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.

 

Imported Mothers

I occasionally see articles about Gulf Arab sex tourism in India. Wealthy Sunni GCC nationals abuse and mock religion by entering into contractual Islamic marriages with impoverished young Indian women and girls with the intention of divorcing them after a few weeks of sexually exploiting and abusing them. It is a disgusting practice that is not at all uncommon, but is not discussed very much in the Gulf. It should be widely condemned. Just like wealthy Western men who go to places like Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Latin American countries, and elsewhere for sex tourism, wealthy Gulf Arab men engage in this form of exploitation, and some choose to give this grotesque practice an Islamic twist by deeming it “halal” or permissible according to religious mores with a dubious marriage contract. Though quite frankly, plenty don’t care and don’t bother and go on sex tours in East Africa, Thailand, and other nearby countries just to visit prostitutes in the same way that Western men do.

It is usually this issue of supposedly religiously condoned sex tourism that I read about. But I actually wanted to hash out another issue.

I was thinking about the marriages of GCC national men (of various ethnic backgrounds, not only Arab) and Indian women (from various Indian regions, but most often Hyderabadi Muslim background). I had students and friends who were the children of these marriages. I am not sure how very common this phenomenon is today (gonna be 2013 TOMORROW), but gauging from the number of young women I met who had Indian mothers, at some point (80s and 90s) this was extremely common, and certainly it still happens contemporarily.

I knew these girls well, and on occasion even met their mothers. Let me explain a bit about the social context of these marriages.

There are Gulf Arab men who wish to marry but who cannot economically afford to gain the acceptance of a proposal from a Gulf Arab family. Some of the governments in these countries actually gives a substantial financial marriage gift to the groom when two Gulf Arabs marry. The monetary gift is supposed to help the couple start out, and is also an incentive to get Gulf men to marry Gulf women, since men who marry foreigners do not get the money. As far as I know, this gift is only available for first marriages. But the marriage stipend isn’t enough for some families to consent to a union between their daughter and someone else. Good family/tribal status, a good education, a decent job, social privilege, and money to provide housing to a bride, and a nice car are often major considerations. Many men just don’t have these things. They aren’t rich by Gulf standards, but they are wealthy by the standards of underprivileged families in India, so these men seek brides from there. A second reason is this: Suppose a Gulf Arab man wants to engage in polygyny. It is hard to find a modern, educated, never married before (virgin) Gulf Arab woman to agree to this. So he goes to India to find someone who he believes will be more docile and whose family will be accepting of the situation. I’d say most of these GCC-national + Indian bride marriages involve polygyny. The docility issue is tied to the third reason. Gulf Arab women have not yet gained full social equality with their male counterparts, but they are educated and modern minded. They are much more empowered than their grandmothers. Many Gulf men find this threatening. They seek an Indian bride who is supposedly more submissive. If he mistreated a Gulf Arab woman, her family would give him problems and encourage her to divorce him. An Indian woman will be completely alone with no support system and nowhere to turn, so she will be completely dependent on her husband. (Reminds me of white American men who seek Filipina or other Asian brides because they say white women have lost their femininity and they want a supposedly submissive and petite Asian woman to give them back massages and treat them like kings. Barf.)

Anyway, you have these various factors at play. I had a friend once who was of Ajami origin and a UAE national. The Ajami, known locally as the Ayaimi, are Sunnis from the South of Iran, and this community has significant numbers in Dubai. They speak a dialect of Farsi (called Ayaimi) and many claim to have mixed Arab and Persian heritage. In the UAE, they are not considered to be Arabs, though, but a type of Iranians. My friend was the daughter of his father’s first wife, who was also an Ayaimi woman. Her father also married a Hyderabadi woman. My friend joked that her dad loved Hyderabadi biryani so much that he just had to have a Hyderabadi wife. He then married a Persian (Farsi speaking, and not a speaker of the Ayaimi dialect) who was younger than my friend. Her family was not very wealthy, and I wondered how her dad could support all these wives and the children that came from these marriages. This all sounds very sensational. I want to make it clear that most UAE nationals I knew were NOT in polygynous marriages nor were they children of such families. Polygyny is the exception and not the rule there. But unlike in other Muslim countries where polygyny is considered permissible, but socially frowned upon, and for the most part rare, in the UAE (and other GCC states) polygyny among locals is pretty much completely socially condoned without question. It is a sign of wealth and virility for men, and considered a Sunnah that is desirable to practice. Anyway, it is complex, but since I told you this sensational (yet completely true) anecdote about my friend’s family situation, I just felt I should give a bit more background on what perceptions of polygny are like in the UAE and generally in the Gulf because the stereotype outside of the Gulf is that every man has four wives when this is far from true, and most have only one. But yep, so this man, my friend’s father…he claims to have married a Hyderabadi woman for the biryani. Um, yeah.

