What does ‘desi’ mean?

A question from a friend: She is white American Muslim and lived in Pakistan and India as a student and professionally while working in the development sector, and she hadn’t heard the term ‘desi’ until coming back to the US recently. She now hears it used frequently among American Muslims of South Asian decent as well as from other Muslims when referring to South Asian origin community members. She asked me what it meant. I thought I would use the opportunity to make this into a blog post because I have been asked on occasion what it means. Desi is one of the first Hindi/Urdu words I ever learned when I first started interacting with friends of various backgrounds from the South Asian American community as a new Muslim. It sounded like daisy to me, but with an /s/ instead of a /z/ sound in the middle. What was this word? Over the years the word has become a very normal term for me to use, so let me put this out there for anyone interested in the word. White girl hashes out her take on desi:

Desi is very much used all over the des (South Asia) where Indic languages are spoken. However, outside of S. Asia, it is used in a very different way than what one may have heard before, prompting the question.

Des/desh and the adjective desi/deshi have roots in Sanskrit (desh). Des and desi would be preferred in Urdu and Western dialects of Punjabi, going into India and further East and on South it becomes deshi/desh, depending on how the s/sh is pronounced in the local languages. It essentially means homeland, or something of the home, something domestic, or native. It also takes on the meaning of the Indic homeland. So you have a desi, a native, and a pardesi, a non-native. Foreigners are pardesis in the des. And you have terms like swadesh (homeland). In Hindi, a more formal term for pardesi is videshi.

Pardesi also means anyone who is not local, without the implication of Indic versus non-Indic. In wedding songs (in Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, etc), the bride who leaves her native village to marry a person from a different village calls that man a pardesi, he is not native to her village. In other usage in songs, a man who leaves his village for travel, perhaps for economic migration, can become pardesi to his wife/love-interest by going to the pardes.

Desi is also use regularly all over to mean sort of like “organic” or grown/raised in purity in the countryside—so you have desi murghi (sort of like free range hen), desi anday (organic, natural eggs), desi ghee (pure ghee just like what is made in the village which has does not have adulteration or hydrogenated oils in it (opposite would be vanaspati ghee or adulterated ghee made with transfats). This particular usage would probably be the way that ‘desi’ is most frequently used within the des.

These are the main ways that desi/deshi is used within India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh by peoples whose languages include this terminology. (Bangladesh…the desh or homeland of the Bangaal people). However, the word desi has taken on a life of its own outside of the des among the South Asian diaspora. Probably coined by South Asians in the UK, desi has become shorthand for South Asia/South Asian and is used just to mean Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and Nepalese. Rather than say that whole mouthful, one can just say desi.

Desi has even been used in diasporic academic writing (though the term has been deemed problematic) and very much widely used in common speech among diasporic desis. Desi aunties, desi foods, desi dinner party, desi clothes, etc. It isn’t used so much in this manner within the des because there is no need for contrasting, but saying desi in the diaspora highlights the contrast between desi versus the non-desi majority community, so it marks insiderness. Interestingly, in very recent times, this usage has spread back to Pakistan-India-Bangladesh, and now one can hear it used this way more and more in popular culture. So you have the word appearing in Hindi film songs.

I use the word desi frequently, and pretty much everyone I know does, too. It’s just easy. However, in the diaspora the word is not without controversy. Who counts as a desi both popularly and also by self-designation? What about Afghans? Bhutanese? Maldivians? Where do desis from places like Kenya, Guyana, or Trinidad fit into this picture? Some diasporic Nepalese say that they are desis, some don’t. Also, some Nepali cultures are very Indic, others are very Sino-Tibetan in culture and language, and hence more clearly non-desi. The term also has some particular ethno-political implications within Nepal. Some diasporic Pakistani Pashtoons are completely fine with being called and self-labeling as “desi,” while others see themselves as more Afghan oriented in terms of language and culture view desi as meaning Indic, in contrast to themselves. A friend tells me that Pashto only uses ‘desi’ in the pure organic food sense, but that within Pashtoonistan the term does not exist meaning homeland or native place the way it does in the Indic languages, so these factors give it a twist in the diaspora. Also for Kashmiris, in my observations and interactions, I’ve come across Kashmiri Muslims in India or from India who look down on the Gangetic Plains people (or in modern times, feel marginalized by them) and see themselves as more Central Asian-Persian than desi, and I have had convos with Koshurs who insist that they are not desi, while others I know wouldn’t think twice about identifying as desi and most certainly use the term themselves. I haven’t encountered a diasporic person who is of Pahaari Kashmiri origin who questions association with desi-ness, though.  There are hairy identity politics at play when it comes to using and applying the term in the diaspora. There are also many who don’t like the cultural lumping and erasure of distinctness that comes with such a blanket term. Obviously as a non-desi, it is in no way up to me to define who is and who isn’t desi, and I do respect that there are diverging views on the term and its usage.

Here in Amreeka, the term is used with impunity and definitely serves its purpose, though. For example, I might ask a Bangladeshi American friend “Should I wear desi clothes to your party?” I don’t want to be exclusive and say “Pakistani clothes” or “Indian clothes”  since that implies that one nation owns the clothes, South Asian sounds too formal…so I just say desi, she gets it, it’s fast and she lets me know what will be appropriate.

We all “get it” when a desi American person says “Oh that’s such a desi uncle thing to say,” or “She has such thick desi type hair, mashallah,” it shows cohesion and a common experience of such disparate groups as Hindu Gujaratis, Hindkowan Pakistani Muslims, and Bangladeshi Muslims in the US who up close in the des would find it strange that anyone thought that they had so much in common, but in the diaspora, share some common experiences as South Asian origin people with hyphenated identities. The term bridges religious and national divides, too.

Desi also evokes a longing for homeland, a longing for des…desis are such a global people now due to migration, they are of the des and in the pardes. There is actually a lot of media within South Asia and the global diaspora produced on the des-pardes migration issue, including a publication, and I think in the 90s, an Urdu drama of that name (Des-Pardes), a Hindi film with that name, and the issue crops up in Hindi films a lot, too. So many South Asian families have become des-pardes families.

So you have a word with deep roots that functions in distinct ways within and outside of the des.

