" I asked, as we pulling out of the gates of the society.

"Oh, God. DU is upset that we aren't more grateful about the hotel, so she wants us to be all thankful tomorrow."

"No freaking way!"

"I can't believe this asshole. I mean, I never had that kind of relationship with him," Mr. 4B said, looking out the window. "It's not like he was the fun uncle who made jokes or that I could confide in or something."

"Weddings bring out the worst in people," I said.

"It brought out the worst in him."

"I'm so tired."

"Me too."

"When do we have to get up tomorrow?"

"At six so we can get back in time."

"Six? It's eleven now. Where the hell is this place?"

We spent the next hour in the car seething. As we got farther and farther away from the city, the lights along the sides of the road began to disappear. We passed camel stables and soon we were just along a highway. Huge concrete pipes lay all along the road, and every once in a while we saw that people were camped out inside them. Eventually, we reached a intersection and our driver pulled in at the truck stop on one side.

He said something in Marathi to Mr. 4B, who said "Aare Bhapaare," and put his hand to his forehead.

"Are we stopping for gas?" I asked.

"No. Apparently we're here."

I looked out at the rows of tanker trucks lined up in the dirt parking lot. We seemed to be at a sort of all-night restaurant. Where was the hotel? We got out and went into the restaurant. One of the waiters, it seemed, was also in charge of check-ins. He looked us up in his book, where after much confusion, we were found under DU's name. and then took us to our room. To reach the room, we had to walk through the kitchen, where plates of half-eaten noodles were stacked up waiting to be washed. We walked out into an open area with a separate, single-story building.

He let us into our room, which mercifully included an air-conditioner, and left us.

I looked around. Mr. 4B was irate. "It's not so bad," I said. The day had been stressful and unpleasant enough and I really just wanted to go to sleep. "It's like a Motel 6."

"No, it's not. Motel 6 is a lot cleaner than this."

He was right. The room was entirely gray, either from paint or dirt, except for the bathroom which was dull pink. It smelled like thirty years of stale cigarettes. The bed was made up with worn sheets that had once been white, but were now gray and pilled. We could hear the TV on the room next door. I opened the closet and found a basket of fake flowers. Thinking they were funny, I pulled them out, but Mr. 4B was in no mood for humor.

"Don't touch those!" he said. "You don't know how dirty they are."

I decided I wanted to wash my face and hands, but there wasn't any soap in the bathroom. Unsure where it might be, I opened up one of the drawers in the table next to the bed. Inside were three condom wrappers, but no soap. "Oh, God," I said, unsure whether to laugh or yell. Mr. 4B came over and looked in the drawer.

"Disgusting!"

"At least they used protection." (Yes, my sense of humor does get me in trouble sometimes).

"It was probably three truckers and three prostitutes right here on this bed."

I looked at the bed. Clearly, neither of us was in a mood for anything other than sleep that night, but now even sleep seemed impossible--no matter how exhausted we were.

"Maybe I should take them out. What if they clean this place and find the condoms and then think that we are sex maniacs or something." Neither of us was thinking clearly at this point.

"Clearly, they don't clean this place."

"Do you think they washed the sheets?"

"Oh, God. Now I won't be able to sleep at all." Mr. 4B said, burying his face in his hands.

I went into the bathroom to try to wash some of the wedding make-up (about 1/4 inch thick) off my face with water and maybe assess the status of my million and one mosquito bites. Unfortunately, when I turned the tap on the sink, nothing came out but a low metallic wail. Clinging to the mirror was a pair of house lizards.

When I came out, Mr. 4B was perched on the edge of the bed, seething. We could hear male voices in the room next to ours. Mr. 4B started to fiddle with the TV, which didn't seem to get any channels. "There's no water," I said.

"Of course there's no water," Mr. 4B hissed. "This is a hellhole. There isn't water in hell."

"Well, I'm going to try to get some sleep on the trucker/hooker bed," I said. It was already twelve thirty AM. I got up and checked to bolt on the door and then laid down on the trucker/hooker bed fully clothed.

I laid there like a corpse, trying not to let too much of my skin touch the bed. Mr. 4B messed with the TV a little longer and then laid down as well. After ten minutes, he simply said,"I'm going to kill that bastard."

"Go to sleep."

"Did you check the bolt on the door?"

"Yes."

"Can you check it again?"

"Can't you check it? I'm so tired."

"Can you just check it?" Mr. 4B was so angry at this point that there was no arguing.

"Fine." I dragged myself up from the bed. Every part of me ached with exhaustion. "It's still locked."

"Sorry," Mr. 4B said. He curled up with his arms around me and said. "I'm seriously going to kill DU."

"You do that," I mumbled.

After nearly an hour of desperately needed sleep, we were awoken by a loud crashing noise. "Someone is trying to break in," Mr. 4B said, sitting up. Then the water turned on. Water began gushing from all the taps in the bathroom. I went in and tried to turn them off, but they would budge. The bottoms of my pants were drenched. The shower was running. The bucket tap was running. The toilet was flushing non-stop like something possessed and the sink was overflowing. The men next door were shouting on the other side of the wall as they tried to turn off their water. Mr. 4B came in and we both tried to close the taps. After a couple minutes, the water simply stopped, leaving us to lie back down with our wet feet and wet trousers.

Atop the wall opposite the bed, a red light kept blinking in the dark. Now that we were awake again, Mr. 4B began to fixate on it. "I think it's a camera," he said.

"Maybe it's a smoke alarm," I mumbled, trying to fall back asleep. "Or a mosquito thingy."

"No, the mosquito thingy is over there by the door." Mr. 4B got up and turned the light back on. He took the chair that he had placed in front of the door and climbed upon it to investigate the red light. "I think it is a camera."

"Well, we're not giving them anything to look at. Go back to sleep," I mumbled. You know you are exhausted when you don't want to do anything on your wedding night and you are not freaked out by what is probably a camera in your trucker/hooker hotel room.

Eventually, we got back to sleep. We had to be back at my MIL's the next morning. Of course, even though we had scrambled to be back on time, nothing was ready at the house. The aunties were lined up for showers and DU was already there.

"So, how was it?" DU asked.

"That place was an absolute shit hole," Mr. 4B said. He went in the kitchen and told his mother and the aunties about it. They all shook their heads and said, "Aare bhapaare, aare bhapaare," over and over again. My MIL went into the living room and yelled at DU. I have no idea what she said, but it was enough to keep him quiet for a solid ten minutes.

I went and found my sister, who had spent an eventful night sleeping on a bed with two children who still wet the bed. She had taken care of two sheet changes in the night and had tried to get the mothers to change the kids' clothes, but had received blank stares. "So, I spent last night sleeping with pee-soaked children," she said.

"I spent the night in a truck stop," I told her.

She went on to tell me that after we had left, DU had cornered her and given her a prepared lecture on how she "must be so sad to be losing her sister."

