Diving in Anyway

There are certain things in my life that I have been waiting for with varying amounts of patience. I have been waiting a long time to be married and there were things I set up in my mind as things I would wait to do until that time. Unfortunately, now it just feels like my entire life is on hold and I'm hanging in a closet waiting to get started.

It's tough coming from a community of marrying young and arranging marriage, but living in a society that believes in late marriage and dating for years. I haven't adjusted very well, but that isn't the point.

The point is, I decided to do something that I had not planned to do until I was at least engaged.

In Hindu culture, there are five signs of a married woman (well, approximately, anyway, this can vary by region and community, of course!). In America the wedding ring is gaining popularity in Indian weddings, especially because it is the only sign of a married person recognized in America, but it is not part of the original Indian system.

So, for the western culture, a ring on the third finger of the left hand is the only sign of a married person. Here are the Hindu signs (as far as I understand it, anyway)

1) Mangalsutra necklace. This is sometimes also called a thali, I believe in South India. There are slight differences. A thali is usually a gold necklace with a gold pendent. A mangalsutra is usually black beads also with a pendant.

2) Kumkum in part of hair. Kumkum, or sindoor, is a red powder. During a wedding ceremony, a groom will put it in the part of his new wife's hair. Traditionally, she would do this herself daily. I heard some story that way back in ancient times it was originally the groom's blood!

Here is a picture of the lovely Bollywood actress, Aishwarya Rai (now Bachchan) at her wedding and you can see the red in her hair and the necklace:


3) Silver toe rings on the second toes of both feet.

4) Round, red bindi.

5) Nose piercing


The first three (as far as I know) always mean marriage, but the last two depend. In some parts of India they mean marriage, in some parts they mean you're just more traditional. I've had some people tell me that bindis have nothing whatsoever to do with marriage and other people tell me that a red one is specifically making the point of being married.

So to avoid confusion, I have been wearing a black bindi. When I get married, I will switch to a red one, most likely (though I think black would probably look better on my skin, so I'll have to see).

From what I've read, it is common for girls in India to get their nose pierced when they are engaged or reach marriageable age. The reasoning I've heard most is that Ayurvedic medicine (traditional Indian medicine, there's another post I need to write!) believes that making the hole in a particular spot eases the pain in childbirth.

The nose ring is something that is utterly different in interpretation between America and India.

Here in America, a nose piercing is something that a young person gets to be rebellious and different and to upset his or her parents. In India, it's an ancient tradition that is well respected and they create nose rings that are much more beautiful and elaborate than anything you would get in the U.S.

So in one place it means modern and in the other it means old-fashioned! Isn't it funny how that happens?

I have wanted a nose piercing for many years. I thought they were beautiful from the time I was a teenager and the farther into Indian culture I get, the more I want one. I had a previous boyfriend who hated them and said they look like boogers stuck on your nose. Yuk. So that opinion prevented me for a long time. Then I thought maybe I would get one as a celebration of getting engaged.

But ten years after my first prospective/possible marriage, I'm still not engaged and I've decided that I don't need to find something special to celebrate to do this, so I just went for it.

Today, I got my nose pierced.

Going extinct

White Indian Housewife has a brief post about the (crazy) people who really do think that white people are superior and who give her a hard time about marrying an Indian man. It's a good read:

http://www.whiteindianhousewife.com/2010/08/on-the-other-side-of-the-fence/

There are people out there who are concerned that the white race is in decline and will go extinct. This doesn't worry me at all. Yes, paleness is a trait that is usually dominated by darker skin, so a white person and a brown person will have a brown baby in most cases. Is that a problem, though?

To me, as long as the human race doesn't go extinct, we're in good shape.

People are people and we are all equally capable of leading fulfilling lives as human beings. If in a couple hundred years there cease to be any white people at all, I wouldn't be at all distressed.

So what if paleness goes extinct?

(Oh, and I wanted to add something about the having kids that look like you. My cousin is white and her husband is from South American ancestry, I believe. They have two children. The girl looks exactly like my cousin except her skin is darker and the boy looks exactly like her husband except very pale. These things can be quite unpredictable!)

Racial Differences (funny)

A friend sent me this hilarious article about racial groups.

Basically, someone took thousands of profiles from a dating site called OKCupid and separated them by gender and by race (what the people themselves classified their race to be). Then he analyzed all the parts about what the people like in order to find the top 50 things that people of that race and gender list as what they like. (It doesn't say, but I believe that these people are all in America).