 

The baby name issue

In the pardesi+desi and gora/gori+desi online community, baby names are always a fun topic. The baby name topic is also an issue for second generation desi Americans and Muslim Americans as well. I am very interested etymology and language, so it is a topic of interest for me.

Here is an excerpt from a convo with a friend-We were talking about class and baby names—like how upper middle class desis of various ethno-religious backgrounds have their preferred equivalents of names like Emma, Hannah, and Madison. For Americans, think of Gertrude, Mildred, Twyla Jean, Nakisha, or Starr, and how in the USA names carry some message of age, class, rural versus urban, or might be associated with a race or ethnic US subculture.

In convos with desi+pardesi couple friends, such issues come up- A white American Christian background friend married into a Jain Indian family says:

“…The class thing comes out in other ways too…for instance, I have a running “future baby name” list, and my husband nixed many of them because they sounded “like servants’ names” or “too old-fashioned.” I guess we’ll end up with the trendy babies’ names of India then…I wonder what the “Madison” and “Aidan” of India would be, heh.”

I said:

“Actually there absolutely are Madison and Aidan in both Hindu and Muslim desi flavor of the year names. I love names like Jahanara or Dilara but these sound like “servant names” or “old lady names” to people of my husband’s particular background. “

EASY-FOR-GORA NAMES: I have had this discussion online and ‘in real life’ with friends, too, but about Muslim names. We have our own considerations as individuals, and one in particular for me when I was pregnant and name-hunting was that I wanted something that wasn’t too hard for people unfamiliar with Muslim names to pronounce, but which had a good Arabic/Islamic meaning. (Being from Texas, the name had to sound okay in Spanish, too no Suda, no Maimona, etc. )

Are you in an interfaith relationship with a Muslim? Is your significant other trying to convince you to choose a “Muslim name” for your baby?  Technically, there is no such thing as a Muslim name. However, names carry the message of what community one belongs to, so people tend to like names that reflect their community. If you come from a mainstream or majority group in your society, you may have never thought much about it. But name choice is a very important identity marker and part of affirming and celebrating one’s identity for religious and ethnic minorities.  I said that there is no such thing as a Muslim name. What do I mean? By ‘no such thing as a Muslim name,’ I mean that many Christian Arabs have Arabic origin names, and people in many other countries from Iran to Indonesia have modern concocted names or names from other sources, like Adelina or Nurgeisha in Central Asia. Or pre-Islamic indigenous names like Bahram or Maneezheh in Iran, or Watri in Indonesia. These people are all Muslims. Dave Chappelle is a perfectly Muslim name. A name doesn’t have to be Arabic, Turkish, or Persian origin to be a “Muslim name,” although that is usually what is meant by “Muslim name.” And once again, Muslims don’t ‘own’ Persio-Arabic names. In India (and Pakistan, which also has a small Parsi community), Parsis have names which are Persian origin. Sometimes we know that a person is Parsi by seeing their full name, such as something plus-walla as a surname. (Some Muslims also have -walla surnames, too.) But often Parsi name choices overlap with Persian name choices of Muslims.  I have observed that some Sikhs also have Arabic or Persian origin names like Iqbal or Daler. So one will find Christian, Parsis, Sikhs, and others with names of  Arabic or Persian origin. Muslims don’t “own” these names.

Once, a friend and I were discussing Muslim baby name choices. She is white-Christian American and her husband is a Pakistani Muslim. She noted that to her ears, many of the Muslim male names she saw “sounded Black.”  We are socialized to read names as identity markers, as I discussed above with the examples of Gertrude and Twyla Jean. I have looked at boys’ Arabic names and it has occurred to me that a name “sounds Black” as well. This thought process led me to a quick check of white privilege and what a name “sounding black” means in my culture in terms of racism and intolerance coming from the mainstream white culture. Names are so rich in meaning, markedness, and connotation and a name “sounding black” or “seeming Muslim” has a lot of cultural implications, including many negative ones due to racism in our US culture. African American sounding names, as well as ‘foreign sounding’ names are stigmatized in mainstream white culture. That brings up the reality that what your name is does have an effect on your future. There are multiple studies that show that having a name associated with African Americans or which sounds Asian get less call backs for jobs in the US and Canada. See here and here for some support for that claim. I think it is sad that people should fear affirming their child’s ethnic, religious, or racial identity by giving them a distinct, non-white sounding name. We as parents make choices that will deeply affect our children’s lives, names being a major one. Some US communities of color have been compelled to have legal ‘American names’ in addition to ethnic names used at home. Many children of color with foreign sounding names elect to use shortened nick-names or select an ‘American name.’ For us white Americans, when considering these issues as a partner in a desi+pardesi relationship, it also becomes a question of white privilege and whether we will give in to structures of white privilege and avoid marked names. Are we hoping to perpetuate some form of white privilege for our multiracial children of color? It’s very complicated. If I give my child a ‘Muslim name’ that is more aesthetically pleasing for the mainstream white culture,  hence less likely to elicit grade-school teasing, am I still playing into the wrong side of things just the same as avoiding a Muslim name altogether and going for a mainstream “white name’? I realize that many of the Muslim names that I personally like sound better to me than others because I have been socialized in white American culture to find certain sounds more aesthetically pleasing, while others sound awkward to me even though they have beautiful Arabic meanings. Names are so very complex. I do feel that I have opted for names that are aesthetically pleasing in my native culture while simultaneously Muslim for a variety of complicated reasons.

Since we are talking about desi+pardesi couples and names, let’s look at Hindu names. It might be the same that desi-pardesi Hindu Indian affiliated couples would want a sound Sanskrit origin name that is ‘easy’ on the ears for non-desis so that  kids don’t get teased or have names that the non-desis can say.

Take note that just like it is problematic to say ‘American name’: George Joseph, Balbir Chauhan, Shehpar Humayun, and Jose D’ Souza are all equally Indian names. These are baby name quests for a Hindu name or Sanskrit origin name, not a Hindi name, and not an ‘Indian name’ as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and others are also legitimately Indians with Indian names, just not always necessarily Sanskrit origin or Hindu names, depending on the community. So you are looking for a Hindu Sanskrit origin name, not an Indian name. Your significant other is rejecting names for sounding like a maid’s name, or “old fashioned,” or too something or another. And beyond that, you get to know that some Hindu names sound very stereotypically Bengali or Gujarati or Tamil Brahmin or whatever. It is a lot to consider.

