Gustavo Arellano runs a nationally syndicated column titled “Ask a Mexican” which began three years ago (first as a joke) in the OC Weekly. A while back, over the tip-line, someone suggested we run a similar column. I think it’s a good idea. I think I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna be the “Desi” with the answers. So…if you have any questions for a Desi (or Indian, South Asian, whatever you prefer) I am now your man. Send them my way at abhi [at] sepiamutiny dot com. I will try to answer at least one question a week and I will only tackle questions sent via email and not via the comments. I will more than likely ask my bunker mates to opine on certain inquiries, especially if they are more qualified desis for a particular question. To get you in the mood, here is the latest “Ask a Mexican” column:
Q: Is it true that there are a lot more Mexicans hooking up with East Indians now? I know a few mixed Mexican-Indian couples, and I’ve heard that in some parts of the country, there are communities full of Mexican Hindus (products of Mexican-East Indian intermarriage). Is it true that this is a rising trend? If so, do you have any advice for young Indian-Americans interested in attracting Mexican girls or guys?
–El Otro Tipo de Indio
A: Dear Other Type of Indian: I try not to answer questions about interethnic amor (that’s more of a Dan Savage thing), but I’ll run yours because it allows me to plug Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans. This fascinating 1994 ethnography by University of California Irvine anthropology professor Karen Leonard studies Mexican women in the United States who married men from the Punjab region of what’s now India and Pakistan during the first half of the 20th century. There are muchos similarities between Mexican and Punjabi cultures — a love of flatbreads (tortillas and rotis), spicy cuisine and loud, drum-based music (banda and bhangra, respectively) — but Leonard concludes that American immigration policies barring most Asian women from entering this country inspired many of the unions, and that both Mexican and Indian-American communities (never mind the gabachos) discriminated against these families… [Link]
Please, ask this macaca all kinds of questions and not just cheesy relationship questions. I just want to heal. Like Dr. Phil. Or Frasier Crane.
No wonder you like S(+)M! Thank you, I won’t be here all week.
Etymology is very important, it gives you the entire history of a word, and from what society, and implications and connotations are associated with it. For example, romance is essentially a western concept, and this becomes clear when looking at the words root: romans, as in, from Rome.
I think spelling is really helpful, especially in vocabulary development and advanced reading, at least in your school days
I’m not denying that learning how to spell has its uses. But most of us learn the fundamentals of spelling in elementary school, and while etymology may be interesting, it’s usually secondary to the need to spell correctly to be understood…and by the time the average American is an adult, spelling is a pretty simple process, and spell-checkers can usually fix problems with typographic dyslexia. 🙂
I just don’t see competitive spelling as useful. That’s all.
Hema, I can see this POV. I remember when I met the regional spelling bee champion who was like 16/17 years old, I remember thinking, “Does he hang out with the southern Jersey hide and seek champion?”
I guess it depends on what you think the function and purpose of language/spelling are? 🙂 Maybe it’s the writer in me that loves words (although I mangle them, and grammar, all the time on SM!)
I agree with you in that competitive spelling is kind of strange. All these “merit” competitions have become such a racket, though. It’s another thing for a kid to put on his/her resume. Whatever happened to the joy of spelling? Am I being ridiculous. Probably a little 🙂
Haha, is that how you get out of doing “romantic” things in your relationships? 😉 (I keed, I keed)
I guess spelling is the safety talent: if nothing else work out, you can always be the champion speller. After all, one has to be something.
Wish “champion slacker” were an option 😉
You know how those beauty pageant contestants always show off one of their talents? Imagine if someone said “oh, i’m really good at spelling.” They could have an impromptu bee right there on stage!
No, I’ll do them, I just acknowledge that it’s essentially a western concept, as is “Valentines Day”
No, I’ll do them
Ha! The things men will do…
hema, I would watch that pageant. For the spelling, of course 😉
HMF, I am laughing so hard. “I’m sorry, next time we get it on could we do without the Western social constructs? Thanks.”