"I said, 'no. I'm not losing my sister,' but he had clearly been preparing his speech for a while, so I just sat there and let him give it." He had gone on to give some speech about how she must be heartbroken that she will never get to see me anymore. He also said that my parents must be very sad since they will never see me again. "We'll see them when we get home," she said by way of brushing him off.

All I could do was apologize. The past few days had been a disaster. We were tired and dirty and angry, but we were at least 2/3 through the wedding.

After the wedding nightmare was over, we had a couple days before we headed back to the US. During those two days, DU stayed away. We were sure he had been shamed enough by his own actions that he would not interfere again. But on the day we were leaving, DU called my MIL and announced his intention to ride with us to the airport. Knowing exactly how much we all hated DU, my MIL did something kind. She made up something about how there wasn't enough room in the car with the luggage. Mr. 4B came in and told me what his mother had done. It was he first kind action I had ever seen from her. I went into the kitchen and thanked her.

New Aasif Mandvi Movie

2011-01-06T16:12:00.000-08:00

With a gori love interest.

Old Coots, My Thighs, and Unsolicited Sex Advice, Part 2

2011-01-02T09:05:00.000-08:00

A Visit to DU's apartment (If you haven't read about the dirty uncle yet, I suggest starting here)

A few days later, we got in a rickshaw and headed to DU's apartment. DU's wife briefly came out of the kitchen to greet us, but she quickly disappeared back into the kitchen. She was clearly at least fifteen years younger than DU, and had a friendly openness about her that made me think that she was someone I would like to know. You know how you can meet people and, even if you don't have a common language, you know that you get along? She seemed like that sort of person.

On the way there, Mr. 4B explained that DU's wife had been living with a debilitating illness for many years and had come within inches of death several times. Because of her illness, she had never had children. Because of her lack of options in life, she had never gone to college or been able to pursue a career.

When we arrived at the apartment, I noticed that my MIL and Mrs. DU were both wearing the same thing: a Barbie pink polyester sari. (I've since decided that the Barbie pink polyester sari must be the Maharashtrian equivalent of the mid-western grandma sweatshirt with corresponding turtleneck--either that or Mom jeans. No one thinks it looks good except other old ladies). I tried to follow her and MIL into the kitchen to avoid DU, but I was quickly shooed out by MIL. I guess she wanted to hang out with Mrs. DU and share some gossip alone.

Thwarted in our attempts to avoid DU, my sister and I made sure to sit on the opposite side of the table from DU and to pull our chairs all the way out, thus placing our legs fully out of his reach. Clearly, Mrs. DU was in pain and having mobility problems. She moved slowly and often hunched over as she moved. I didn't yet have my back problems as severely as I do now, but even without the experience of long-term pain, we all felt a bit bad about sitting in the cramped living room while a person with an illness waited upon us. To make things more awkward, DU never once lifted a finger to help his ailing wife. In fact, he yelled orders to her from the living room. I should explain that DU's normal voice was a normal human's yelling voice, so his yelling voice was enough to set the dogs outside barking.

After Mrs. DU brought us some tea, DU began a long lecture about how India is the best country in the world and how all American marriages end in divorce. (Seriously, do all old coots in India receive a manual at age 65 that gives them a series of lectures to memorize?) After a while, I tried to make polite conversation by pointing out how pretty the small Garuda statue in the corner was. DU went on to explain what Garuda was (fine) and then tell me about other gods on his shelf (also fine). I was sureMr. 4B eventually got up and went into the kitchen to ask his mom something. At the same time that he went into the kitchen, Mrs. DU came out carrying some more snacks. Now, IN FRONT of his wife and my sister, DU said, "Now, I know that American girls have a lot of sex. I think this is very good. I talk to many women and they are all very frank with me about this. You can tell me all about these things." Mortified, I coughed up a sip of tea all over my shirt. Poor Mrs. DU, not knowing what her crazy husband had just said, was worried that the tea was bad and began fussing over me. Everyone came running from the kitchen as I tried to reassure poor Mrs. DU that everything was all right. Now that Mr. 4B was back in the room, DU turned the conversation to his second favorite topic: himself. He told us about his old job and what he was doing now that he was retired and then busted out some business cards. Whoever had printed the cards had turned his initials into the image of Ganesh. We smiled and nodded, but he seemed convinced that we did not understand the importance of this, so he repeatedly pointed at it and explained, "You see, those are my initials. And this--this is the image of Ganesh. He is our elephant god. You see? Those are my initials, and you look closely and you see that they make a the shape that is like an elephant head." We smiled, nodded, and turned to each other with raided eyebrows.

Thus, physically unmolested, we eventually left, but not before DU gave us a gift. He yelled at his enfeebled wife in the other room, and she emerged carrying a large package of bed sheets. The sheets were Kelly green with enormous hot pink daisies on them. We accepted them as graciously as possible, given that they were appropriate for the bed of a five year old child, and tried to get out the door. Unfortunately, before we made it out the door, DU stopped to inform us that, "this is so you have our blessing for fun in bed. You can think of us when you use them!" Mortified, I held the sheets as far away from myself as possible as we walked down the stairs. Mr. 4B shook his head with embarrassment. "I never saw him behave like this before," he said. My MIL, ignorant of what DU had said about the sheets took them from me and walked with them proudly, admiring them as we went out to find a rickshaw. Needless to say, we let her keep them.

Old Coots, My Thighs, and Unsolicited Sex Advice, Part 1

2010-12-31T10:40:00.000-08:00

Yes, dirty old men are everywhere. They are a constant of every society--probably even on other planets. If I landed on an unexplored planet today, some 55+ year old alien would probably pull up in his beat-up spaceship ("Hey baby, how ya doin'?") and flash me a set of gold teeth. So, of course, one of the biggest elements of my wedding was a filthy, dirty, ancient, old coot in tight polyester pants.

No one is quite sure how Dirty Uncle (DU from here on out) was actually connected to the family. He was certainly no blood relation, but no one seemed to be his friend or like him either. One person seemed to vaguely remember something about his father being someone's landlord at some point, but even that connection was unclear. Still, for whatever reason, people in my husband's extended family allowed him to behave as though he were actually important. He wasn't fun, interesting, intelligent, or even charming, but we came home back to my MIL's from shopping one day before the wedding and found him perched on the couch. Now, my MIL's living room is set up with a sofa against one wall and lower more traditional seating across from from it against the other wall. My MIL hurried into the kitchen to make tea for DU, while we (my sister, Mr. 4B, and me) were ordered to sit down across from him. "He is very old, Mr. 4B said. "He's more than 80, so we must treat him with a lot of respect." And silly us, we thought that he was some sort of venerable grandfather figure. We smiled, greeted him with a namaste, and lowered ourselves onto the floor. DU sat there with his huge, polyester-clad legs spread wide apart. Due to the difference in height levels of the seating, the three of us sat down only to be presented with an all-too-revealing view of DU's crotch. We all tried to look away.