I can imagine some people might be confused as to why I would mix Sanskrit origin names and Muslim names in the same post, but all I can say is that in in my experience some of the same topics come up for all of us. Not to mention, that I have noticed that some Indian baby name books and websites have Hindu and Muslim baby names mixed together. A non-desi friend who is married to an Indian Hindu told me that all of the names she liked from one such baby name website were rejected by her husband because they were Muslim names. I suppose the website author just presumed that Hindu and Muslim Indians would know the difference automatically, but it wasn’t considered that some pardesi who is less familiar with such things might be perusing the site. I really don’t know that much about names from other religious communities but I wonder what issues come up for Sikh-American and also desi+pardesi Sikh affiliated American couples, though.

Desi American Muslim couples, as well as couples in interracial marriages where one parent is non-desi and non-Muslim, tend to all have some common names that they use: like Zain, Rayaan, Ayaan, and Adam for boys and Sara, Laila, Yasmine, and Aliya  for girls. I would bet a lot of money that there are similar issue for Hindu Americans and mixed Hindu desi+non-desi couples and there are probably some names that a lot of people in the US use. (Neel, Jay, Anjali, etc)

This website that mentions some popular US Hindu names.

http://hinduism.about.com/b/2005/06/05/most-popular-indian-baby-names-in-us.htm

This website that has it’s own filter for “easy-for-gora” names:

http://www.indiaparenting.com/names/homepage.htm

I can tell you some ‘trendy’ Hindu names after discussing with a friend: stuff with -aan in it is popular for boys and girls (interestingly also same in Pakistan these days) so for boys: Amaan, Yuvaan, Vivaan, Ayaan and also Aryan, Aman (short -a-, not aan), Saamir, Aditya. For girls: Anya (BIG trendy name) Aryana, (interestingly both Anya and Aryanah are trendy in Pakistan but with the Arabic and Persian meanings taken) Vivyah, Vanya, Riya, Siya, Diya, Rashi. You could have a look at some baby name websites to check the meaning of these names.

Friends, may I suggest that you purchase a comprehensive book of Hindu babynames, though, because one thing I have found about researching baby names online (I have had two kids in the past 3 years) is that there are a lot of mistakes in baby name website name meanings because they are made by non-specialists (no linguistic background), sometimes randomly user-added, and sometimes the same mistake is copied from website to website. If you are interested in a name you see online and want to confirm its Sanskrit meaning, you can aske here at the Word Reference forums Indo-Iranian language section or consult a Sanskrit dictionary or Hindu baby name book.

I have read multiple online discussions of non-desi partners who want a mainstream American name while their significant others want a Hindu or Muslim name. I understand why the significant others desire names from their own communities as religious minorities in the US, and how it represents their culture and background and re-affirms identity. No one should be *forced* to name their kid something when they don’t want to. I hope any couples going through this can reach a compromise.

****

A list of Pakistani Muslim-American girls names beyond Leila and Yasmine:

A few words on Pakistani names-Pakistani Muslims tend to take names from Turkish, Persian, and Arabic (mainly the two latter). An exception to this would be Pashtoons who also use Pashto origin names. There is no such thing as a ‘Pakistani name,’ anymore than there is an American name or Indian name since Pakistan is also multi-ethnic and a home to people of diverse faiths. However, I have compiled this list and over the years I have shared it with a few friends who were either desi Muslim American or married to one and looking for a desirably sound  Muslim girl’s name that was ‘okay for the goras’ to pronounce:

All are Arabic unless indicated as other. You can leave the ‘h’ off of the ending of any of these names, it is just to be closer to the Arabic spelling that many people leave it on. Some of these names would have an -at ending in Urdu, while they have an -ah ending in Arabic (ta marboota). It is up to you which pronunciation to take, but it seems the -ah Arabic endings are more popular in Muslim-American communities.

There is no standardized way to transliterate Arabic or Persian into English orthography, so some variation on spelling is possible. In some cases, variation on pronunciation is also possible based on whether one takes the Arabic versus the desi pronunciation.

Meanings are confirmed from The Complete Book of Muslim and Parsi Names by Maneka Gandhi and Ozair Husain. (Don’t trust unsourced babyname website meanings!!!) Please let me know if you find an error in the meanings.

Aida: saffron
Aliyah: high, exalted, feminine of Ali, (my daughter is Alayah, the diminutive of this)
Amani : uh-maan-ee pl. of hope
Amara: uh-maa-ruh a sign
Amber/Ambreen/Ambreen: amber
Amina: trust worthy, one with iman
Ammara: uh-maa-ruh: tolerant
Anayah: uh-naa-yuh (in Urdu this becomes Inaayat, but you can use the Arabic pronunciation): help from God, grace, bounty from God. This is actually popular in Pakistan right now as a girl’s name.
Anisah: uh-nee-suh companion/friend

Aania /Anya(aahn-nee-yuh): She that has achieved her ambition/aspiration(the highest goal).

Ariana/Aryana: aa-ree-aa-nuh, (Farsi name) pure, it is related to the word Aryan, as in the nation of Iran and the root of the word Ireland, it is a proto-European word. This name is also popular in Pakistan right now. It is the name of the Afghan airlines. It sounds close to the word for naked in some dialects of Arabic, as some  Arabs will tell you, but the real Arabic word is ‘uryaanah, not Ariana anyway. The word Uryaan exists meaning ‘naked’ in litererary Urdu, too.

