A Journey In Black and Indian Love

Hi everyone, I only have a few minutes to type out a quick post but I wanted to thank you all for your outpouring of support that M and I received in response to “Mary.” You all give me hope that there’s much more good in the world than there is ignorance. The louder our voices are against people who simply can’t accept others because they don’t like seeing couples not to their suiting, the more we can drown out their ignorance and hatred.  I have so much to update you all about. Write again soon! Until the next blog lovelies!

Life has been so hectic for M and I lately. With starting the brick and morter part of our jewerly business and school starting, it has been enough to make our heads spin. That doesn’t include scout meetings for both kids, my regular job and my voiceover business.  I’m thankful to be taking everyting in stride.

 I’m finally beginning to realize some very important facts.

1) My body is getting older and it needs more sleep than the four or five hours max I’ve been giving it over the last three years.

2) I don’t care how much technology and various gadgets are supposed to save time…to me it only paves the way for more time to be taken away. When I was a kid my grandmother cooked everything from scratch on a stove not a microwave. Vegetables were fresh out of some garden and she kept an immaculate house all while taking care of her kids, foster kids and a couple of grandchildren like me.  I’m still in awe of her strength.  Some things I won’t compromise on like cooking full meals for my family. We do eat out occasionally  but I believe dinners should be eaten together even if it’s not at a dining table. Often my family and I will camp out in the den and watch movies while eating dinner together (lately it’s been the Planet Earth series).

3) There’s only one of me and there’s only so much I can do. If I’ve done my best then I’ve done enough and if the task isn’t completed, perhaps there’s always later…if not oh well.

4) Sometimes no words are more than any number of words could ever speak.

5) The family members who are people I would ordinarily never deal with if they were not family no longer have control over my emotions with the whole “I’m family” excuse. I have some family I would never ever be friends with because we are dramatically worlds apart and there world is one which I have no desire to be a part of and I’m perfectly fine with it. It’s taken me  a long time to reach the point where I don’t care how they feel about me.

I’m in awe of the energy and passage of time. It seems just like yesterday that my kids were babies in carriers. Now they are mini adults with all of these emotions and intelligence. They are growing so quickly.

How many of you in the last few weeks have said to yourself or someone else I can’t believe it’s already the middle of September?!  That’s a sign that somehow we’re not slowing down enough to savor the days and truly acknowledge their presence.  I’ve promised to change this for myself.  I’ll have new posts soon my lovelies. ..until the next blog.

Well, we got our first hate post today (under the “About” comments).  I knew it was coming eventually and with all of the ignorance in the world today, it doesn’t surpise me at all. “Mary” says that Blacks and South Indians don’t mix and that relationships like me and M’s make her want to throw up. Hmmm.  Her post didn’t even warrant me wasting the energy to get angry. I feel sorry for people who have so much stupidity and hatred within them that they feel the need to spread it on a public forum. Thankfully, not everyone is like Mary. If they were, M and I would have never married. I respect the fact that she (or he) may not choose to marry outside of their race but to try to push that same old, tired propoganda on others is …yawn.. so boring. So Mary (or whoever you are), I won’t keep you much longer. I just wanted to give you the attention you apparently so desperately deserve and I’m sure you are exhausted because carrying around so much ignorance and baggage has got to be heavy.   To my other readers, I apologize but it’s obvious this person needed attention badly. I’ll get back to my regular post that was planned for today here shortly.

Hey everyone, it’s been a minute since I’ve blogged and this post will be short but I’ll make a longer post this weekend. I wanted to say hello to all of the new people who have stopped by the blog and left comments. You are the reason I started this and the reason I will continue to reach out and share parts of our life. 

