One thing about not being an actual Indian wife is that you don't automatically know all the little intricacies of being an Indian wife. And as far as I'm aware, there's no instruction manual anywhere detailing all of these things for you, so you have to rely on others to tell you what's what. Except that real Indian wives have always known these things, pretty much from the time they were born, so it doesn't even occur to them that the faux Indian wife might need a primer.
And so it is that I literally stumbled into this year's karva chauth.
A random headline spotting led to a quick scan of wikipedia (the definitive source for all things I don't understand), where I learned that karva chauth is, in short, a day that good Hindu wives spend fasting and praying for their husbands to live long and healthy lives. And if you break the fast, your husband will die, become ill, or otherwise have a generally shitty life.
A superstitious bunch, those Indians.
I also learned in my five minutes of research that this year karva chauth occurs...yesterday. Well damn.
Now I'm pretty sure that my not being Hindu (and my being a white American) gets me off the hook for the whole religious fasting thing. And the fact that my mother-in-law has let two go by without asking me if I fasted is a pretty good indicator that she doesn't expect it of me. And the fact that my husband didn't even know what it is tells me he doesn't expect it either and would most likely not be impressed if I gave it a shot. So I think I'm in the clear on that front. Whew.
While I may not be in trouble for not knowing about this whole fasting thing (which is apparently a lot more complicated than just not eating...there's special preparations, a special pre-dawn breakfast, and you have to spot the moon before you can eat or drink which would really suck on a cloudy night), it's just one more example of how complex inter-cultural relationships can be.
Before we got married, or really before my first trip to India, I didn't get the big deal. The biggest differences that had presented themselves to that point were that I sometimes had to correct his pronunciation of English words, and he didn't tell his parents about us right away because just dating for kicks and giggles is not really an acceptable practice in the land of arranged marriages. Beyond that, we were two peas in a pod. I mean, his parents didn't force him to drop out of school and return to India when they found out we were dating, so we were totally in the clear, right?
When I look back at that time I don't know whether my naivete is hilarious or pitiful.
The truth is that no matter how compatible two people are in terms of their sense of humor or favorite type of music or how they like to spend their time, how they were raised is incredibly (and deceptively) important.
My husband was raised in a world where people don't date, they marry who their parents tell them to marry, wives move in with their husband's family and don't work outside the home, and everyone who has the luxury of getting an education is expected to pursue a field like engineering or medicine with guaranteed jobs and guaranteed moolah.
I was raised in a world where having a boyfriend at the age of 10 is, if not expected, definitely not unheard of, where people marry whoever they want at whatever age they want or never marry at all or marry multiple times and their parents have no say in the matter, where once a couple is married they move off on their own and form their own nuclear family, where both husbands and wives work outside of the home and children are latchkey kids or have nannies, where everyone goes to school regardless of whether they have money or even intelligence and people go into fields like acting or writing where the only thing that's guaranteed is that they're going to spend a lot of time waiting tables.
And that's just scratching the surface.
Being married to someone from a different culture is an incredible experience. It's opened my eyes not only to other aspects of the world outside of my upbringing, but it also constantly presents new realizations about my own culture, things I take for granted or have never bothered to fully understand because "that's just the way it is." It's insanely rewarding and I love it.
But it is also such a huge pain in the ass. I'm often glad that I didn't know all of this going in, because I very well may have decided it wasn't worth it, that it was too scary and difficult. And that would've been a real shame. Because I don't regret a minute of it.
And so it is that I literally stumbled into this year's karva chauth.
A random headline spotting led to a quick scan of wikipedia (the definitive source for all things I don't understand), where I learned that karva chauth is, in short, a day that good Hindu wives spend fasting and praying for their husbands to live long and healthy lives. And if you break the fast, your husband will die, become ill, or otherwise have a generally shitty life.
A superstitious bunch, those Indians.
I also learned in my five minutes of research that this year karva chauth occurs...yesterday. Well damn.
Now I'm pretty sure that my not being Hindu (and my being a white American) gets me off the hook for the whole religious fasting thing. And the fact that my mother-in-law has let two go by without asking me if I fasted is a pretty good indicator that she doesn't expect it of me. And the fact that my husband didn't even know what it is tells me he doesn't expect it either and would most likely not be impressed if I gave it a shot. So I think I'm in the clear on that front. Whew.
While I may not be in trouble for not knowing about this whole fasting thing (which is apparently a lot more complicated than just not eating...there's special preparations, a special pre-dawn breakfast, and you have to spot the moon before you can eat or drink which would really suck on a cloudy night), it's just one more example of how complex inter-cultural relationships can be.
Before we got married, or really before my first trip to India, I didn't get the big deal. The biggest differences that had presented themselves to that point were that I sometimes had to correct his pronunciation of English words, and he didn't tell his parents about us right away because just dating for kicks and giggles is not really an acceptable practice in the land of arranged marriages. Beyond that, we were two peas in a pod. I mean, his parents didn't force him to drop out of school and return to India when they found out we were dating, so we were totally in the clear, right?
When I look back at that time I don't know whether my naivete is hilarious or pitiful.
The truth is that no matter how compatible two people are in terms of their sense of humor or favorite type of music or how they like to spend their time, how they were raised is incredibly (and deceptively) important.
My husband was raised in a world where people don't date, they marry who their parents tell them to marry, wives move in with their husband's family and don't work outside the home, and everyone who has the luxury of getting an education is expected to pursue a field like engineering or medicine with guaranteed jobs and guaranteed moolah.
I was raised in a world where having a boyfriend at the age of 10 is, if not expected, definitely not unheard of, where people marry whoever they want at whatever age they want or never marry at all or marry multiple times and their parents have no say in the matter, where once a couple is married they move off on their own and form their own nuclear family, where both husbands and wives work outside of the home and children are latchkey kids or have nannies, where everyone goes to school regardless of whether they have money or even intelligence and people go into fields like acting or writing where the only thing that's guaranteed is that they're going to spend a lot of time waiting tables.
And that's just scratching the surface.
Being married to someone from a different culture is an incredible experience. It's opened my eyes not only to other aspects of the world outside of my upbringing, but it also constantly presents new realizations about my own culture, things I take for granted or have never bothered to fully understand because "that's just the way it is." It's insanely rewarding and I love it.
But it is also such a huge pain in the ass. I'm often glad that I didn't know all of this going in, because I very well may have decided it wasn't worth it, that it was too scary and difficult. And that would've been a real shame. Because I don't regret a minute of it.