Let's see what white women like v.s. what Indian women like. And which one am I closer to?

White Women
the red sox= Well, I'm from Boston and that's our team. I don't care about sports at all and would never mention it in an online dating profile, but if I'm going to root for any team it will be them.

jodi picoult= Yuk. I think her writing is terrible. I read one of her books and the plot had an enormous hole in it and was very disappointing.

boating= not interested

nascar= really, really not interested

mascara= it's useful sometimes, I guess. I already have very dark and thick eyelashes, so I don't worry about mascara much.

ireland= the land of my ancestors from one side of my family.

nicholas sparks= Yuk. Even worse writing than Picoult. Horrible, overblown romantic stuff

horseback riding= never done it

bonfires= never done it

flea markets= never been to one, though they sound fun

a country girl= not at all

nora ephron= I do like her writing and her movies. She did My Blue Heaven, which is fantastic

waitress= the profession or the movie? I've never been a waitress. The movie was okay

ray lamontagne= I don't know who this is

i'm blond= Nope, never have been

yankees= This is the team directly against my Red Sox team, so certainly not!

kenny chesney=heard of him, but never heard his music

decorating= LOVE

getting dressed up= LOVE (hello, gorgeous sari)

skiing= I did it once when I was a kid, didn't care for it

when harry met sally= cute movie

baths= not really, although I like them better than showers

my red hair= I do like my red hair. Thanks to henna I am delighting in having orange hair in front.

horses= I like animals in general, horses are nothing special to me

summertime= Sure, summer is fine.

wine= I don't drink any alcohol

dmb= don't know what this is

historical fiction= I've enjoyed it when I've tried it, though I'm more into literary fiction and classics

cookbooks= love them

flip-flops= indifferent to them

my girlfriends= having friends is nice

the time traveler's wife= Amazing book and I highly recommend it

country music= don't care for it

diet coke= I hate soda

dirty dancing= good movie, nice love story

coffee= I also hate coffee

thunderstorms= I like rain more than I like thunderstorms

midwest= I drove through the midwest once

tim mcgraw= heard of him, never heard his music

new recipes= Yeah, new recipes are always good

patricia cornwell= heard of her, never read any of her books

mom= I like my mom

carrie underwood= heard of her, never heard her music

nursing school= I'm not a nurse, so never been

eat pray love= LOVE, we've all ready established that

yoga= I like it okay, but I've talked about that before too

pilates= good exercise

my toes= Um, weird. I am fond of my feet. I don't know why. They are very small and I think they are pretty.

animal lover= I do love animals

baking=I do love cooking, though baking is something I'm not great at.

I'm giving myself a generous 19 out of 50.

Indian Women
bhangra= love it. I love the music and I love the dancing, but I'm not so good at the dancing. I enjoy watching it, though. My college had an amazing bhangra team

the namesake= amazing book and very good movie, I highly recommend them both

shantarama= I haven't read it

thousand splendid suns= haven't read yet

bollywood= love

residency= not a doctor, so I don't know about this one (see, right there you can tell I'm not an Indian, I've never even considered being a doctor)

the kite runner= it's on my list of books to read

jhumpa lahiri= Love. She is the author of the Namesake above. I've read all her work and I'm a huge fan.

interpreter= still only monolingual :(

indian food= love some of it. it is often too spicy for me, but I'm trying to build up my tolerance.

my passport= I'm fond of my passport, but I probably would not list it on a dating site.

my couch= I like my couch.

thai food= I really like pad thai, which I only just found out about this year. Haven't tried anything else.

slumdog millionaire= great movie

i heart a foodie= food is yummy

spices= like them

monsoon= never experienced one. Maybe it would cause me to change my mind about loving the rain?

wedding= LOVE weddings. I read about weddings a lot and really enjoy going to weddings and hearing about people's weddings.

bridget jones= love the movies, haven't read the books yet

vegetarian= yup.

frnds= Friends? I like them.

new yorker= shudder. No, I dislike New York.

my parents= Yup, I like them. Both of them.

neighborhoods= Sure, neighborhoods are nice

social justice= I believe in it

different cultures= Obviously :)

physician= nope

soca= I don't know what this means

when harry met sally= very enjoyable movie

be silly= Not so much. I get accused of being too serious a lot. I have a sense of humor, but it's kind of a subtle, wry, British sense of humor that I got from my dad (and I don't know where he got it, as he's from North Carolina).

norah jones= the couple songs of hers I've heard, I've liked

paradiso= I don't know what this is, but it sounds really familiar...is it a movie?

