In Which We Discuss the Hindi-Bindi Club and Racial Identity

My father is Indian, my mother is a mixture of English, Irish and Welsh. Since my parents cannot stand each other, this causes problems. My mother spent many years insisting that I was British, pure British, which was a bit pathetic, since people would spend five minutes looking at me, and then ask "What are you?".

I'm not purely British. But, because my father is second generation and a lazy alcoholic to boot, I'm not really Indian. He's my main link to the culture, and he barely knows anything about it himself. My grandparents see me as one of his problems, not their grandchild (it probably doesn't help that my name is Kali).

In short, although my face loudly proclaims that I'm not white (for lack of a better term), I feel like a fraud pretending to be Indian.

I do read a lot of books by Indian and South-Asian authors. Very few seem applicable to me. Most South-Asian people on TV, in films, or in the media in general, are Pakistani Muslims. Indians tend to be from the Punjab, or the bigger cities like Mumbai or Kolkata. The mixed race characters tend to live with both of their parents, rather than be entirely cut off like I am. The few times I've visited my aunts or cousins in the last few years (less than five times in the last nine years), they've insisted on treating me like a baby and giving me badly cooked English food. They don't see me as one of them. But I'm not white either.

The Hindi-Bindi Club is about first and second generation Indian immigrants in America. One of them is mixed, but, as observed above, she lives with both parents. The three daughters refer to their mothers as the Hindi-Bindi club - because they speak in Hindi and wear bindi (bindi being the 'red dots').

A little note about Hindi. Although true Hindi is the main language of India, each region has its own dialect (and these differ from each other far more than most people would expect). For instance, most people have heard of chapattis. My family, who are from gujerat, call them rhotli.

Anyway, the book reminds me of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. Both books focus on first and second generations (Amy Tan's are from China), and how the mothers and daughters view each other and their culture, in short. The Joy Luck Club focused on the growing bridge and lack of knowledge between mothers and daughters, while The Hindi-Bindi Club focuses more on the different values held by mothers and daughters. It's also mentioned that, in Indian culture, love is shown via food. By the offer or refusal to make someone's favourite dish, for instance. Between every chapter, there are recipes. Most of them I don't really recognise. I've never eaten Indian food, except that cooked by my dadima, and she always gave my sister and I the most basic stuff. Since she didn't (and still doesn't) speak English, we never did find out what was in any of it. But I think I could make a passable rhotli, since the recipe given for chapatis is similar enough to what I've seen my dadima do. And we do have an anglicised potato and chicken curry. My dadima taught my mother how to make it, and she passed the recipe onto my grandmother. We've now successfully bastardised it, by adding more potatoes and leeching out spices.

Another issue that The Hindi-Bindi Club brought up for me was the importance of sons to Hindu families. I knew that they were important, since many of my father's issues stem from his having two daughters, but I never knew why. Now I do.

It seems that, for Hindus, only sons can perform the necessary death rites. In other words, my father won't make it to the Hindu version of heaven....because of my genitals. Considering that someone once thought it perfectly acceptable to call me a mutt, and I've been criticised for using the term "mixed race" to refer to myself (by someone who isn't actually mixed), I am now more thoroughly mixed then I usually am.

It was a good book though. I like Cowboy John best. I particularly liked the way one character described him as an American who had become Indian, much as their daughters were Indians who had become American.

In Which We Discuss Books That Made Me Cry

I read two books today. I didn't mean to, but I finished one in my lunch break, and then I started one on the way home, and the bus broke down, so I finished it.

The first book was Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. It's essentially about mothers and daughters - the things they have in common, and the things they don't.

The story begins with Jing-mei Woo stepping into her mother's shoes after her death - and realizing that she can't. The Joy Luck Club is something her mother invented, while in China during world war one, and something she continued with in America around the time of the second world war. The current members are three other women, who have also come to America from China. Each has a daughter. Each of them has wanted to spare her daughter the torments and sorrows that she went through. Because of this, the daughters never really get to know their mothers - as Jing-Mei, (or June, as she is known), realises when she meets the sisters she never knew she had, and needs to tell them about their mother.

Most of the book is made up of stories from the mothers and daughters. The stories from the mother's various childhoods don't seem to gel with the mothers seen by the daughters; it can be difficult to realise that this staid matron was also the girl you just read about. That's not a bad thing; it's realistic, for a daughter not to realise that her mother was once a person in her own right.

The second book was Mitch Albom's for one more day. I've read one of Mitch Albom's books before - the five people you meet in heaven.

That made me cry too.:(

for one more day is about a man who gets to spend one last day with his mother, who had passed away years before. He gets to say everything he wished he could have before. The little twist at the end was the real tear-jerker, though. I never saw it coming, and it would have been a good book without it, but that twist made it a brilliant book.

I'm trying to work out if Mitch Albom is corny or not. I'm leaning towards no, but I suspect I might be too young to tell the difference.