"Now," he said, looking at my sister, "come sit here by me." My sister got up and sat on the couch about a foot away from him. "Come close," he said. She scooted in closer and gave us a look of terror as he placed his enormous hand on her thigh. "I understand that you are going to be my daughter-in-law." We all gave him puzzled looks. Not only was this person no relation whatsoever, but he also had the wrong person. My sister is thin with dark hair while I am the opposite.

Once we managed to explain that I was the once set to marry Mr. 4B, we exchanged places, and now I got to sit with his enormous hot mitt slowly climbing up my leg. Now, as you know, salwar kameez pants are not very thick, making this doubly unpleasant. I looked at Mr. 4B for help, but he said to just ignore it. When I tried to scoot away, he followed suit until I was squished between him and the arm of the couch.

"I'm going to go check on the tea," I said, writhing to extract myself.

I hurried into the kitchen and returned with the tea. "You will make a good Indian housewife," DU exclaimed. I rolled my eyes for my sister and Mr. 4B as I brought them they tea tray. I found it odd that my MIL had opted to stay in the kitchen. When I brought the tray back in, she seemed to have decided that now would be a great time to clean out the fridge. She clearly didn't want to be in the room with him either.

I went back in and sat back down on the traditional seating. The three of us turned to look out the window as DU began an extensive ball-scratching session. DU then began telling us about our wedding and how he had worked so hard on it. I raised my eyebrow in the direction of Mr. 4B, who simply shook his head and raised one shoulder to indicate that he had no idea what DU was talking about. He then asked us about what we thought of the English translation of our wedding invites, of which about 20 had been printed. We waited to say anything, because the mangled translation made absolutely no sense in any language. He then proudly announced that he was responsible for the translation. We nodded and said it was very good and thanked him profusely. As he ate a plate of sweets, he told us all about how Indian marriage is better than any other type of marriage and so on and so forth. We continued to grin and bear it as he licked his fat fingers and dithered on and on. Finally, he left and my MIL mysteriously re-emergered from the kitchen.

NEXT TIME... A Visit to DU's House

Umm, That's Not Awkward...

2010-11-12T09:46:00.001-08:00

(FYI: No, I don't actually own that t-shirt. I stole the picture from a website)
Just for a laugh, I thought I would share the most awkward, inappropriate, and outright ignorant things people in the U.S. have said to me throughout the years about my relationship/engagement/marriage. None of these are from family members or even people I know particularly well. Please feel free to add odd things people have said to you in the comments section.

While at a fast-food job during undergrad when we had only been together a few months:

Other employee: So, you're going out with an Indian guy?

Me: Yup. He's a nice guy.

Other employee: So, is he circumcised?

Me: [stunned silence] I-um-I-don't-um--why?

Other employee: That was really inappropriate wasn't it?

Me: Uh-huh. New topic, please?

In my hometown after our engagement was printed in the local paper:

Lady have met a few times: Oh, you don't want to marry one of those guys. I heard about this girl, somebody my friend's daughter knows, and the guy had another wife back home. Anyway, he ended up taking the kids.

Visiting author at my undergraduate college, over drinks. Not sure how the topic arose:

Marrying Indian men is very dangerous. My friend married an Indian man, and before they were even married for two month, he had established his mistress in the house across the road.

Me: [I gaze down at my drink and play with the stirrer] That's really sad.

Visiting author: You're not married to an Indian, are you?

My drunken professor who paying for the drinks: She's going to be.

Visiting author: I should shut up.

Girl giving me a ride home after class: I just don't know why you would subject yourself to that. I mean, I know I could never stay with someone from such a misogynistic society.

Drunk lady at a party after my husband got up for a moment: "Oooh, is he yours?"

Me: Um, yeah, he's with me.

Drunk lady: It's cool, honey, I like the dark meat myself.

Me (into my drink): Um, that's not awkward.

Woman I had just met: Well, let me tell you about these foreigners. They come here, they meet sweet little girls like you, they get them to sponsor their green cards, and then they divorce them. You had better watch out.

Woman at my old job: So you have an Indian husband?

Me: Yeah. He comes in sometimes. You'll probably meet him.

Woman at my old job: So does he wear a lot of leather and feathers and stuff?

I'm sure you guys have funnier ones, but that's a little taste from my treasure-trove of awkwardness.

For Those of You Who Like Making Stuff

2010-11-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

For a while now I've been looking for patterns for sari blouses. I have a few saris that came as gifts that don't include blouses and I'd like to be able to wear them when needed, especially since some of them are less formal than my wedding saris and would be appropriate for smaller functions. Yes, I know that I could just do the take-it-to-India-and-pay-someone-to-do-it thing, but I really want to improve my sewing skills. Because the sari blouse is so fitted and includes so many darts to make it form-fitting, I have a lot to learn from making it. Also, if I figure out how to make the traditional blouse, I can start to modify it for more stomach coverage (important!). Of course, if you ruin a blouse, gain or lose weight, or just want to have a different color to go with your sari, I think it's a good skill to have.

With the exception of decorative work, which I do fairly well, I'm somewhere between a novice and a competent person when it comes to sewing. So I don't necessarily trust myself to disassemble my existing sari blouses and trace the pieces. Instead, I've been looking around for patterns online and experimenting with trying to make the blouses out of cheap fabric and scrap. I'm sure those of you who are experienced sewers can give me some tips (seriously, if you have some, I'd be grateful)

This morning while I was looking around online I came across this site entirely devoted to making sari blouses! Yay! I plan to play around with it over the coming weeks and see if I can get some results worth sharing, but don't expect anything. I might be too embarrassed. For years now I've been drooling over this Folk Wear pattern (this company makes patterns for all kinds of cultural events from traditional Korean dresses to Ukrainian and Irish folk-dance wear), but have yet to buy it because it is really quite expensive for a single pattern. Maybe I should just add it to my Christmas list?

Folkwear also has a salwar kameez pattern and a Nepalese blouse pattern. I do have a salwar kameez and lenga choli pattern that I got for a few dollars, but oddly enough, it was listed under Halloween costumes (made me think of this article called "Is Your Halloween Costume Racist?"). I haven't made anything from the pattern, since I really do have a lot of salwar kameezes. I think I bought it thinking that the shorter lenga choli would work for a sari blouse.

Let Us Praise the Humble Rutabaga

2010-11-05T07:42:00.000-07:00

A little while back, my husband went to India for a quick trip. Honestly, I didn't mind staying behind. I could do without the stress of seeing my MIL, leaving the dog, and spending $1,300 to sit on a plane for seventeen hours with a major back problem. Sure, I missed Mr. 4B, but, honestly, I was excited about one thing: food. As many of you know, marrying somebody from a completely different background often means that you don't get to eat some of your favorites very often.