Dalia: dahlia the flower

Daniya: close or near (Arabic), giver (Old Persian)
Daria: daa-ree-yuh: learned, knowledgeable
Dara: daa-raa, halo (This is an Arabic meaning, but if you take the Persian meaning it becomes a boy’s name)
Farah: furr-uh, not Fae-ruh as in English: joy
Faria/Fariah: faa-ree-yuh: tall
Haniyah: haa-nee-yuh: a young maid
Hina: Hinn-nuh: henna, mehndi
Jennah: Paradise, Heaven. This is said as jinnat/jennut in Urdu, but you can just use the Arabic pronunciation which sounds like the English name Jenna.
Layla: night (this is considered a bad meaning by Pakistanis, though)
Linah: soft, gentle, also spelled Lena
Liyah: pure white, morning
Liyaan: lee-yawn: gentleness
LujaneLujain: loo-jane, silver
Marjaan/Marjaana: coral (I love this name, it is mentioned in the Quran, but it sounds like die-life or die in Urdu.
Maria/Maaria/Mariya/Mariah/Mariyah: maa-ri-uh (note the stress is on the first syllable, not as in Spanish): a type of bird, fair complexioned, the Christian wife of the Prophet pbuh. Popular in Pakistan right now, also sounds close to the Italian and Spanish names to Americans
Maya: means like wealth or capital in Farsi (and in Urdu, like sar-o-maya) it is also a note on the Persio-Arabic musical scale. (It has the Sanskrit meaning illusion, as well)
Mina: mee-nuh: Farsi. a type of enamel used to decorate gold. This is a well known style of desi gold design, you can google meena/mina meena kaam or meena kari for pictures.
Muna/Mona: muh-nuh: a wish or desire
Naila/Nayla: nigh-luh: a winner, achiever
Niyah: knee-yuh: vow, intention (this is niyyat in Urdu) It might be bothersome to some to not use double /y/ when spelling this name in English, but I could even see it as Nia.
Nolah/Naulah: Largesse, a gift, a kiss
Naurah: no-ruh: a blossom
Nura/Nora: Light, illumination
Rasinah: of good character
Razaan: ruh-zawn: a modest woman, calm, composed
Razeen/Razine: ruh-zeen: same meaning as above
Sabrine: suh-breen patient
Sabria/Sabriyya/Sabriya: suh-bree-yuh: patient
Sakeena: suh-kee-nuh: calm, peaceful
Samina: suh-mee-nuh valuable, expensive,another common mixed couple name
Samira: suh-mee-ruh one who converses by moonlight, another mixed couple name
Sara: saa-ruh, This one actually has multiple meanings-a shawl and a princess in Arabic, a star in Persian, another mixed couple common one; it means princess in Hebrew, too.
Soraya: the stars (the Pleides)
Tamara: tumm-aa-ruh, female date seller,
Talia: taa-lee-yuh: stress on first syllable, start, outset, beginning, like the Mexican singer
Tara: taa-ruh Persian and Urdu: star
Yasmin: yuss-meen: jasmine, always a crowd pleaser with the mixed couples
Zaina: zane-uh: beautiful
Zeenah/Zina: zee-nuh: adornment, this is zeenat in Urdu

For boys I have no list, but I like Aliyaan (twice sublime), Ayaan (leaders), Junaid (I know, so 80s, but it is a great name)…it is the diminutive of the Arabic for soldier), Firaas (horseman), Jaid (sounds like Jade and from the Arabic word for good) and then there are the mixed couple classics: Adam, Rayaan, Zain which are great!!! I also love Tai (obedient).

 

Next Goal: Telugu

WordPress tells me that it has been over three months since I last posted. I have been busy and in another transitional period with the Texas-Virginia move, so I haven’t felt like blogging.  I am just waiting right now for my pressure cooker lid to fall in, so I will try to write a post now as I sit in wait.

I didn’t feel much like blogging last year when we were getting ready to leave Dubai. Subhanallah, it has been well over a year that I have been back in the US. My husband left Texas for the DC area to start his new job in late June, and my daughters and I followed him in August. We would have joined him sooner, but we had to wait for the apartment we had selected to be ready. So, I got more play time with my family in Texas, alhamdulillah.

Now, I am in Novastan. I quite like it here, alhamdulillah. There is a huge and diverse Muslim community here. It is A LOT easier to be in public in hijab here, thank God. In Austin it was very challenging due to all of the stares. Here, there are many hijab wearing women everywhere, and they seem to be working in major stores like Walmart, Target, the grocery stores, and all. So it is a regular sight here and not something that draws too much attention. In Austin, it was also hard to go out with my parents because people would stare even harder at our interfaith family as if to say “Oh my, golly garsh, I would be so embarrassed if my daughter ever went and married one of them men and came home to me wearing that thing on her head…” but then again, maybe that is all in my own head and no one was really thinking that at all. Stares and visible discomfort, though mostly stiff uncomfortable friendliness and politeness, were a common reaction to me.  My whole family is great about it and it never bothered a single one of them at all to be out with me in public (well, except for my 90 year old grandmother, but hey, she’s 90 mashallah), and I realize that I am lucky that way because I have other friends who really get hell from their own relatives about hijab.

So, out here in Novastan I have a lot of options for Muslim worship, including a more progressive oriented community, which is refreshing coming from the Arabian Gulf where in order to be considered “religious,” you have to wear all black and cover everything but just one eye to see the way and pray in the darkest corner of your house. Any inclination to pray at mosques in a mixed gender musallah where you could actually SEE the imam or khateeb, while indisputably the Sunnah arrangement of a mosque, was just unthinkable. But here I have it much better. One of the many reasons I like being a practicing Muslim better in North America than in the Arabian Gulf.

There are also a lot of other things I like here: greenery (I like walking on trails), Muslim mommy meet ups, Hindi/Urdu language practice groups, and…I have an Andhra style dosa place right outside of our apartment complex where I can go and get my dosa fix. No, it isn’t my precious Saravana Bhavan by Lamcy Plaza, but it is crispy (though a bit oily), spicy, and good. Actually, my apartment complex is filled with Telugu speaking people. All my neighbors above and below are from Andhra/Telengana. It seems that there is quite a large Andhra community here. I should learn Telugu.