So, these marriages take place. They are real marriages. There is no intention to divorce. The wives are kept as normal wives would be. Except for one thing. You see, in Gulf social hierarchies, Indian people are considered to be low. They are not all thought of as laborers—I don’t just mean in that way. I mean that Gulf Arabs consider them to be inherently inferior due to their Indianness. According to locals, Indians are dark skinned and unattractive. They are poor. They have bad manners. There are a lot of stereotypes about them. It is complex, though. Many Gulf Arabs watch Hindi movies and love Bollywood stars. I had many students with crushes on Bollywood heroes, whose faces they used as screen savers on their laptops. They enjoy Indian food and speak pidgin Hindi…some can even speak Hindi fairly well. But the prejudice is there. (It’s hard to explain…maybe it’s like how in the US gringos love Mexican restaurants but often have terrible terrible stereotypes about Mexican people, not really an exact parallel, but just to try to explain the layers of racism.) So what happens when a Gulf man marries an Indian woman and brings her into his extended family structure? She is there alone. She has no power or support in that family. She is from a stigmatized ethnic group. Although there are many, many well-educated and professional Indian people in the Gulf and especially in Dubai, she is not one of them. She will no doubt be from a very poor Indian family and may not have much of an education—Indians of a “good family” do not send their daughters off to the Gulf to get married. These are very poor families who will take advantage of the dowry (mehr) given by the Arab man, the fact that no dowry (jahez) will be required by him as may have been from an Indian groom, and by the fact that their daughter will be “well settled” in a Gulf home rather than remain in their poor family in India. The dynamics of this type of marriage are very unfair from the start, and involve exploitation and economic coercion.

I knew some half Indian girls who were very open about being mixed. They were into Indian culture. When I say Indian culture, I mean that same sort of essentialized Indian culture that many of us India-Pakistan-Bangladesh affiliated people know in the US; Bollywood and Hindi oriented—this isn’t the vastness of cultures within India, but these are this is the essentialized face of Indianness in diasporic contexts. The girls don’t know much about Hyderabad, per se. Some travelled to India often and knew their Indian grandparents, but some did not. Their grandparents sometimes lived in very poor conditions in a completely different world than the relatively privileged worlds they inhabited in the comparatively well developed UAE. But they like to wear bangles and sometimes special 22k Indian gold earrings or necklaces. They show off that they know Hindi. They don’t feel shy about being part Indian. Once I had the students give presentations on a person who they considered to be their hero. A half-Indian student gave the presentation on her maternal grandfather who lived in Hyderabad. She showed the class many pictures of him and her mother’s Indian family and the family’s home there.

Then there were other girls who you could tell were uncomfortable by their mixed identities. And it was an insult for someone to say “You have an Indian mother.” So no wonder they felt this way. I also knew a girl in Oman whose father was of Zanzibari Omani origin and who told everyone that her mom was an Omani Arab, but everyone told me behind her back that her mother was an Indian. She hid the fact because she was ashamed of it and the judgement it brought. I was totally shocked that anyone would lie about the ethnicity of their mother, but once I understood how things worked there a little better, I came to see the complexity she faced when it came to her identity.