In my case, I married a man who, if left alone, would only eat poha and chicken. Only poha and chicken. He would top these things with ranch dressing and sri racha. Let's just say that he's not a vegetable guy. He also shuns the majority of the world's fruits. That's just him. So, even though it sounds crazy nuts, I spent a couple weeks madly devouring green vegetables. I remember seeing something on television called "What Do You Eat When You're Alone?" When alone, most people eaither eat things they would be embarrassed by in front of others (i.e. brownies for dinner) or they ate all the foods their spouse of partners hates. So, after a long, mouth-watering discussion about with my Scandinavian neighbor on all the ways to prepare apples and berries, I spent a couple weeks eating oven-baked delights. I only had a short time, but I managed to cram in such autumnal delights as butternut squash, baked apples, kale, berries, Swiss Chard, spinach, and yes, the humble rutabaga. It's easy to take such things for granted, but deprive yourself of them long enough, and you too will want Brussels sprouts fried in olive and balsamic vinegar and some hardy root vegetables.

Mr. 4B is back now, so we're back to the usual rotation of the Indian food and stuff-that-is-somewhat-similar-to-Indian-food.

What do you eat when you're alone? Do you have things that you used to eat but never get to have anymore?

Man's Best Friend: an Unexpected Cultural Difference

2010-11-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

Some of my favorite people are dogs. As I write this, my own dog, whom we’ll pretend is named Chini, is sitting at my feet playing with her ball. We got her a few months ago when I was in constant pain and she has been essential to getting me moving again and helping me keep in good spirits. Mr. 4B loves the dog as much as I do, and she’s made us very happy. Still, when we go to India or go to an Indian party here, or even when we walk Chini in our neighborhood, we are reminded that dogs are a huge cultural difference. What I think of as a lovable companion, many of my Indian friends and neighbors think of as something to fear. Of course it's not everybody, but it is a profound departure from what Americans are used to. Never in my wildest dreams would I have considered marrying a man who didn’t like dogs, but some of my American friends married to Indians have brought up dogs as one of their main points of disagreement within their marriages. I’m going to try to address some of the problems the “dog divide” between American and Indian culture.

I am ardently pro-dog. I always had pets. My parents always had pets. I have a photo of my great-grandfather in his World War One uniform holding a dog. I have a photo of my great-great-grandparents farm that prominently features a little dog. So, growing up, I honestly thought that there were probably twenty people in the world who didn’t like our evolutionary companions, and all those people were cranky octogenarian men—you know, the sort of guys who yell “Damn kids!” at passing roller skaters. (Of course, when I moved to creepy-as-sin, litigious, self-righteous suburbia, I discovered a lot more people who hate both dogs and kids, but that’s another story).

In trying to wrap my head around the idea of hating dogs, I’ve been thinking a lot about the differing ways that people think of domestic canines. As a kid, we often had priests and nuns at our parish from Ghana, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. They had a different yet highly practical attitude towards dogs. “We do not have dogs inside the house,” one priest told me. “We like them, and they help look after the farm, but they sleep outside the house to guard it.” Though the attitude was different, it made sense in the context of rural life. At the other end of the spectrum are the northern Europeans. My northern-European neighbor was recently waxing nostalgic for being able to bring her dog inside the department store. In the U.S., only working dogs for the disabled are allowed in the department store, the train, or the grocery store. In China, home to the first dog considered a purebred, people are starting to keep larger dogs than in the past and people are starting to think about animal welfare laws. In India, most dogs live on the street. They have diseases and parasites galore, they are not spayed or neutered, and though some people feed them biscuits or food scraps, the vast majority of people dislike them. Some people even fear them or think of them as filthy and disgusting. But, since India is a land of extremes, I’ve seen imported pure-bred dogs being walked or carried by servants in the suburbs on Mumbai. (Maybe the stigma is not so great in the wealthiest part of the population?)

Recently, the cultural differences about dogs have become a major problem in our neighborhood. We live in a diverse complex, and I would say that about thirty percent of the people here are recent immigrants from India, Pakistan, South Korea, and China. My neighbor, who works in a trauma unit (I promise that detail will be relevant later!), was walking her dog down the street and a South Asian lady came around the corner, took one look at her (this was like 60 feet away), and started screaming and waving her arms in the air. My neighbor, unsure what was happening, but worried that there was an emergency, put her dog in a sit-stay, dropped the leash, and ran over. She said “I’m a nurse. Do you need help? Is someone hurt?” The woman then yelled at my neighbor to “keep that filthy animal off the sidewalk.” My neighbor was flabbergasted. Obviously that is an extreme example of extreme (and probably pathological) behavior, but it there have been smaller incidents as well, including, sadly, incidences of people pulling their children away from dogs they are petting. As a result, the complex has been putting up “friendly reminder” notices reminding people of the leash law (not the problem here!).

Clearly, some of the worries that people have about dogs comes from experience with Indian street dogs. Since the dogs aren’t trained, aren’t fixed, and aren’t vaccinated, people avoid them. This is rational enough. (Since I’m not rational, I generally spend my entire trip to India looking at cute puppies and wishing I could pet them). Luckily, Mr. 4B and I have been able to undo dog-hate in a few of our acquaintance by explaining that Chini is vaccinated, spayed, well-groomed, and trained. In general, if a person watches us put Chini through her commands, and then we let that person tell Chini to “sit,” “lay down,” “roll-over,” and “shake,” they see that she should not be feared. Unfortunately, other people aren’t even willing to come in the same room as her, which is very sad. Sadder still, I know some Indian-Americans whose parents TAUGHT them to hate dogs. At the end of the day, learned behavior is hard to undo. If you grew up with a mom who snatched you up in fear while you were petting a doggie, you would probably be scarred for life, too. If your parents have a framed picture of you, age two, taking a nap with the dog, you can’t really wrap your brain around dog hate.

If you’re a gori bahu like me, maybe you have had problems getting your husband or in-laws to accept your beloved beast. Maybe, like me, you’ve made compromises about what kind of food the dog will have (ours only gets chicken, no beef or lamb, though veg food is available at Petsmart). Maybe your dog has boundaries that you didn’t grow up with (Mr. 4B when we first got Chini: “I don’t think I want the dog on the bed.” Me: “That’s fine.” Mr. 4B three days after we got the dog: “Come here, come here. Get up on the bed! Good dog! What a good dog! Are you a good dog?”). Maybe you have a spouse who is telling you “no” and you just don’t know what to do. Maybe you are living in India and just can't help it but feed and look after all the dogs in your neighborhood. When it comes to the dog aspect of my life, I consider myself very lucky. I feel happy and grateful every time I look at my dog. Even if you don’t feel the same way I do about my dog, she's here to stay.