I also met a Sindhi Auntie who is visiting her daughter from Pune for a few months here in my apartment complex, and who I chit chat with while her grandchildren and my kids play on the apartment complex playground. She brought me a sample of some kind of Maharashtrian fresh green chile and garlic chutney that she made the other day. This place is really starting to feel like Dubai, all Indian neighbors and aunties bringing me samples of delicious things to eat!  I also met a white Australian lady who is married to a Bengali. She is a Hindu convert and she introduced herself with a Sanskrit name, and even though we have chosen different paths I feel we have quite a bit in common as someone who has changed my name to Fatima. When I talk to her about my life and travels, I don’t have to explain every single thing to her. Interestingly, she has a brother who converted to Islam. He is married to a Malay lady. For some reason, a lot of Western male converts seem to be married to Malay or Indonesian women, I have noticed. Last, I met an  Andhra lady from Hyderabad who is very nice to talk to. She told me “Oh, I have lots of Muslim friends back home, and when I talk to them,” …she points to the group of Andhra aunties standing nearby in a circle next to the play area… “they say, your Telugu is half Urdu!” I peeked at some online Telugu learning resources out of curiosity, and I saw that there were a lot of Sanskrit as well as Persio-Arabic words in it, so although it was Greek to me, I could pick out some words I recognized from the sample sentences…so I guess Hyderabadi Telugu is very Urdu-influenced??? She also told me her roommate in college was a girl named Ayesha who is still her best friend. I get it, she has to show me that she is friendly with Muslims and doesn’t have any issues with making a friendship with me. I held back from telling her the same thing back-”Oh, in Dubai I had sooo many Hindu friends, I lurve pure vegetarians and they lurve me back, yippee! Some of my best friends are…blah blah blah.” I did tell her that my husband has relatives living in Hyderabad and he has been there before, but let my actions and personality let her know that I am totally open to friendships with anyone and everyone. Anyway, I am an American, not an Indian Muslim, so I don’t count when it comes to these sensitive issues, and I have the option to brush this stuff off. She is very nice though and we have good conversations. I am thinking about asking her to take exercise walks with me, since she seems like she might be game. I walked almost every day for the whole year in Texas, but sadly have only been out walking one single time here.

We have settled into are apartment nicely, and we are just missing some pieces of furniture and some things that will finally make our new home complete, but mostly everything is set up. I still have to take care of some special vehicle registration stuff and get new license plates. I did get a new driving license, so one thing down, two more to go!

Well, *pop* there goes the lid to my handy old pressure cooker. Off I must run!

 

All Time Classic Hindi Movies

Do you like Hindi films? You can probably guess that I like them, and I do. Aren’t they fantastic? Hindi films are widely loved far beyond India. I have personally met people from many countries (Everywhere! Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kenya, Egypt, Oman, and the UAE) who can communicate in very basic Hindi from years of watching Hindi films. I don’t think that one can learn Hindi simply by watching Hindi films, but if you are learning Hindi (or Urdu), it is great to use them as a learning tool to get greater exposure to the language. As a matter of fact, this site has learning tools such as transliterated lyrics, film guides, and filmi vocabulary lists, which are very useful. It also has a page dedicated to explaining cultural information that might come up for people who are less familiar with desi culture, which answers questions like: “What does it mean when someone tugs their ears?” and “What does it mean when someone wags their thumb?”

In the UAE as a teacher, I once had a student tell me that her hobby was singing. I jokingly asked her to sing something for the class, and she burst into song. In a sweet, clear voice, she serenaded us, and it was a filmi song. She sang “Bole chooriyan, bole kangana, hay main ho gayiiiii, teri saajna. Tere bin jiyo nayo lagda, main te mar gayiaaaaa…,” then suddenly the entire class of Emirati girls joined her and they sung the rest of the song together. It was a surreal experience.

We have our own iconic films in my native culture-The Wizard of Oz, Grease, Forrest Gump, Titanic, and many more. My culture is punctuated with references to these types of films. Similarly, in a very general way, one could learn a little bit about Indian culture from Hindi films, especially the classics.

One often hears the expression “Old is Gold,” about classic Hindi films and film songs. What films are evergreen, iconic classics that you would recommend to someone who wanted to experience the best of the Hindi film industry?

Here is a list that I have created. Which of these films have you seen? Which ones did you love? Are there any favorites that you just ‘don’t get’? Any that you’d add to the list? I will put a (*) by my personal favorites:

Sri Chaar Sau Bees/ Sri 420

Mother India

Guide *

Mirch Masala*

Arth*

Masoom*

Mughal e Azam

Pakeeza

Silsila

Kabhi Kabhi

Amar, Akbar, Anthony

Sholay

Ham Aapke Hain Kaun?*

Maine Pyaar Kiya*

Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge

Umrao Jaan (original)**** (I love this film. It is sooo tryst and beautiful!)

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai*

Ham Dil De Chuke Sanam

Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham

Devdas

Parineeta

Bandit Queen

Mr. and Mrs. Iyer*

Munna Bhai MBBS

Dil To Paagal Hai

Lamhe

Chandni

Edit: My husband would like it if I add his faves (not an exhaustive list): Namak Halaal, Mausam, Amar Prem, Aapki Qasam, Basera, Karishma, Jo Jeeta Voh Sikandar, Faraar, Yaaraana, Qurbaani,  Lagaan, and Kaala Pathar. He also loves most Amir Khan films. He loved 3 Idiots.

I haven’t seen any of these except for Namak Halaal, Jo Jeeta Voh Sikandar, Lagaan, and 3 Idiots. More for me to explore!

 

Misbah Rana was never really Molly Campbell

Her sudden disappearance from a British school led to an international hunt and a diplomatic row with Pakistan.

And when 12-year-old Molly Campbell turned up in Lahore – 4,000 miles away from the home she shared with her mother on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland – it was feared that her Pakistani father was about to force her into marriage with a man twice her age.

Then Molly went on television insisting that she was happy and had chosen to live as a Muslim. She became Misbah Ahmed Rana and faded from the headlines.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1356426/Multicultural-Britain-From-luxury-life-Pakistan-modest-house-Blackburn.html#ixzz1Dr0QiHVT

I remember seeing Misbah’s story in the news. I wondered what had happened to her, too. I felt sympathetic towards the non-Muslim British mother based on the way the UK  media had portrayed events. It was as if Misbah had been whisked away, brainwashed, and was being forced into a marriage at age 12. I had read the stories about Misbah. I had also read books with a similar theme about other internationally abducted children. (What is the name of the book by the UK woman whose two daughters were force-married in Yemen and one daughter came back? The girls married mountain men and lived under very difficult conditions in rural Yemen.) I had seen Not Without My Daughter. Haven’t we all seen that movie? There is the specter of child-kidnapping for every Western mother who has children with a foreign-born and raised man, especially an Eastern and Muslim man. If you divorce, he will steal your children, we are told by our society. And it does happen. I tried through Google to find the statistics and couldn’t, but I recall reading once that 25% of international child abductions from the US involve a parent from a Muslim majority country.