When it comes to marriage, it is hard for multiracial half-Indian Gulf nationals. The prejudices come into play. Pure Arab families want to marry those with supposed racial purity and with good and documented tribal lineages. (I have very high suspicions that given the intertwined histories of the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, East Africa, and Coastal West India that Gulf nationals are actually a lot more multiracial than they think they are!) Cousins are preferred. Mixed multiracial people are undesirable, even if they are cousins. I knew half-Indians who married other half-Indians. I also knew a lot of half Indians who somehow ended up marrying into Al Baloosh families. You see, the Baloosh are a non-Arab ethnic group who have roots in Pakistani and Iranian Balochistan. Within Balochistan and within Pakistan, Baloch are culturally more on the Iranian-tribesman side and not desi, culturally speaking. In the Gulf, Balooshis are looked at as Indian-ish. Some like to play up the Iranian-ness, since that is more prestigious than Indianness. But when I would press for a person’s family’s place of origin, it was more often in Pakistani Balochistan and not Iran, which within the Gulf is seen as making them more Indian/desi. Some Balooshis embrace this Indian thing as well, and are very into Indian culture and speak Hindi and so on. It’s funny how that works for diasporic communities….so strange because in the sub-continent, a Baloch tribesman in Pakistan and a random Indian person would be looked at as two extremely different identities, but in the Gulf, they are lumped together as desi and Indian. Yes, even if from Pakistan—the average Gulf national people don’t know much about Pakistan and partition or Muslim majority regions in the subcontinent or two nation theory or any such thing, and some of them see Pakistanis as sort of another type of Indian.  Another twist on this is that there are a large number of Afro-Baloch in the UAE and Oman. They are descendants of mercenaries, traders, and slaves of African or partial African descent in Pakistan and Iran, especially in the Makran region. They are among the main black ethnic groups in the Gulf. They are lower on the social ladder, especially when it comes to intermarriage. So it is these groups who marry more easily with people who are part Arab and part Indian. Not to mention that for whatever reason, a lot of Balooshi men also go to Hyderabad for brides, it is not just Arabs who do it. So I often met people who were half Hyderabadi Indian and half Baloch/Balooshi. (Sorry for the confusing nomenclature, but Baloch people are called Balooshis in the Gulf.)

I should also say that I knew of Indian-Arab matches that were love marriages, not just this situation of Gulf men going to poor families in India for brides. I knew a half Keralite half Gulf Arab girl whose parents had met while working together, and a half-Sindhi (Pakistani Muslim) half Gulf Arab girl whose parents had met because they grew up in the same neighborhood in Dubai. This girl exuded Sindhi pride and showed off that she could speak Urdu and Sindhi very well. I also knew Gulf national women who had married Indian or Pakistani men. So it’s not all tales of exploitation. But yep. The exploitation and economic coercion factor is there whenever one analyzes marriages where a GCC national has flown to India for a bride.

Anyway, I often found myself thinking about the social dynamics of these marriages and the children produced from such unions. I was hesitant to talk about such issues directly, and gauged a lot simply from observation. It was something I would have liked to ask about, but wouldn’t that be silly, patronizing, and possibly insulting if I asked someone to explain their identity to me in this context. These issues are unspoken. These half-Indian girls and women I knew were just regular people in my life, and I didn’t want to put them on the spot. In the social settings of the GGC, these girls are thought of as half-Indian, and they are part of Gulf society. They aren’t really part of Indian society within India, where I guess they would be viewed as “half Arab.” So I haven’t given much thought to it from that angle, per se, but I wonder how they are looked upon when they visit India or when they interact with the very large sections of diverse but often socially compartmentalized Indian communities in the Gulf. I knew women who had entered into this type of marriage. I knew their children. I wonder how they would feel if they read what I wrote here and of my assessment of their familial situations. Their mothers did not appear to be pitiable and downtrodden people. They just lived their lives. We didn’t speak of prejudices or of the social issues. But I was keenly aware of the dynamics of their situations, as they must have also been.

 

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!

 

Mugambo?