Where I've Been

2010-08-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Hi. Just an update. I've been neglecting this blog. I promise that it's not because I don't have anything to write about; it's just that I've been quite ill for the past few months (nothing life-threatening, just painful) and have been dealing with treatments that have left me horizontal and pain-medication that has left me a bit stupid. The good news is that I will be able to avoid surgery and, I hope, get off of the painkillers soon. I'll be back soon...

A Mixed Wedding in the Midwest

2010-07-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, my husband and I attended a wedding of another mixed couple. One of my extended family members married a Hindu woman of Indian descent. Her parents are from India, but she was raised here. We flew into a large mid-western city to attend the wedding, and we really had a good time. The two families did a good job making the traditional Hindu ceremony accessible to a non-Indian audience and even brought a few western traditions into the ceremony. I admit it—I was downright jealous.

Our wedding, held in India a couple years ago, was no fun. It was about people’s egos and insecurities and it made no concessions to cultural or religious differences. For most of the ceremony, I was scared (what’s happening? Why won’t anybody tell me what’s happening? What happens next? What am I agreeing to? This wasn’t in any of the stuff I read on-line, et cetera), confused (why are we doing this? You said I wouldn’t have to do this. What do you mean I should just do it and not ask questions? Hang on, how do I do it? Et cetera ), or angry (you said there would be a translator. Why isn’t there a translator? I’m sick of being pushed around, et cetera). This couple had been prepped and at each stage of the ceremony someone, either the priest or the bride’s sister, explained the purpose and meaning of the ceremony.

The people sitting in front of us, who are close friends of ours, kept laughing because my husband and I were sitting behind them saying things like, “Did we do that?” “Yeah, I think so. We just didn’t know it at the time.” "This was the part of our ceremony where people were watching cricket." “Huh, no fair,” and “What! She gets to walk IN FRONT of him around the fire? Not fair!” “Hang on, they’re BOTH doing that?” At one point, my mom just turned to us and said, “You should have come here to get married.”

It really was a good ceremony. Rather than ignoring the groom’s differences, they choose to make some concessions to those differences during the ceremony. They incorporated having the bride walk up the aisle, having a flower girl, and putting on wedding rings (we put ours on in the jewelry store parking lot a couple weeks after we got married. Store clerk: “Oh, when’s the big day?” Us: “Two weeks ago.”). Most importantly, they had prepared the couple for everything that they would need to do during the ceremony, so they not only knew what was happening but understood why they were doing it. The bride and groom were good sports and had fun trying to peek over the sheet at one another and feeding each other sweets. All in all, it was a great experience for me to a mixed couple get married in a ceremony that expressed so much love and acceptance of both families.

Calling All Inter-Faith Couples...

2010-07-09T13:29:00.001-07:00

I recently wrote to an online magazine suggesting that they do a piece on Christian/Hindu interfaith marriages. The magazine has featured several stories about making Jewish/Christian or Catholic/Protestant marriages work, so I thought they should include a piece about the growing demographic of Christian/Hindu marriages. The thing is, they asked me to write it. So, if you are in a Christian/Hindu marriage, I'd like to hear from you about how you make it work and the part that spirituality plays in your lives. Is religious practice a solitary endeavor? Can you talk to your partner about your beliefs or do you keep them private? Have you felt a pressured to convert? Have you actually converted? I'd like hear from you and include your experience in the story. You can respond below, or you cna e-mail me at: blonde.bahu at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks! -4B

Big Differences: Privacy, Solitude, Space, and Building the Invisible Wall

2010-06-30T10:10:00.001-07:00

Privacy. Growing up, even in a house full of kids (we all shared rooms and there was only one bathroom) I never really thought about it. If you wanted to read alone in the backyard or go hide in the attic and draw pictures, that wasn’t a problem. I spent hours alone as a teenager sitting in the basement painting. Even wanting to be alone in the kitchen while kneading singing along to the radio was considered normal. Solitude was integral to life, to religious contemplation, and to just being able to think or do creative work. But with my husband’s family, things are just different.

I was recently talking to Milwaukee Masala about this, so I thought I’d go ahead and post about it. If you have Indian in-laws, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you don’t, allow me to fill you in. Many Indians (as well as people in other cultures), especially of the previous generation, grew up in joint-family houses. When a woman got married, she moved into her in-laws house and lived there with her husband and his parents. Often, the husband’s brothers and their wives lived in the house as well. I know of people who still live this way, and it’s not terribly unusual for many people around the world. According to an old Japanese saying, the greatest loneliness is to bath alone. If you are used to it, it probably isn’t even an issue, but if, like me, you value privacy, you can expect some pain.

I am used to things like knocking on a door before entering a room. For me, it is common courtesy. For my mother-in-law, it is unheard of. As a person who likes to read and write, I appreciate solitude. In general, I am uncomfortable when I’m being watched. If I need to change clothes in front of people, I am only comfortable doing so in front of a couple of my closest friends. So, one of the hardest things for me on my first trip to India was the complete and total lack of privacy.

Yes, I know that much of this lack of privacy comes from population issues—there are simply too many people for everyone to find some solitude—but knowing that does not make the constant surveillance any easier to withstand. I was reading V.S. Naipaul (yes, I know—problematic figure) last night and came across this passage, which I did not bother to mark and hence now cannot find, about a sense of inner self-assurance people have that allows them to deal with being constantly in public. The passage was about a man who sleeps on the street but is able to go through his day as though a wall separated him from the gaze of the world.

On my second trip, I was more prepared for it. I knew that having a door closed would not stop anyone from simply barging in. I knew that reading a book was not going to stop my MIL from coming into the same room and turning on the television. I learned that because I was using a space in the kitchen that did not mean that someone else wasn’t going to try to use it at the same time for something they considered more important. I learned a way of staring ahead to protect myself from the long, long, sometimes open-mouthed stares that people gave me. But on my first trip, I did not expect it—the staring, the photos taken of me without my permission. My husband didn’t expect it either, so he hadn’t even considered warning me about it.

The lack of privacy extended beyond the apartment or the gazes of strangers. I found it extremely odd to sit in the consulting room during other people’s doctor’s appointments. I’m so used to patient privacy laws that I felt as though I was committing some kind of ethical violation. It also extended to the body. In the US, we grow up with “hands to yourself” and “personal space” in school. I think those ideas come from a very strong sense of individualism that, whether you like it or not, is just part of American culture and identity. Sometimes I found it upsetting, violating even, to be physically pushed aside by my MIL or to be expected to change clothes in front of other people. I was even in a room reading a book once and some people just came in and starting changing their clothes. Sometimes, however, the lack of personal space gave me a sense of connection with other people. While sitting on a boat, an old auntie I didn’t know kept her hand on my thigh for the entire boat ride. While my first reaction was “this is freaking awkward,” I had a good 40 minutes to sit and analyze the situation of having an old-woman’s hand on my thigh. By the time we got off the boat, I felt good that this older lady had trusted me enough to hang onto me for a whole boat-ride. (Men’s wandering hands are another story. At some point I’ll get up the courage to tell you about Perverted Uncle. He liked my thighs, too).