The latest update on Misbah’s situation gives a clearer and more complex picture of the situation.

I have friends whose stories have similarities to Misbah’s. They are biracial Arab-white American, and since the parents’ divorced, the kids got the mind-@#$%^ of parents constantly fighting and mom leaving anything Islamic and Arab. Even if the mom didn’t become rabidly Islamophobic, there was always the message from mom that dad’s culture was backwards, and if the kids had contact with dad, dad put down mom’s culture and ways. What an assault on a kid’s identity. Many non-Muslim Westerners cannot understand why kids in this situation would actually CHOOSE Islam. (“Why would anyone choose to be backwards and oppressed?”) But some do choose Islam. They are not being treacherous to their mothers. They are simply claiming the identity that they want. I feel the non-Muslim or ex-Muslim mothers have a complete right to leave Islam and to live any way they want. As a religious Muslim, let me make this clear: I believe that there is no compulsion in religion and that anyone has a right to leave Islam and should not be treated punitively by anyone for their personal choices. But everything known about parenting biracial/bicultural kids shows that in these situations, it is extremely damaging for one parent to isolate kids from the Other culture and Other people and especially to give negative messages about the culture. I see great error in Misbah’s mother trying to turn her daughter into “Molly Campbell” and forcing her to put Islam behind her when Misbah had previously been raised as a Muslim child. You cannot suddenly have a new identity forced upon you. As a biracial/bicultural person, you cannot suddenly be told to forget about the other half of your identity just because your mother wants to move on from her ex-husband’s culture and religion. Misbah’s situation represents how often biracial/bicultural children are forced to lay down and act as cultural bridges upon whose backs adults thoughtlessly walk across or even have battles upon.

Something else strikes me in the updated version of Misbah’s tale. She wants to live as a Muslim woman in the UK and not in Pakistan, despite living a very privileged lifestyle in Lahore, because she feels that she will have greater freedom and more autonomy with her life choices as a Muslim woman in the UK. Many Pakistanis as well as non-Muslim British people are perplexed by Misbah’s assertions, but for very different reasons. I see that from some of the comments below the above linked article. There is so much mutual misunderstanding and Misbah has borne the brunt of it on her young shoulders.

I wish the best for Misbah on her life journey. I hope that she finds what she is looking for.

 

Honorary Member

The Big, Bad, Blonde Bahu was discussing this recently. My 2 rupaiyan:

In American Muslim communities there are a lot of women of various ethnic backgrounds (African American, Latina, and white…definitely a lot of white) who get married to native Muslim men and become ‘honorary Arabs,’ for a while. I really haven’t seen any convert men doing this. I have seen them getting into a foreign language. But they don’t experience the metamorphosis that women often go through. I don’t know why. WHY? But I have friends who have gone through this phase with Arab culture. Often at the other end of this tunnel of romanticizing and exoticizing the culture is later becoming disillusioned and becoming and ‘expert’ on all things wrong with the people and the culture.

I do think that with desi and Arab cultures, if your husband or significant other is a recent immigrant, you do get pressure from his family and community to desify or Arabize. We receive pressure as well as positive praise and attention from in-laws, other recent immigrants, or locals when we go to husband’s home country. US raised children of immigrants of course find ‘wannabes’ creepy. They know exactly who we are and where we come from, so we look extra ridiculous to American born and raised children of immigrants. We also get to do all the “cool” stuff of the culture (sari and bindi) without the burdens that they have to face—possibly growing up in a household with strict gender roles and sexism, expectations that they study a certain subject or go into the family business, avoid sexual transgression, marry a person of their own community, and so on. So there is that element that us foreign-wives are not only flakey but also extra patronizing because we have the right, the privilege,  to pick and choose with much more freedom than they ever could.

There is also this competition between white wives married to these recent immigrants: take gori wives. Who can cook desi well, who can speak a little of the language, who knows all the desi habits and manners, who has been to the des the most on visits? When we pardesi-married-to-desi women see each other, often  hackles stand on end because in our minds, we are each other’s competition. And we will be compared to each other by some, but more so by ourselves.

With white people in particular, many of us believe that we have no culture. We are ‘normal’ and other people are ‘cultural.’ Well, live abroad or get married to a foreign man and we learn really quickly that of course we have a culture when we have something to compare it to. Anyway, this whiteness as a cultural blank-slate phenomenon is an aspect of our culture that pushes some people to mistakenly see other human beings from foreign cultures as exotic and spicy and we see imitating them as a way to spice up our white bread with mayonnaise lives. That is objectifying and ultimately racist.

It isn’t popular to discuss this white-American (or Aussie or Canadian or Brit) element in the context of converting to Islam, but white people get into Buddhism and Native American religions to spice up our lives, so there IS an element of white privilege and white entitlement when we look into Islam. I know that this isn’t all it is about, but it is there. I know that becoming Muslim is different than going to some phony Native American sweat lodge one weekend, obviously we change our entire lifestyle and take on the burden of being visible Muslims, and face Islamophobia. So it is different. But for some of us, what prompted our ‘seeking’ outside of our own backgrounds in the first place has a connection to our entitlement and privilege.

I think it is really complex. We all have our own stories. Some of us have lived in India or wherever for long periods of time…just as our husbands change in the US, wouldn’t we change living in an Indian community in India? Some of our adoptions have become natural to us. I don’t know about you, but I LOVE Pakistani food and love to cook and eat it, I am not trying too hard there, that is really me. I read a lot about South Asia. I am not an expert, and I find there is always something new to learn. It is an interesting region for me. I like gold bangles. I own many. Hmmm. Why do I feel defensive about these things?