There are just some things in Urdu/Hindi that I will never get. Sadly, many of them I won’t even notice because they are layered cultural references or belong to specific regional accents, and I don’t even catch them. So they are lost on me. Sometimes in a foreign language there is what you understand and there is what people are really saying…and you as a non-native speaker cannot judge the discrepancy between the two. This happens due to a simple lack of acuity with second language listening comprehension skills related to level and proficiency, but also due missed to cultural cues. Other times, you catch the cue and realize there is some deeper meaning at work, but don’t get the reference as a cultural oustider. Some cultural references crop up again and again. But I never ask about them or google them because it would be awkward to stop a group of people in the midst of their chuckle filled conversation just to ask “Who is Mugambo?” “Mugambo KYON itna khush hua?” And in my busy day filled with sporadic net surfing, the name Mugambo never pops into my brain. And so I don’t remember Mugambo until someone mentions this mysterious name again!

Still, I start to paste pictures together. Light bulbs go off months after I hear an expression or cultural reference because its meaning finally becomes clear to me by some uncanny incident or occurence. A realization sinks in. Silently, I will affirm to myself: “Oh, so that’s why he said so-and-so looks like a Pashtoon film star in that outfit.” “Ah hah! So this is a mutiar!” I will know where someone is from when they say “Mereko udhar-ich mila.”

I become ‘in  the know’ in that ungainly way of a non-native speaker. It would be too silly for me to use such expressions myself…I would feel disingenuous. I am too much of an “FOB” so to speak. I would be like the guy who says “That is a sucks, yaar!” Instead of “that sucks.” How long would my husband have to live in Texas to be able to say y’all? My New York dialect speaking parents don’t say y’all after 30 years in Texas. Can a des-raised Pakistani say y’all if he has Pakistani-accented English? Is that okay? Does it sound phony? Do you see what I mean? Maybe my husband will love the Texan accent and go Southern all the way when we move there. Yee-haw.  He has a des-raised cousin in another Southern American state who has a very interesting convent educated Pakistani English-small town Southern American English accent combo. I think he says y’all.  Anyway, I still don’t feel proficient enough to actually use such references or special expressions unless there is some humor in the fact that a foreigner is saying them (maiN teri aisi ki taisi kar doongi!!!), but at at least I will know what the heck the references mean.

And so I keep building my repertoire.

Guess what? There is a blog post that explains  Mugambo! If only I had known before. But then I feel sheepish, googling up Mugambo, watching Mugambo youtube videos, just so next time I will ‘get it’ when someone says “Mugambo khush hua.”

 

SaaRe ek nahin hota

1. Inshallah we will be off to Amreeka soon. My mom is buying a new car and she will keep her old car while we visit so I will have my own personal wheels! I am really excited about that!

2. I must remember to say gilaas, not cup! A cup is not a gilaas. Otherwise no one understands me. And I must say Der and Dhai. Because saaRe ek nahin hota, and no saaRe do! But yes saaRe teen. See? So confusing!  I usually stop myself before saying saaRe ek. But occasionally one slips, even after all of these years. That is called first language interference plus mommy brain. Soon in Amreeka I will be able to say 1.5, 2.5, and cup all I want. Cup cup cup in a cup. Cup da baap cup da baccha! I love cups!

3. My bro who is closest to me in age is getting married in late July, Inshallah. I haven’t been to a non-desi co-ed wedding in a long time. So all my fancy clothes are either shalwar qameezes for desi weddings or prom gowns for Arab weddings. I had a hard time hunting for something long sleeved, leg covering that I could wear to bro’s wedding that was formal-ish. My hometown is pretty casual and not at all fashion forward, so I had some flexibility.  All the formal stuff over here looked so boxy or fru-fru. I ended up with a white cotton blouse and white and blue skirt from the Gap. The Gap used to be only for long skinny people but it seems in the past few years they have also catered to short stocky people like myself. So I like them a lot more now. I am very happy that I have I finally found and outfit! Now I can just relax and enjoy the wedding stuff. It will be a family reunion when I get to Amreeka.

4. Is it El Ninyo again? Someone told me that. Cuz I heard it’s like 105 in Texas. And well, it is about the same here. So I ain’t escaping nothing over there. I was hoping to. Inshallah it will rain when I am there. I will be disappointed if it doesn’t rain. Because it only rains a few times a year in the Gulf. And I miss the rain. Like the deserts miss the rain. I want to smell the grass right after it rains, and maybe see a rainbow.