Needless to say, any time I spent alone in India, whether it was the ten minutes alone in the shower or a few minutes swimming out as far as possible into the ocean, I relished the rare opportunity of not being watched, stared at, or monitored. Constantly being watched made me wish I could live in a hermit’s hut in the north woods. Still, I didn’t mind being monitored by some people. I tend to allow a lot from both children and dogs, so I didn’t mind that the little boy in the apartment across the way ran out to look at me every time he came out on the balcony. His interest was harmless, friendly even, and when I waved, he waved back. I went outside to wave at him a few times a day, as he was a pretty bored kid. After two extended stays in India, I think I’m a little better at building an invisible wall around myself, but I think my efforts are flimsy at best.

Seriously, Galli Galli Sim Sim Needs to be on DVD

2010-06-30T09:10:00.001-07:00

If you haven't checked out Galli Galli Sim Sim on YouTube, you should. I honestly get a lot of great vocabulary out of watching and re-watching these adorable videos. Kid's shows present concepts clearly in ways that are easy to remember, the vocabulary is for an audience of young children and therefore easier for me to understand, and the repetition and rhyming language alos help, obviously. Also, muppets are at my level of sophistication. I really wish that more of this show was available to watch on-line or on DVD.

Rosetta Stone and the Big Bad Language Barrier

2010-06-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

This isn't going to be a terribly well-composed post. I know I haven't posted anything here in a while, but I have some good news. I now have Rosetta Stone Hindi 1,2, & 3. I've wanted it for a long time, so I'm hoping it will really work. Like many of you, I've tried all kinds of ways of learning Indian languages. For a while, I tried to learn Marathi, but the dearth of resources for that language made things difficult. For many reasons, Hindi is a much more pragmatic language to learn as it is much more widely spoken and there are materials available to learn it. My hope is to someday master it. Ideally, I will even be able to raise bi-lingual kids (my husband has some delusions about making them tri-lngual, and while I sympathize with the idea of wanting to have kids who are "like you," it does not seem realistic).

Like many Indians, my husband is tri-lingual. He didn't have to put forth any special effort to be tri-lingual, he just grew up that way. And while I'm jealous of people who grew up tri-lingual or quadra-lingual, I often find that they can be the most obtuse when it comes to teaching language or understanding the difficulty of language acquisition. How many parties have you been to, standing there chatting with somebody over a beer, and when you mention that you've been going to Hindi class, they scrunch up their face and say, "Hang on, you don't need a class to learn Hindi. I mean, can't you just pick it up?" My desired response is always "How, through magic?" It is an attitude I get from my husband's family as well as his friends' parents: I should be fluent in Hindi and Marathi by now. I try to explain that if I were constantly exposed to Hindi, I would probably pick it up fairly quickly (during our short stay in the Andaman Islands I was exposed to more Hindi than ever before and found myself picking up words and gaining confidence in speaking), but here, I rarely hear Hindi outside of songs or the occasional movie.

Milwaukee Masala and I have had similar experiences with taking Hindi classes, though we live hours apart. The teachers for the courses that I have taken have, unfortunately, relied on a strange pedagogy of humiliation and condescension. They have not been people with training as teachers--rather they have been women whose sole qualification for the job is that they speak Hindi and some English. In both classes I've taken, the teachers have had an attitude that is very difficult for an American student to work with. The teachers say things once and then expect you to know them. If you ask a question, say about why something was constructed passively, they respond badly and tell you not to ask questions. Rather than seeing questions as a sign of engagement in the learning process, they saw my asking questions as a sign that I was dumb or possibly insolent. In one of the classes I took, a linguistics major who was also taking the classes became everyone's go-to person for any questions about grammar or meaning, as we quickly learned that they had no place in the classroom.

Another unfortunate aspect of the classes I have taken is the bias both the teachers had toward Indian-American students. While many of these students had less Hindi exposure than I had, the teachers automatically assumed, based on their appearance, that these students were getting the concepts while I did not. In one class, the teacher was constantly calling on me to ask "Is this how they teach this in America? I'm asking because I don't know," and the rest of the class, all American born, would look down at their notebooks unsure how to respond. In both classes, the teachers enjoyed putting me on the spot, drilling me and drilling me until I made a mistake they could call me out on. Needless to say, no one learned much in those classes.

I'm hoping things go better with Rosetta Stone. We'll see.

My Alien Outlook on Marriage

2010-05-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

Last night we were watching the PBS special “This Emotional Life,” a fascinating look at the biological and social aspects of human relationships. The first episode looks at parent/child bonding, friendship, bullying, and marriage. Romance and marriage: I try to pretend that cultural differences don’t matter within OUR marriage. I want to believe that what matters is that we fell in love with each other, but I sometimes feel like I’ve landed on the planet Vulcan.

No, seriously, sometimes I can’t help but visualize my mother-in-law as the Vulcan lady with the Yiddish accent asking Spock if Vulcan ceremonies are for “out-verlders.”

After watching the program, which featured several American families and their emotional interactions, I asked my husband if his mother, or another Indian of his mother’s generation, watched the episode, would she find it totally alien? The answer: an immediate, emphatic, unequivocal “yes.” The families and couples profiled in the documentary were trying to resolve interpersonal conflicts, trying to restore the romance in their relationships, and working to improve their own sense of fulfillment as well as working towards making their partners fulfilled and happy. The couples wanted to improve their communication skills as well as their sex lives. But for my mother-in-law, as well as for my husband’s aunts, and even some of his cousins, that view would be completely alien, even contradictory to what they have been taught. And as we talked more, I started to wonder if we have a cavernous divide between our ideas of marriage.

Obviously, not everyone’s family is the same, and if you or your partner come from a particularly wealthy or highly educated family, this might not be true for your situation. My husband’s family, however, is extremely middle class—the group that adheres most closely to the social mores or any culture. Maybe your partner grew up in a household in which the husband and wife were equal and spoke to each other affectionately at home. When asked if his parents had an affectionate relationship or treated each other as equals, my husband says that his parents simply put up with one another and got used to one another. For them, marriage was about clearly defined roles, familial obligation, and continuity. If one were to ask my mother-in-law if she was happy in her marriage, she wouldn’t even understand where that question was coming from. Her marriage was not about being the wife of a specific person; it was about being a wife in a very general sense—fulfilling a role and a duty.

As someone who grew up looking to be seen as an individual and loved as an individual, this idea of rigid, clearly-defined roles has been very painful for me (the part that goes like this: hi, we just met and I don’t know you or anything about you, but I’ve decided that you are going to act like this and what relationship we’re going to have, and no, you don’t have say in this, so bend over and touch my feet), but perhaps I will write about that later.