One of our readers has reached out with the idea of a facebook group and it’s something I definitely plan on doing ..so stay tuned for more information. It’s coming soon. This weekend, I’ll be sure to tell you all about our holidays, which we shared two days of which with my mom on vacation. It was interesting to say the least. I think the time spent together dispelled some of the myths about M but it also made me realize some of my mom’s ideas about him were much worst than I could have imagined. It’s bedtime for me right now so until the next blog…

C. That’s the grade I would have given me and M’s communication a year ago. It would have been a solid C. I know this may sound confusing but even though we love one another and we get along well for the most part, our communication styles are different. I think this is because we were raised to communicate very differently. I’m very open and rather no nonsense. I believe in sharing my feelings no matter what and M is quieter. He holds things in and topics that would generally warrant a discussion for most people usually stay tucked in for him. M says this is cultural. I say I agree to a certain extent but the communication style that he exhibits can easily be applied to others from around the world.  That being said, I’ll give you a few  examples of what I mean.

Here’s a simple one. ..we talk to M’s mother.. if M interprets, I know I’m not going to get half the details. Amma can talk for 10 minutes straight and I’ll ask M what she said and he’ll say…’oh she said her foot hurts.” I’m a detail gal so knowing everything she said helps me understand her better. My solution? Years ago I hired a translator so that Amma and I could talk between ourselves without half baked interpretations.

Another example.. a repairman came to our business and was quite rude to M. I politely tried to point out the guy’s behavior but M never stood up for himself. Both my sister and I finally got so fed up with the repairman’s attitude towards M that we handled the situation ourselves when politeness didn’t work so well anymore. M’s response? To say, yes he noticed but he didn’t see the purpose in saying anything.  For me, I felt it was important to address for several reasons.. 1) I don’t want the repairman to think it was okay to come into our place of business and treat us like crap whenever he felt like it. and 2) To let the repairman know it’s not okay to treat anyone like that regardless of whether its a business or not, especially when we were polite to him. I understand that some people you can’t change but…and my last example of how we communicate differently..

The other day we had our date night and over dinner we discussed family and marriages etc. Both of M’s sisters had arranges marriages and I was asking them who arranged them and how the process went. At some point I asked him how Ambili and Minnie felt about being arranged. He shrugged and asked ‘what do you mean how did they feel?’ It’s not something you discuss you just do it. He then went on to say that here in the US, people are accustomed to talking about choices and how they feel about them whereas there in India people sort of know what is expected of them. In other words his sisters got married without complaint. I cannot imagine marrying someone I had only seen or talked to a couple of times.  What is slightly more irritating about this subject is that M went on to say that he refused to go meet families to be arranged except on one occasion where his mother begged him to so that people would say that he at least went to one arrangement meeting. He says he went only because of the love for his mother but he never went on another one again. What irritated me about this story was the VERY OBVIOUS sexism. He had choices his sisters didn’t. He could talk about what he didn’t want but his sisters couldn’t. WTH?

I’ve heard from many women over the years who are married to Indian men and complain about what appears their lack of concern over very serious subject matters. M and I have had this experience and he has explained to me several times that his silence on things have nothing whatsoever to do with how he feels.  He says he doesn’t want anyone to feel even worst about a bad situation so he keeps his comments in. I feel sometimes  it’s moreso a matter of if he doesn’t talk about it, then perhaps it won’t exist. He has a happy go lucky attitude about everything.  

Today I give the communication between me and M a B. A solid B. We talk more because I understand him a bit better and he understands my need for details and expression. Until the next blog my lovelies…

As I’m sure you all can tell, I’m relatively new to the whole blogging thing. As I visit some of your sites, they are so nice and functional with all of these cool little embedded links and stuff (Big shout out to Gori Girl on this one-She even has chat!!)

So because I love to learn and because I want people to have the desire to visit the page again and again without being bored, I’d like your help on learning how to do some of the cool things I see on other blogs. Any tips any of you could provide (email or via the comments link), would be appreciated.  I hope you all are enjoying the blog.

P.S. One thing I want to do is be able to have some of my favorite blogs show up on the right side of my page so that other readers can enjoy them. Now since I put the stat counter on there today, my resources and link sections have disappeared… hmmmm.