5. I have another ladies’ lunch at the Award Winning cooking teacher’s house. Last time I wanted to take something Amreekan to represent, but I chickened out and made channa pullao and baingan ka raita because I couldn’t think of any thing Amreekan to take since my dish had to be vegetarian and impressive. They really liked the channa pullao and baingan ka raita and some people even e-mailed me for the recipe and the Star Chef asked for the raita recipe! I felt so happy! But now I really want to do something Amreekan. This time I am gonna make vegetarian polenta bolognaise! It is like say, Italian American. Well, it doesn’t really matter if it isn’t truly Amreekan because the hostess cannot even remember where I am from anyway. She keeps telling people that I am from London. To her it’s all the same! I have it all planned out! Yummy, butter laden, cheesy, bechamel sauce topped veg. polenta bolognaise!

6. My favorite dosa spot, Saravana Bhavan (say that fast three times in a row) opened next to my favorite shopping center Lamcy Plaza. Before I had to go to the one in Karama or the one in Bur Dubai near to Bank of Baroda bazaar…both special trips for me, though I thought of some excuse to get near there and get a dosa when I could. But now I can go and enjoy my favorite onion rava sada (say that fast three times in a row) whenever I want because Lamcy is my second home. And the Bombay Chowpatty in the food court has good dosas, but let me tell you that Saravana Bhavan has crazy mad delicious eat your fingers dosas and their other items are fabulicious, too! So, let’s just say that they are gonna be seeing me a lot over there at the Saravana Bhavan Lamcy branch.

7. Baby is teething. She already has two teeth, mashallah. She is mashallah good tempered, but the teething has her waking at night a bit. Subhanallah the night waking has started as my school year has ended so I can sleep in with her a little bit. Otherwise I would be dead tired all day and a walking zombie. Poor thing. I know her gums are all itchy. It is hard being a widdle baby!

 

Doesn’t it all look like baby food?

Our new housekeeper cum nanny is very nice, mashallah. She isn’t as well organized as A., the old housekeeper. But she is good with my girls, alhamdulillah. She is from Bangalore. Her family is native Urdu speaking from Karnataka (yes, there are native Urdu speakers in the South), but they have this kind of very different dialect so neither my husband and I can always understand what she is saying. I have spent more time with her, so I actually have to translate what she says for my husband sometimes.

Also, our old housekeeper A. and I were very bonded on food and cooking. We liked to eat a lot of the same things, and we shared recipes and talked about food a lot. A. had worked for a lot of different families. She was one of those people who always knew everything. She would surprise and impress me with the range of cuisines and dishes she knew. She knew West African foods, Korean foods, Japanese foods, Latin American foods as she worked for embassy families in New Delhi. She was one of those “culture vulture” people who liked learning about different people and especially their food, so she picked it all up. She also had worked for a Indians of various backgrounds, especially Punjabis. Based on her observations of my cooking, she said Punjabi (Sikh) food was like Pakistani food, lots of garam masala, and we use everything openly, open-heartedly, without miserlyness (translating what she would say from Hindi). We use lots of oil. That was how she assessed our food. She really liked it though. We would eat things and lick our fingers and moan, “oooh, this is so good.” She loved what I cooked and I loved what she cooked. We also both loved Chinese food. She was very open to trying new things.  She would experiment in the kitchen when I was at work while she would baby-sit. She made all kinds of interesting things. Things that she invented herself, like sweet potatoes seasoned and made into the shape of cupcakes, and all sorts of other things. She was a real foodie. She would cook whenever she was bored, pick up recipes from friends and neighbors, and watch food shows with me.

The new housekeeper isn’t into food. She is one of those people who says things like “Oops, I forgot to eat.” How can anyone forget to eat? I have some friends like that, too. They can skip a meal and not care. I get low blood sugar and start to have a melt down if I eat late. I just don’t get it. She doesn’t have a sweet-tooth at all, either.