We really do learn our ideas about marriage, love, and romance from what we see as children, so I’m stuck wondering how this has affected our marriage. Even if my husband knows something intellectually, what he saw as a child has probably been behind many of our fights and resentments. Things I see as major problems in a marriage don’t seem like major problems to him. I wonder if we hurt each other because, at the end of the day, we’ve internalized different ideas of what marriage is all about.

Religion, Culture, and Identity (All in One Post!)

2010-04-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

[Note: This post may seem a little half-baked, as it’s more “maybe this is why…” than anything else, but it’s something I’ve been wrestling with a great deal lately]. Unlike my husband, whose family has lived in Maharashtra for hundreds upon hundreds of years, I don’t have straight-up ethnicity. I have ancestors from more than eight countries. If I have anything like an ethnicity, it’s Catholicism. And I think that part of my reluctance to part to with it is that it feels like losing the sense of culture. When one of those lecture uncles gives me the “India is better than America because we have culture and tradition and you don’t” speeches (I’m sure you’ve heard that one. SRK’s speech in Swades made me so happy), I have always had Catholicism.

This morning I was reading a New Yorker article about the ordination of women as bishops in the Church of England. As I was reading it, I wondered how I could be sitting here rooting for the ordination of female bishops in the C of E but still feel a strong pull towards remaining Catholic. I know, it’s ridiculous and irrational. I want women to have a stronger role and more equality in Catholicism. The Anglicans already HAVE it. The more I read about the ugliness of my home church’s cover-up of child molestation, the more I question my desire to stay. My husband does not understand at all. He basically thinks I have Stockholm syndrome. At this point, I might even want to concede that point with the caveat that I still question whether it is appropriate for the angry, hurt, pissed off Catholics to just throw up our hands and leave the Roman Catholic Church.

At this point, I despise much of the administration of the Catholic Church, but what is it that keeps me clinging? What is it that makes me want to be back in those pews saying those words? How much of it has to do with God and how much of it has to do with culture? Am I scared of going WASP? Is that my problem? I’m only half-joking when I say that. So much of my life and my thinking has been informed by a particularly Catholic mindset and Catholic culture that I can’t help but hurt a little bit when I think about losing it. Maybe it’s silly, but I feel like it’s a huge part of who I am.

They say that you are what you defend (which would make me really Desi…total tangent). As a child growing up in a predominantly fundamentalist Christian town (though that’s changing a bit), my siblings and I had to defend ourselves against playground evangelists. You know what I mean, the kids who go up to other kids on the playground and say, “Have you asked Jesus into your heart?” and then tell you that you aren’t really a Christian and that you’re a cannibal. I grew up having to defend Catholicism tooth and nail. I think that even if I do start going to another church for spiritual reasons, I will always defend Catholicism against those fallacious and oh-so-common attacks from fundamentalists.

Also, Catholicism does provide one with certain privileges. I’m talking about a sense of belonging. I certainly don’t fit in well with most groups (I never have), so I’ve always treasured the sense of belonging I get from being able to say, “I’m Catholic.” When I’m together we can bond over shared experiences.

Being Catholic also comes with a culture. We’re Irish and Italian and Mexican and Filipino and everything else. We drink—a lot. We have specific food for specific saint’s days and feasts. We have a bunch of holidays other people don’t have. We have homemade first communion dresses and special cakes and bread to eat on Ephiphany. I always enjoyed celebrating those days and their accompanying food, and that’s something I want to pass on to my kids when I have them. I’ve always enjoyed the cultural part of things, but I guess I don’t necessarily have to get rid of that stuff (well, except for the first communion dresses) if I go over to another church.

I don’t necessarily believe some of the stuff that comes with Catholic culture. Some of it is downright funny. I happen to know that my mom buried a statue of St. Joseph upside down in the yard to try to sell the house. That’s just superstition. I want to be free of the superstitious stuff, but I admit I’ve grown used to certain things and don’t find them as bizarre as someone coming from an outside perspective might. I think that much of Hinduism is the same—many of the practices are cultural, not religious, but they are continued as though they actually have something to do with God.

Yes, I know that if I start going to an Anglican church that doesn’t mean I’ve changed religions, but it is still a big deal culturally. I was reading somewhere about ex-Mormon support groups (no offense intended at all, Dugi—I’m just drawing a parallel!). My husband couldn’t understand why anyone would need an ex-Mormon support group. I understood completely. By leaving that particular church, they were pulling away from the traditions of their families and the strong sense of community they had grown up with. Maybe they had found a way to understand God in that was the truth for them and that provided the answers that they personally were looking for, or found a place that made them feel more accepted for whatever reason, but they still mourned for the good bits.

The Green Card Experience

2010-04-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

I actually wrote this a while ago after our actual green card interview (a fun thing that took us a year and a half to get). We were successful, but the process was confusing, stressful, and oh, yeah, really freaking expensive). Based on our experience, I wrote up my idea of what the USCIS job posting must look like:

Hey, Are You A Douche Bag? Want to make a Career out of it? Apply to USCIS!
Are you known among your close friends and family as a douche bag? Do you take great pleasure in having power over others? Would you describe yourself as anal retentive, controlling, and compulsively bureaucratic? As a child, did you enjoy capturing animals and then shaking the jar and seeing if they would fight? Has a psychiatric professional ever suggested that you have a “God complex” or “narcissistic personality disorder?” If so, you have the qualities we’re looking for at US Customs and Immigration. If you think you have what it takes, please send in your replies to the following questions along with the other items listed at the bottom of this post.
Answer each of the following questions about the scenario described. Explain your answer in exactly one hundred words and fax it separately. Each answer must have its own cover sheet. The cover sheet must include your full name, address, and the job posting number. We will not provide a fax number for you to send it to. Do not call or e-mail us to obtain the fax number.
Scenario 1:
A couple comes into the office for their green card sponsorship interview. They have their lawyer with them. They have filed all paperwork on time and have paid all fees. They brought two full binders worth of evidence in addition to copies to all documents they have already filed. Everything appears to be in order. The couple takes out their passports, tax returns, driver’s licenses and current lease. The lease indicates that they moved six weeks ago. One member of the couple has not had his/her driver’s license updated to the new address yet. The license will not expire for another year. In this situation, how do you make the interviewees as uncomfortable as possible?
A) I would talk to the couple as though they are children about the need to update the license
B) I will insinuate that the un-updated license is grounds when rejection and then pretend to look something up while actually checking my facebook
C) I will make off-color jokes indicating that the spouse with the updated license should have found a way to illegally obtain an updated license for his/her spouse and is therefore an inadequate spouse because he/she did not try to commit fraud
D) None of the above. I might suggest a trip to the DMV after the green card comes through (thereby saving lots of paperwork for the DMV and USCIS), but as long as the license is unexpired and I have other forms of identification available, it’s not worth wasting time on.
E) A-C