I have written these words here and there before when this discussion comes up on blogs: We have all seen her, the girl with Irish features and freckles, obviously a strawberry blonde, who has dyed her hair black, has  painted  on black eyebrows and cat eye kaajal. Occasionally some desi humors her and tells her she looks like a Kashmiri or a Pathan…she is sooo elated, maybe she can pass! She is wearing a bright orange, sequins covered shalwar qameez and rolling off copious head bobbles and spouting ufffos. She looks so silly. She is newly in love with her desi guy…why is she affecting his accent? WHY does she do that? Sometimes a girl meets a guy who is into camping and hunting and she gets into that to please him, impress him, to be closer to him. Sometimes a new beaux listens to some type of music that she doesn’t know, and suddenly she has to know all the bands and his station becomes her favorite station. Do men do this with the same frequency as women? Do many of us women really feel the need to attach our identities to a man’s? With a foreign guy, it becomes his culture.  With the pardesi-desi relationship, her man is her vortex to spicy exotic love (cringe), her wanting to please him has taken her to bizarre extremes, well…many of us have been there and we usually come to our senses and get over it. She will, too. I actually like her better than some of the women who are married to desi recent immigrants and know nothing about their husband’s cultures or countries. (I am NOT lying, I know a white woman who says her husband is Pakistanian!!!) As long as she comes away with a positive respect for the culture and doesn’t turn into one of those women who go on tirades of  ”I know everything about Indian men and they are SO sexist and uncivilized!!!,” then I see no harm in it, cringe worthy as it may be. It passes.

 

Azwaaj e safaid faam

Not much going on here. We are still *just relaxing.* I am okay with that. I knew that we could be crashing at mom and dad’s house for a while. My husband has been having a lot of interviews, Mashallah…something will work out eventually…Inshallah. When, Inshallah, he gets a job, we will move to the location of the job.  Every time a series of interviews gets serious, I start to imagine what it would be like to move to whatever part of the country that this job is in. Denver? Don’t know much about that place. Makes me think of boulders. Guess cuz there is also a city called Boulder around there somewhere. New Jersey? I was always meant to be a Jersey girl. According to my parents, unless you are very rich and live in Manhattan, it’s terrible to raise kids in/around NYC, which is where they both grew up. Everyone who was moving on up left for Long Island or even better: New Jersey (and then the grandparents retired in Southern Florida, Flaaawrida!). That’s the way it was for New Yorkers of my parents’ generation. I have lots of cousins in New Jersey. In Texas I am weird looking for a white person, with dark hair and different facial features than the common German and Irish faces. When ever I go to the East Coast, I see lots of similar faces to my own, nice Italian, Jewish, and Greek noses, lots of black hair and fair skin. The people know kosher pickles and Dr. Brown soda and egg creams. And they fold their pizza. This is alien in Texas. A lot of people in Jersey have a similar history in America to my family, Ellis Island great grandparents, lower Manhattan, the boroughs, and then: New Jersey. That was meant to be my family’s story, too. New Jersey. But somehow I became a Texan instead. I mention to a couple of people that Dh is interviewing for a position there. “It’s a dump!” they say. I am kind of miffed cuz all my cousins live there. That’s not very nice to say. What does that mean? How can a whole state be a dump? I never had that impression of it as a kid. Funny how everyone has their ideas of what a place is like. But I was meant to be a Jersey girl. Then that position didn’t  pan out and I had had the whole silly neurotic and self-indulgent “I was meant to be a Jersey girl” fantasy for nothing. What place is next? I spend time googling mosques and Muslim community activities in these random places across the USA. Mashallah it seems there are a lot of Muslims everywhere these days.

People keep asking me how my husband is dealing with living with my parents. Mashallah my parents are very laid back and un-intrusive people. They don’t demand to know our every move, they are cool with us doing things as a nuclear family but happy to join in when we do the extended family thing. We have our own space, my husband has access to his own TV and computer. He drives. Alhamdulillah, it is an ideal situation. He doesn’t mind. Gori wives get questions about how we deal with our husbands’ “desi soch” sometimes. In this case, you know, because culturally it is supposedly the worst thing that we are at the maike ghar and the woman’s family members are the ones helping out. Mard-hood is lowered. Husband is like a bahu. (he helps with the dishes, too!) “It must be difficult for your husband.” (mostly aunties asking this stuff, yes, but not just them.) Hey! NOT all Pakistani men are the same!!! It is hard for him, probably. But he doesn’t let on. I mean, who really truly loves to live with their inlaws? (Okay, I know, some people do, sure.) This is just majboori. He is a good sport. Hello, my parents are VERY nice people, Mashallah. STOP asking me that!

I think it is interesting to watch my husband observing my family’s culture and habits. Us white people talk about learning about *other* cultures. Sometimes I will see some other goriwife’s family picture with her desi immigrant husband standing at a BBQ or birthday party and there are all of these stereotypical looking whities surrounding him, and realize that NO DUH!, it goes both ways. My family’s values and habits are so different from the stereotypical Pakistani values and habits, so I know many things are notable. My 26 year old sister gets picked up at our house by a guy for dates. My 21 one year old brother’s girlfriend is at our family functions. My mom has a beer sometimes. Things like that. My husband is intimately involved in a very different cultural space. He likes observing us. And sometimes I step outside of myself and imagine that I am observing us, too, because I am imagining what stands out to him.

My girls are enjoying gramma and grampa’s house. That is really important. So alhamdulillah, I am just relaxing these days.

 

62,000 Minutes

According to an online date calculator, it is around 62,000 minutes until we arrive in Amreeka. That’s about 43 days. So much is going on. I am in the middle of a term at school. I have students to prepare to teach everyday. That keeps me busy, busy, busy Thank God. That’s what I am here for, right? 

 We are settling on a shipper. We have been discarding unneeded clothes and other items. But aside from those few things, it is just sitting and waiting for this huge life change to come. The major tasks of the move don’t start until right before we go. I am staring into my crystal ball, wondering how things will work out, but everything is hazy. Do I see foreboding clouds? Do I see a few glimmering flashes of light? My husband has been sending out job applications online for a few months. He actually has a couple of places interested in interviewing him. He is on a third level interview with a prominent company in California (Silicon Valley). What if we moved to California? My girls would be California girls. He has also finally asked his current employer about possible transfer to any of their US branches. He hasn’t given proper notice yet, though. His employer told him that they would look into this and get back to him. Two of the companies that contacted him for a future interview are in Texas. Right now we have nothing, and I am counting my chickens before they hatch, so to speak. But what if it came down to a choice between a major city in Texas and California? There are positives and negatives to any place. And I am just making khayaali pullao in my head.  Heaps of pullao.