She also hates our food. She thinks it is flavorless. She cooks her own foods for herself. She offered a taste to me a couple of times, but her level of spice is very very hot.  Like I might use a heaping tsp of red chile powder and 3 dried or fresh chiles in a dish. She will use 2 tablespoons of chile powder, plus 8 whole chiles. She also uses loads and loads of curry leaves and mustard seeds. I only use those in a few dishes. I do have a curry leaf plant, but my mustard seed supply probably lasts me a whole year. She also makes everything in the pressure cooker. Everything.

I ordered Chinese food once since she has been with us. She hated it. “What is this stuff? Dinner or dessert? This is sweet!” she complained. Also, our old housekeeper and I had fallen in love with the Gujarati cooking of our neighbors and started making some of their dishes. They always sent us snacks and samples of what they made if they made a special dish or made something they knew one of us liked. But the new housekeeper hates the Gujarati food. “Sweet, spicy, and sour all at the same time!” she complained with a grimace.

She usually makes veggies or daals for herself and eats whatever meat dish I cook with achaar or fresh green chilies on the side to up the heat. I also try to bring her vegetables that I assume she likes, like drum stick and stuff. When she first arrived, the old housekeeper and I asked her what her place’s famous dishes were. Idli, dosa, vada. We asked her, “Do you cook sambhar?” We both like sambhar, and actually A. had worked in Chennai for a year and the sambhar recipe both of us use is the one she picked up from a friend there (that friend was also a Bangalorean, not originally from Chennai). “Oh no, sambhar is made by Hindus, Kannada speakers. That isn’t our dish. Muslims make dalcha.” (I actually know some Muslims from Hyderabad and Madras who make sambhar quite regularly, including our neighbors, so I knew this wasn’t true, but may be the case for people in her community).  She didn’t know haleem or nehari by name, but once when I made haleem she said “Oh, we call this khichda. This is baby food for us.”  My delicious haleem was reduced to baby food! Well, I guess it does look kind of like baby food, but anywayz…

Since I am so into food, I have a hard time relating to people who aren’t that into eating and all. That is perfectly fine by me if she cooks for herself and all, and even if she thinks that the food I make is flavorless and gross. As long as she is comfortable and happy. I like her, she has a pleasant personality, is good with children, and tries hard to do a good job. So that’s what counts.

 

Pakistani Urdu and perceptions of language across the border

I watched the film Ramchand Pakistani, which depicts the lives of a Pakistani Hindu Dalit community in the Thar desert for much of the film. The film is excellent, and I highly recommend it. The film takes some narrative liberties for entertainment purposes, but basically tells the true story of a Hindu Dalit Pakistani father and young son who were captured and imprisoned for 4 years in India for accidentally crossing the India/Pakistan border. A critical look is taken at how the case is (NOT) dealt with by both Indian and Pakistani official administration with special consideration of the low-caste minority religious status of the pair. The central female character, a woman who lost both her husband and son, goes through very difficult lengths to survive and stay sane. Her side story was especially thought provoking.

Among other thoughts I had on this film, my mind also wanders towards language issues.

The film is in Hindi and Urdu. One point I noted was that for some reason, the actors who portrayed the Sindhi Thar resident Dalits used “mereko” in place of “mujhe.” The film makers could not use authentic actors from that particular community because they probably don’t exist, and the well known Pakistani (and one Indian) actors who played the members of that community just spoke in Urdu for the sake of ease of both themselves and the intended film-going audience. So the native language of that community was not used at all.  I have no idea what language that would be anyway, but it is most definately not Urdu (some dialect of Sindhi, Cholistani?). For whatever reason, the film makers seemed to think it more authentic to have the Thar residents say “mereko.” Any speculation as to why? Does that make them seem more authentically Dalit or perhaps more Hindu from a Pakistani perspective?

 The film also depicted Indian soldiers and an Indian prison, and it was interesting to see some of the Pakistani cast members affect faux Hindi accents in their Urdu. One actress in particular made a strong attempt at Bombay style Hindi since her character was supposed to be from Bombay. The main character in the film, young Ramchand, spends four years in an Indian prison, and viewers witness his Urdu (which the real Ramchand probably didn’t speak, or at least didn’t speak well) turning into some dialect of Hindi common to uneducated speakers. The actor who played the 12 year old Ramchand did an excellent job at that accent.