anna karenina= Haven't read it yet and I'm ashamed. My dad loves Russian authors and I've been meaning to read this one.

tapas= yummy

funny= see "be silly."

the alchemist= haven't read it, but it sounds good

dance floor= I do enjoy dancing, though I'm terrible at modern club dancing

my mom's= her house? It's fine.

exotic destinations= Sure.

the unbearable lightness of being= Love the title and have always meant to read it just for that

discovering new things= Yup. I love to learn and I'm always trying to learn new things all the time.

gandhi= I like him

dark chocolate= Yum.

analyst= ?

jane austen= Love

coffee= Don't like

vivacious= Um, I don't know if anyone would call me this

great conversation= I like to think so, as long as you enjoy philosophical meandering

salman rushdie= I like his writing

god of small things= it's on my bed side table, but I haven't read it yet.

And for this one, I get 30 out of 50.

Hmmmm. In either category it looks like I'm not really the statistical norm. Although, I get 11 more points in Indian than in white.

Updates on Things

Clothes
Satish made a great point on my last post that sometimes clothes are just about what's easiest. When you have a hectic life, you might not be putting much thought or effort into what you're wearing and I hadn't even thought about that.

I also forget how hard it is to look different from the norm around you. I always have and I'm not sure why. Even before I got involved with Indian culture, I always looked different, even when I was trying to fit in. It used to upset me a lot, when I was a kid in middle school. I had a boyfriend who taught me to just dress and look how I want, in a way that makes sense to me, and ignore stares. Not everyone has that.

I think clothes are an interesting thing. They are, to me, always a costume. I'm not sure how I would dress if I was not trying to portray myself in a particular way.

Prayer
My new way of looking at prayer is slow going. I have a problem with wanting to be in control of everything all the time. I'm guilty of seeing prayer as something that I can use to force the world to do what I want! I need to learn how to surrender to the universe and really do it, not just pretend to surrender to get what I want. I feel like if I want something badly enough it will come to fruition, but I'm making my self sick wanting things so much.

Perhaps my ambivelence about what happens is a way to safe-guard myself against feeling disappointed when things don't go the way I am trying to make them go.

I want to be at peace with whatever happens, but I need to also still want things and express those wants in a healthy way (I think they are expressed in unhealthy ways currently). So, still working on that!

Hindi
Hindi is not happening at all right now, as I'm exhausted and overwhelmed by so many other things, but I'm starting a formal class on the 20th, so then I'll be back to learning with full force.



What else do you want to know about? Ask me about my life and I'll happily tell you... :)

Cultural

I was able to spend a lovely afternoon yesterday with a friend from the Hindu Student's Organization at my graduate school in California. She has moved closer to my area and I'm thrilled to have her here.

We talked about religion and life and lots of things. I told her about this blog and about my continuing journey to mesh my ethnicity with my religion. She didn't think there was any issue with me being culturally Indian and thought it was great that I wear a bindi now.

In some ways, I'm more culturally Indian than a lot of the second generation Indian Americans here. Probably because being cool and fitting in have never been on my list of priorities!

I'm an old-fashioned girl at heart. I like tradition and I'm slow to adapt to change. While some people go through their teenage years and want to fit in and look like everyone else and not be labeled "weird", I am not one of them. I don't really understand the fear of being labeled "weird."

I don't need to have designer jeans or wear the right kind of clothes or have the right kind of hair style. I don't need to rank on the social ladder at all. I don't need to be thought of as "modern." And so I am free to follow my own instincts and wear things that others my age find hopelessly old-fashioned.

I guess it helps that my mother is not an Indian mother, so though I often dress like an Indian woman of her generation instead of my own, I'm never in a position of feeling like I'm too similar to my mother. I don't need to rebel in that way.

Now, I only know that it is rare for young people who grew up in America to wear "ethnic" clothes and be traditional. What is it like in India? For those who live there, do you feel like many young people are trying to be cool and look Western or are many of them wearing suits and bindis? Do young married women still wear kumkum in their part or is that something that only grandmothers do?

I get the impression that I might not be so out of place there with my old fashioned look. I often see recent immigrants from India who are my age and who are dressed very traditionally (though I'm sure for some of them it is because their in-laws prefer it that way).

Holiday: Ganesh Chaturthi

Guess what? There's another great holiday coming up in one week.

Next Saturday is Ganesha's birthday.

The celebration actually lasts for 10 days and I believe it starts (this year) on September 11th (although it could be that's the day it ends...someone want to tell me for sure?)