I told our housekeeper a few weeks back that we would be going. I actually found her a new sponsor before I told her. The future sponsor is a colleague and I have known her for a few years. As she will be going to her home country for the summer, she is actually okay with letting my housekeeper go home to visit her family this summer, too. Alhamdulillah, this has worked out. This was another thing that had been giving me knots in my stomach. You see, before I leave the country, I have to either cancel her visa or she must transfer to someone else’s sponsorship, or I cannot leave the country. That’s the way the rules work here. I knew that she would find another sponsor pretty easily, but she has some requirements, such as staying in our neighborhood, and having certain timings off. If she went with just anyone, she couldn’t be guaranteed to get what she wanted in an employer. So now, alhamdulillah, she will be going to someone who agrees to her requirements, but will also be cool with her going on vacation this summer. Yay! If she hadn’t gone on vacation, we would have owed her the ticket money anyway, but of course it’s not the same thing and she really wanted to go home. So, inshallah khair.

I try to absorb the sights of Dubai, just because sometimes they are so surreal to me, and also so I don’t forget them. You see, we live on the edge of a desert. There are sand storms, especially at this time of year. The whole sky blackens, as if it were going to rain. But there is no rain. Just tiny sand tornadoes whipping around, sending granules of sandy irritation into my eyes, sending sand and dust underneath the front door, choking me if I take a deep breath. And sometimes there is no sand storm, but the sky is just gray. There is no sun. It can go for weeks like this. No sun.

And then there are surreal moments. On my way to work, I drive through a stretch of desert. I see cars with Oman license plates. I miss Oman. I see giant water tankers with scenes of Northern Pakistan painted on them. I have always meant to take pictures of them, but never have. I’d probably get in trouble for doing that for some reason. You can’t just go do stuff like that here. In front of me is big truck and I squint to read the Urdu lines painted on the back as we are stopped at a light (or it could be Pashto or something). Above it says ‘Haripur.’ Near to the license plate, the Urdu is very squiggly and I struggle to read it. Kabhi…Kabhi…it then becomes clear. Kabhi Haripur Ao, Na. I had been straining to read something so simple. The light turns green and the truck speeds away. For some reason Haripur sounded like it should be in India to me because of the nomenclature, but I google it and find it to be in the Sarhad. It looks like a beautiful place. Some Haripurwalla really, really loves Haripur. That sticker was most definitely not meant for my eyes in particular, and I had taken note of it randomly. But somehow I found it to be very interesting. I should make a bumper sticker that says ‘Kabhi Texas Ao, Na’.

I will soon be having Dubai lasts. Last meetings with friends. Last meals at favorite haunts. Hmmm, my last dosa at Saravana Bhavan. That will be a sad feeling. I have had friends come and go here, as that is the nature of the city. And now it is me who is doing the ‘going.’  The mango season is on now, and although we do get Indian mangoes in the US, there are special suppliers here with really great mangoes. Hmmm, and the litchis are in. Also, here we get Pakistani mangoes, too, straight from Sindh. I know those are available in Canada, but not in the US. I have already had some lasts. Last autumn I was keenly aware that it was my last season of ratab, fresh, ripe dates. I have always loved the ratab season. Hmmm, California has good dates, I hear.

 

Movie Review: Good Morning Aman

I caught this film at the Dubai International Film Festival, so I just thought I would review it here. (spoilers!!!)

Good Morning Aman   is about Aman, a young Somali immigrant in Rome. He grew up in the city’s immigrant projects, and is a streetwise type of guy, but is simultaneously naive and vulnerable in someways. He works washing cars in a used car-lot by day, and roams the streets at night, suffering from insomnia. One night, Aman meets the mysterious middle aged Italian man, Teodoro. At first, you cannot tell why Teodoro is interested in Aman. Is it for some type of homosexual relationship? Aman is broke and bored and keeps coming back to Teodoro because Teodoro gives him money. Will Aman lower himself by entering into an unwanted sexual relationship because he is so broke? Soon it becomes clear why mentally ill Teodoro has befriended Aman: He has a dark secret that he wishes to resolve through his relationship with Aman.

Aman’s is an untold Italian story; a black  Somali Italian story. But it becomes a white story, too. It has to be a white story because the film makers are white. But it is a different kind of black and white story. Teodoro is a white man who is so horrible that he tries to redeem himself for viciously killing a black Senegalese teenager by befriending Aman and eventually making the black Somali youth his beneficiary. It is a sinister, guilt ridden, thing to do. It looks like Teodoro is breaking Italian racial barriers by befriending Aman, if not only due to their mutual loneliness. But then later, you see that the friendship is some type of attempt at absolving his heinous crime, and it becomes clear just how sickeningly racist Teodoro truly is. He is not a barrier breaker at all. At first it seems that Aman is willing to play the sycophant in this relationship to get cash. But the true user is Teodoro. In the end, Aman decides that he has had enough and doesn’t stick around to be exploited by Teodoro’s “friendship.”

I saw the story line as a comment on Italy’s (and perhaps any white former colonial country’s) relationship with African/Muslim/brown and black immigrants: hate, anti-immigrant sentiment, but also the need for the labor, the exploitation factor, the white guilt side by side with racism against the immigrants. I thought the film was racially ground breaking for that reason. It was also an astute twist on the white-Western film theme of absolving white guilt through exploiting blackness, which is most often used completely acritically.

I liked the energy of the movie, despite a few slow patches. The dialogue never seemed trite. One saw very clearly the shit that Aman and his community members dealt with on a daily basis.The actors were great, especially the actor who played the non-chalant Aman. I loved that issues of racism againt black immigrants in Italy were being brought out openly and unapologetically in the film. The film was entertaining as well as thought provoking.

 

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