Anyhow, I am just rambling about my impressions of the underlying linguistic issues in the film. Most people who are not huge nerds like me will just sit back and watch and enjoy. It is outrageous that so many people, including children on both sides of the border have suffered due to political issues which have very little to do with them. The message of the film is very strong, and will hopefully serve as a factor in raising awareness about the issue of innocent Indian and Pakistani political prisoners whose capture was just a stroke of bad luck; a fisher man’s boat drifting too far, a camel caravan traipsing on the wrong desert, or a boy chasing a toy across a line in the sand. Such public awareness could do a lot towards the freedom of those people. When the film reaches a theatre near you, do check it out.

 

Urdu Like Mine: A Reflection on White Privilege and Language Learning

One of the many ways that white privilege affords me benefits has to do with language learning. I am thinking specifically about speaking Urdu. I won’t go into the issue of white Northern people studying “exotic” Southern languages. That is a whole other post. But let me take you right into my life and tell you what I have noticed. I speak Urdu. I live in a mostly Hindi/Urdu speaking environment. I speak Urdu much of my day. In some ways I am fairly fluent. But by academic standards, I don’t speak Urdu that well at all. There are huge gaps in my vocabulary, especially when it comes to “big words.” If you don’t speak Urdu, it might be hard for you to imagine what I mean by that. But there is daily vernacular, and then there is the strongly Persian and Arabic based realm of “book words.” I don’t have a high proficiency when it comes to the book words.

Actually, there are many Urdu speakers who speak in a similar way to me. They could be the foreign born/raised children of native Urdu speakers. If these people’s Urdu sounds like mine, Urdu speakers in Pakistan and India mock them. They tease them. They shame their parents for not teaching them properly. They call them ABCDs (American born confused/crazed desis) if these desi origin people are from America. These so called ABCDs are usually bilingual, but English ends up being the more dominant language. Since they have never formally studied Urdu, there are many gaps in the language. Gaps that were most likely also widened by the shame of speaking a foreign language in front of white people as children, coupled with playground taunts about their heritage. As adults, some of these people regret that they lost their Urdu. Some of them even have the luxury of studying at university the language that they lost. But for me, Urdu was never a loss, it was always something to gain. An achievement.

There are also many people within Pakistan who speak like me. Their second language is Urdu. Their first language may be Pushto or some other regional language. Or they may be foreigners, as am I. Perhaps they are war refugees from Afghanistan or economic refugees from Bangladesh. These people are marked by their accents and broken grammar. Native Urdu speakers, who are statistically mainly situated on the highest rungs of the Pakistani social structure, have a good laugh at these people. Their broken language is one of the many signs of their low status. They have learned Urdu to do business with, and if they are very poorly off, to serve native Urdu speakers. They receive scorn, and I receive compliments.

And then there are people from this highest stratum in Pakistani society, whose parents send them to English medium private schools. These people study and master my native language, English because it is the language of dominance, and as such both a sign of and a key to power and privilege within Pakistan. It is the language of their former colonial oppressors, and now the language of the current Empire of America. People who go to English medium schools are notoriously weak when it comes to “book words.” Though some do master High Urdu due to parental pressure or out of genuine interest, it is very common to hear that these people “don’t speak Urdu,” because all of the complex and sophisticated concepts in their brains exist in English. People of this level of society do a lot of code switching. They are often unable to complete a sentence without using an English word. And I don’t mean one of the many, many English words that have been absorbed into South Asian languages due to past colonialism and modern imperialism. I know that not all English medium graduates have weak Urdu, but many do. So people who have mastered Book Urdu poke fun at these English-medium people as well.

And then there is me. Because I am a foreigner, and a white foreigner, I get away with my funny Urdu. Not only do I get away with it, people congratulate me on my simple, unsophisticated language. They sometimes even show me off to others. Even though my Urdu is really sooo bad. Because it is such an anomaly to find white Americans who can speak Urdu, or even any language other than English, really well.