The big tradition for this is that beautiful statues of Ganesha are created and on the last day, parades bring them to be immersed in water. People sometimes make their own statues and "return them to the earth" by leaving them in nearby bodies of water.

I think this would be a tremendously fun thing to do with kids and they can craft their own Ganesha statue.

I want to craft a Ganesha that I can leave in the lake near my home that will not be bad for the environment, so my boyfriend and I went looking for non-toxic and biodegradable clay. What he came up with was a clay that's basically bread, a mixture of flour and water. Here is the recipe.

The other thing that we are going to do for Ganesh Chaturthi is making Ganesha's favorite food, modak.

This is a dumpling made of rice flour and coconut. Here is a recipe, from the website http://jaishreeganesha.com


"Modak"

Ingredients Needed To Prepare Modak
1. Rice – 1½ cup 2. Salt – A pinch 3. Pure Ghee (Clarified Butter) – ½ teaspoon

For Stuffing
1. Fresh Coconut Grated/Scraped – 1½ cup 2. Jaggery Grated – ¾ cup 3. Green Cardamom Powder – A pinch

How To Prepare Modak
Wash and drain the rice thoroughly. Spread it evenly on an absorbing cloth so that the rice gets thoroughly dried. After it dries, grind it to a fine powder in a mixer. To ensure the thoroughness of the grinding process, pass the powdered rice through a sieve. In a pan boil one and quarter cup of water, adding salt and ghee into it.

Slowly start adding the rice flour, constantly stirring it so that there are no lumps formed. After the entire mixture is added, remove the pan from heat and keep it covered for the next 10-15 minutes. Grease your palms with a little bit of oil. Knead the cooked rice mixture to soft dough. When done, cover it with a moist cloth.

Take a pan and cook the mixture of the scraped coconut and jaggery on medium heat until it turns into a light golden brown color. Make sure that it is not overcooked. Then add the cardamom powder, remove it from heat and allow it to cool a little. Then divide the coconut mixture and divide it equally into 10-12 equal portions. Grease your palm with oil. Now divide the dough of the rice flour into 10-12 equal portions into lemon sized balls. Then flatten the ball in your palm to form discs with a diameter of three inches. Press the edges of the disc further to reduce the thickness.

Next, place the semi cooled coconut and jaggery mixture in the centre of this disc and form 8-10 pleats with your fingers. Then gather them together in the shape of a bundle with its tip being conical. Seal the edges. To understand the shape better, take a look at the picture with this recipe.Steam these balls in a steamer for 10-15 minutes. Serve the hot modak with a bit of ghee.

Next week I'll put up pictures of my statue and how my modak turns out. Also next Saturday Chinmaya starts up again!

A very Hare Krishna Janamashtami

We had a great time at Krishna Janamashtami at the Hare Krishna temple. I had never been to an ISKON temple before. They actually had a whole festival sort-of set up with stands with food and gifts, etc. There were Bhajans and Lilas and some Bharatnatyam dance.

I fasted during the day and broke my fast with the prasad at the temple. (Made me start thinking about fasting as a practice. I'd like to learn more about it and do a post on it).

Here is me all dressed up:


This is a new sari and I was extremely pleased that I found bangles that matched it perfectly. You can't see them too well, but they are gold, black, and orange.

At home I drew designs on our balcony. Here are Krishna's footsteps going into our apartment:
(And Thea wondering what's up)

At the temple, my sweetie bought me a brand new puja set. What I have been using for pujas is an old thaali and some bits and pieces put together and I use a tea light instead of a lamp. Take a look at the old "set" verses the fancy new set:




We met up with some friends, and we learned how to chant the Hare Krishna mantra. I thought it was funny that the guy who wanted to teach us was asking, "Did you know that today is a special day?" I thought, "Why else would I be dressed up in one of my best saris and driving an hour to be here? Do you think I was just wandering by in my best clothes?" He had us chanting the mantra to 108 beads (I have a japa mala and I was surprised that the ones he taught us on were actually rough wooden beads).

ETA: Oh, and I realized when we were chanting it, that the word "hare" sounded more and more like "hurray" which was sort of appropriate. I wonder where we got the word "hurray" from... It's interesting that for some reason native English speakers tend to call Hare Krishna "Hairy Krishna." Apparently that's what it sounds like to them. I don't think "hare" sounds anywhere near "hairy." But anyway, it felt like we were saying "yay Krishna!" which was kind of fun.

All in all it was a delightful evening.