If you answered E to the question above, please move on to the next question. If you answered D, please destroy all copies of your application.
Scenario 2:
A couple has submitted all paperwork and fees for a green card sponsorship. They’ve come into your office with additional evidence, copies of all previously submitted paperwork, and a lawyer. You can find no reason to deny their application. In the file, you see a previously submitted application for an employment green card. How can you derive the most pleasure out of this experience?
A) I would get the most pleasure out of simply telling them that their application had been approved. I would not enjoy keeping them in suspense any longer than necessary.
B) I would sit and look at the older application for a long time and repeatedly mumble, “Wait a minute…” while the couple looked on in fear. For extra fun, I might leave the room for a minute with the form, walk to the break room, see if anyone brought in any donuts, check my facebook, call my cousin, and then return to the interview room and announce that their application has been approved.
C) I will repeatedly question the sponsoring spouse about the details of the previous application, all the while insinuating that the new application is a case of fraud.
D) I will take out the old application, stare at it for a while, and then say “I am going to recommend that you withdraw your application.” I will look up at the terrified couple and relish the look of fear on their faces for a few seconds before I say, “Because this application is being approved.”
E) I would not derive any pleasure out of approving an application. If I could not find a way out of approving the card, I would find a way to make them return for a second interview.
If you answered B, C, D, or E please move on to the next question. If you answered A, please shred your application and place the shredded material in an 8 by 11 inch padded envelope and mail it to the department of Homeland Security.

Please answer the following questions with “yes” or “no”:
1) It is appropriate to lie or make false claims about green card eligibility if the applicant does not have a lawyer in the room.
2) It is appropriate to ask applicants about their sex lives for my own enjoyment.
3) If I already have several copies of a document in front of me, I should ask the applicants for another copy.
4) I enjoy the order and neatness that mindless redundant bureaucracy brings about
5) A US birth certificate, thirty years of tax records, a US passport, and thirty years of voting records are not sufficient evidence of US Citizenship for an applicant’s parent
6) I enjoy having power over others. It makes up for my own inner sense of failure.
If you answered “yes” to all of the above, please submit four copies of your resume, proof of US citizenship, a processing fee of fifty dollars, answers to the KSAs listed on the USAjobs.gov website under job listing 349FTZ—GS-9, a letter of recommendation, and five references by mail, fax, and e-mail (PDF format) by tomorrow. If all parts of your application are not received by the close of business tomorrow, you will be subject to a full investigation.

Odd Lectures from Cranky Uncles

2010-04-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know that it happens to everyone, but that doesn’t make it any easier to take. Friends of mine have come back from Mexico, France, and Thailand with tales of it. I’ve sat through various versions of it in India and at desi parties here in the U.S. I’m sure you’ve been on the receiving end of it, or at least heard someone else take it, at one time or another. What am I talking about? Why, the good old fashioned anti-Western lecture of course! I’ve had to sit through long, insulting, patronizing lectures on why arranged marriage is better than other types of marriage, lectures on how America is destroying the world with its liberalism, and, my personal favorite, why western women are so much worse than Indian women (anything “wrong” with Indian women, is, surprise, surprise, the fault of Western influence). I’ve received these lectures from guests in my own home. I’ve also been given these lectures as an invited guest in someone home. Generally, the person who gives one of these lectures is a man who is fifty or older and who is not used to being contradicted. And generally, not being a saint or a martyr, I come away from these lectures steamed.

Probably the worst one I’ve heard was at the house a Jain man whom I’ll refer to as the multi-millionaire. The multi-millionaire invited us into his house (three floors of an apartment building). Underneath the house were his three Mercedes Benzes. The multi-millionaire made his money working for a European pharmaceutical corporation. His sons were away in Germany studying, but their wives were living with him and his wife. After telling us (my husband and I) in a back-handed way that our marriage was doomed to fail because I was obviously the scum of the earth, he began dissing all Indians who leave India (I’m not sure how his sons didn’t fall into that category). As obnoxious as it was to hear a man with a four-foot high portrait of himself telling us about the beauty of the lives of the poor in India (who, according to him, want for nothing), the worst part came when he started insulting his daughter-in-law, who, by the way, was there in the room. “Look at her,” he said, pointing at the college-educated woman, who, by the way was six months pregnant with his grandchild, “she does nothing.” “I’m sure you do I lot of things,” I said, looking at her. She tried to laugh it off. The multi-millionaire said patronizing things like, “Gandhi—I doubt you’ve heard of him…” (yes, he actually said that, Americans are all very stupid, you see). He finished up his lecture by telling us how all Indians were into peace, harmony, and love. Attributes he clearly personified. I gulped down a lot of tea to keep myself quiet while he talked.

There have been others, some more obnoxious than others. I try my best to endure them, but I hate the part where I have to touch their feet when it’s time to go. I suppose it’s an exercise in great humility to take it and then bend down and touch their feet, but as I said before, I am neither a saint nor a martyr.

My husband and I had a little tiff last night because one a friend’s parents are coming to town for six month visit beginning at the end of this month. My past encounters with the father have not gone well. If I’m sitting at a dinner table with him, he, like a kid with a bb-gun shooting at an animal in a cage, comes at me. Because of the way this man expects to be treated (in his case: I talk, you sit there and shut up), everyone, including my husband and my friends, just sit there and let him have at me. There is no room for conversation, dialogue, or debate in his reality. I am supposed to listen quietly and not talk back: the relationship of a child to an adult rather than of two adults. After a one such lecture, I slipped into the kitchen to find his daughter-in-law. “Don’t let it get to you,” she told me. “He’s a blowhard.” I want to try to avoid having to get any more lectures from him. My husband has promised to help me avoid exposure to him and to help intervene when the pellets start flying in my direction.

I wonder why people feel the need to do this. I suppose insecurity is the main reason. They are used to things being one way (Maharastrian Brahmin marries Maharashtrian Brahmin and lives out his live in Maharashtra speaking Marathi), so when they see me or my husband, they feel that the order they have always believed in has been upset. Perhaps they see themselves as losing power and feel that the only way to bolster their own egos is to knock down someone else’s—even if that person is a twenty-something year old nobody. And though it makes no sense to attack me and blame me for the mistakes or foibles of my home country (or in some cases, other people’s home countries), I am a convenient punching bag. I sometimes wonder how they feel when they are done. Do they really feel like they’ve triumphed over me and my nasty heathen ways and shown how truly superior they are?

I’d like to know hear how others have dealt with these tirades.

P.S. Here are some videos from Goodness Gracious Me of the "everything is Indian" uncle. Enjoy:

-Queen of England, Indian

-Hollywood Stars, Indian

-Leonardo DaVinci, Indian