I have something of a Punjabi accent in my Urdu. I just picked it up that way. Despite being a foreigner, my accent in Urdu is actually not bad. I do have a slight foreign accent, but I have been told often that I sound native. And I have been told that I sound like a Punjabi. When Punjabi Urdu speakers speak to native (Hindustani or muhajir) Urdu speakers, this gets them made fun of as well. With me, often people think it is cute. White, funny, Punjabi-fied, and cute. Punjabi as a language is often under attack by native Urdu speakers. There are negative stereotypes attached to Punjabis and these overlap with their language. As a white person who speaks with a somewhat Punjabi accent in Urdu, I can overlook it when a native Urdu speaker tells me “Don’t say that, that sounds too Punjabi.” Although I bristle and feel irritated when people say such things to me, they aren’t insulting my people, my heritage, or my language. It isn’t really directed to me at all. It is ultimately directed to Punjabis. I am just a filter for it.

I speak a few other languages fairly well, too. But could I complete university level academic course work in any language other than English? Probably not. How many foreigners, non-native English speakers, come to the US and do just that? Actually, my housekeeper, who is only semi-literate (and not literate in her own native language) speaks 8 languages well. Most of the people around me here in Dubai can speak at least 3 languages. Except for most of the Anglophone white people, of course. “Why learn another language when it is sooo hard, and everyone in the world speaks English; I know how to say Hello, Thanks, Good Bye, and a few curse words”…that is their mantra. Back to my housekeeper who speaks around 8 languages, our level of Hindi/Urdu is about the same. (Hindi and Urdu are essentially the same language on a vernacular level, just in case you wonder what I mean by “Hindi/Urdu”). But people congratulate me, not her. With her, they laugh. They shake their heads. They say, you speak Hindi pretty well for a Nepali. With me, they prop me up on a pedestal. She learned Hindi because she had to learn it. She was an economic refugee in India, and worked since childhood in Indian peoples’ homes. She learned Hindi from them. I learned Urdu and Hindi because I wanted to, because I liked it. For her it was a matter of survival. For me, it was a matter of interest.

So you see, the white privilege runs very deep and comes to me on so many, many levels. The more I think about these issues, the clearer to me the benefits of white privilege become. I bet that if other whites were to think about their experiences with their own second and third languages, similar narratives would be revealed. It is just a reality. In the meanwhile, I do need to improve my Book Urdu. And since I am white and relatively affluent, have some leisure time and access to resources that could help me improve, that should be a lot easier for me to do than it would be for some of the other afore mentioned people whose Urdu is like mine.

 

Example of language gaps referenced in previous post

I was looking out of the window at our little patio yesterday with my toddler. I said to her in Urdu, “Look, there is a birdie. She has come to drink water from that little hole. She must be thirsty.” After the bird drank some water, it started to fluff up its feathers…it looked very puffy and cute with its feathers all standing up. It was like birdie goosebumps. I wanted to say, “look how the bird is fluffing her feathers.” I had NO idea how to say that. How do you say puffing up or fluffing? If I were to try, it would come out all wrong. I would probably had said that the bird was “swelling up” because that is the only similar verb which I can think of. I just said nothing.

 I also noticed that my daughter’s ear was a little bit red. I said to the nanny, does D’s ear seem red to you? We peeked in her ear and we saw a little pimple. The nanny said, I see a little pimple inside her ear, can you see its “beak.” She meant that the pimple has a pointed crusty scab, but she didn’t know how to say “scab,” so she said “beak.” It did look like a beak, but that isn’t the correct word. I don’t know how to say pointy crusted scab, either. I would probably use some other words to convey that like “a spot with dried blood and pus.” Neither of us really know how to say the correct words because we are not native speakers. Sometimes we talk in long roundabout ways trying to explain things because of this.

So this is the kind of broken and inaccurate language input that my daughter receives.

In addition to that, there are many problems with my grammar. Like if I were to say a complex sentence in Urdu during natural speech, I sometimes forget to carry the gender or the plurality or the formality (hain/hai) all the way to the end of the sentence. The nanny does, too. I can hear that it is inaccurate the minute I say it. But for some reason I don’t get it right at the moment of production because my mouth is moving faster than my brain.

Children learn to speak by listening and processing rules with generalizations about structure. So what structure is she picking up from us because we are often inconsistent?Sometimes correct, sometimes not.