Saresh and I went out to dinner on Saturday for his birthday (yay for uninterrupted conversation!), and I was bringing up some of the articles I had read in that Little India magazine. He was kind of like “eh” on that conversation and I quipped that I was more interested in Indian culture than he was. In all seriousness, he said, “You are. I’m Indian. I already know that stuff. Lived it – not that interested.”

That got me thinking about how when we first started dating, I kept forgetting he was Indian at all. In the absence of his parents, short of his looks, he never really did anything or talked much about Indian culture. I think part of why our early marriage years were such a culture shock to me was that despite dating a 1st generation immigrant, I might as well have been dating the Midwestern white boy down the hall. I had no exposure to what I’d consider traditional Indian culture prior to getting married, so it was sort of an “all of sudden” adjustment period.

Saresh has always been all about America from the description he gives. I think he must have given his parents a perpetual headache, wondering if they never should have left India. Pictures of him at Indian pujas and parties as he was growing up are hysterical – he looks so angry and annoyed to be there. He wanted to be out playing baseball with his buddies or just going out and having random teenage fun.

There is another type of Indian child that straddles both cultures. I observe some people who it seems can’t decide if they are actually interested in their Indian heritage or not. I don’t know what’s inside their head, but if it was me I envision a mental conversation like, “Should I be interested? Is it bad if I’m not? Shouldn’t I want to be interested? How will this affect my friends? Will my parents be disappointed? Am I too Indian? Not Indian enough?” I would want to want to be interested, but be so unsure having grown up outside of India… I think, anyway.

I wondered if this difference didn’t come from the fact that Saresh lived in India until he was 9, so in effect, he “lived it” as he likes to say; versus a 2nd generation child who is growing up in American culture and only exposed to their parents and the immediate American Indian community – because their culture wouldn’t just be Indian anymore, as Saresh’s was for so long – it would American and Indian. How would you know where one ends and the other begins, and can you be in both?

When I was reading Bad Indian Girl’s “Are you a bad mother?,” I was struck by #10 on the list, “You buy real Halloween costumes for your child and do not force her to be ‘Indian Girl’ in a sari.” I thought it was funny because one Halloween I considered dressing DD up in one of her many saris because she never had occasion to wear them otherwise, and they were so fancy and unique to me – I thought it would be cool. I was going to make her “Indian Girl” for Halloween, but then she wanted to be a fairy, so I didn’t. Here I was the white mom of a half-Indian child, and I thought it was a neat idea, and clearly there are a bunch of Indian moms out there horrified at making their child suffer something that pained them to go through as a child. As a white born and bred American girl, I have a different view of the culture looking in from the outside. It is unfamiliar and intriguing to me, so what one inside the culture finds oppressive, I may have a fascination with.

This all came together for me in thinking about one of the fears of Indian parents regarding their child marrying a white/non-Indian – that their Indian culture would be diminished or taken away somehow. I think they’re worried about something that wasn’t there in the first place.

Saresh had already fallen away from Hinduism long before I met him. He was attending a Jesuit University and all his friends were Christian, and he studied philosophy and theology there – his Hinduism no longer fitting into to his spiritual life, crowded out by a growing spiritual knowledge of other religions and ways of thinking. His conversion to Christianity had little to do with me at all – I never even asked, and routinely joke that he’s a better Christian than I am (and that’s actually no joke).

You couldn’t pay the man to wear Indian clothing – he owns none, and I’m scared to learn the fate of the one gold silk puffy shirt his mom made him wear for his 18th birthday (I think it might have been burnt or something!). He was upset at our pre-wedding festivities, when at a puja, his uncle applied and then smeared down in a streak a botu (not sure if that’s what it’s called on a man) on his forehead. He had on a really nice suit and he looked like a disgruntled American businessman stuck at an uncomfortable cultural religious event. All the pictures from that puja closely resemble his childhood “I can’t believe I have to endure this” face.

He seems entirely unconcerned that I don’t know how to cook anything Indian (white rice, anyone?) – happy to eat the diet of American and German cuisine that I do know how to cook – though not so much German! He can’t stand Hindi music or movies. His parents quit watching Hindi movies in front of him because he made fun of them so much. Instead, our home is filled with an obscene number of Metallica albums (Lord, help me) and manly shoot ‘em up movies like The Rock.

In my case, if anything I’ve probably added to Saresh’s Indian culture. When an Auntie calls to invite us to a party, if I answer I’m more likely to say yes than he is. I don’t mind going to the temple on occasion because it’s fascinating to me. I read (used to! grr…) TANA – he never has, then I just give him the Cliff Notes version. I’ll read about Hinduism and ask him questions, which he’ll discuss with me, but usually end with him saying, “And yet again you can see why I’m not Hindu.” He wants to help me understand his culture because I want to and if I ask for help, he always gives it – though if I never asked at all, I wonder if he’d be fine with that, too.

The only time we ever hit an argument over me not wanting to do something regarding his culture was when we were seriously discussing traveling to India and I didn’t want to go. He was hurt that I didn’t want to see where he was born and spent his first 9 years. Which isn’t technically true – I didn’t want to go for other reasons and seeing where he was born isn’t a strong enough motivator yet for me. I wonder if he’d been more “Indian” all this time, if I’d have a stronger desire to see it. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure he’s all hip to go either. I think he’d like to see some family and also get his parents off his back about going, but my seeing where he grew up may not be a strong enough motivator for him either because we’ve shelved this conversation for now and have no immediate plans to go – and he knows if he asked me to go because it was important to him, I’d do it. He hasn’t asked.

At any rate, I don’t think you could use this argument in winning the parents over – “Hey, mom and dad; marrying this white girl will make me MORE Indian!” But I thought it was interesting and yet another backwards logic applied to the reasons given for not marrying a non-Indian. And mostly it’s just random ponderings that filled my head over the weekend.