Exactly, you just echoed Chris Rock’s joke:
“Anytime a man does something nice, all he’s doing is offering dck. ‘Uh, can I get that for you? How bout some dck?, Can I help you with that? Can I help you to some d*ck??'”
“Samir Patel is the Jim Kelly of spelling”-Dan Patrick [today on the his radio show]. Most of the 1st hour of his show, Dan Patrick spend talking about Mr.Patel[ who Dan Patrick picked to win] and his controversial ending. They even had Stuart Scott come on and give an update during the time when Samir filed his protest. Also they played an interview from 2 weeks ago with Samir on the Dan Patrick show, where the young Samir sounded kind of arrogrant.
Question: I am an agnostic Hindu. I have not come across any Indian Christians who think I need to be saved. Luckily my white friends do not think I need to be saved either by believing in Jesus Christ. But there are many white Americans who believe in the point that we are going to hell if we do not believe in Jesus. Those kind of feelings were not that obvious to me when I was a kid. But I encountered quite a few people who voiced those sentiments as I grew older. So what do people here think about this and have they had any experiences with this issue?
I think he who has no faith is already in hell.
In lieu of payment for my services, I will allow a donation of $25 to the JDRF. it’s for the kids. Have a nice day.
Just to show you that not all ABDs are spelling bee champs, I saw this one chick Sunny Leone on the Debbie Does Dallas Again reality series on Showtime. She is a porn star(why is it that every porn actress is referred to as a porn STAR) and I think she is from a Punjabi family. The funny thing is she was afraid of what her parents might think because she was considering getting into hetero porn instead of just lesbian scenes. I can’t imagine why her parents would care once they got used to hearing about their daughter being in X rated lesbian sex scenes.
Pravin, A similar experience :
I had some door to door missionaries come by my home .They were 2 very nice ladies who pressed some literature on me , invited me to their church and asked me if I was a Christian. I replied that I am technically a Hindu but that I pray to Jesus and other Gods too because I believe that all prayers lead to one God. One of them replied “Oh we hear a lot of that sort of thing nowadays” and her expression was really priceless 🙂
I promised to read their literature and that was the end of that.
So what do people here think about this and have they had any experiences with this issue?
I’ve had a few people tell me that not accepting Christ means my soul cannot be saved, but I’m not sure how widespread this belief is among Christians in general. I get the sense that this is more of a fundamentalist Protestant belief, and isn’t that widespread among “older” denominations like the Catholics and people in the Orthodox churches.
My Orthodox friend tells me that the Orthodox Christians are supposed to worry more about their own salvation rather than that of others, so you do what is good for your soul instead of worrying about the eternal damnation of other souls (or something like that…I’ll wait for Akka’s correction).
I saw this one chick Sunny Leone on the Debbie Does Dallas Again reality series on Showtime
Sunny already has an awesome following among SM regulars, or so I hear. 🙂
@ Roger Clemens talent
No amount of steroids/HGH will help you in the Spelling Bee though. For that matter, no amount of steroids will help Rajah when he goes 4 innings on Monday night, gives up a few dingers and leaves with a pitch count of 100.
My sister went to this missionary run college in India and she would get lots of people try to get her to read the Bible. Her stock response was to offer them the Bhagvad Gita and say if you read this, I’ll read the Bible. No one took her up on it.
Question: I am an agnostic Hindu. I have not come across any Indian Christians who think I need to be saved. Luckily my white friends do not think I need to be saved either by believing in Jesus Christ. But there are many white Americans who believe in the point that we are going to hell if we do not believe in Jesus. Those kind of feelings were not that obvious to me when I was a kid. But I encountered quite a few people who voiced those sentiments as I grew older. So what do people here think about this and have they had any experiences with this issue?
How on earth did a thread about Mexicans and Desis making sweet, mirchi love turn in to THIS? I kind of understand how spelling bees came up, since at least that’s something going on tonight, but proselytization? Yay, an open thread!
Jesus would have kicked ass in a spelling bee.
wtf, Isn’t the thread “Ask a Desi”? Not just about “ask a Desi about Mexican American” issues. You do not have to quote my entire comment.
Pravin, I guess you missed that “don’t ask it in the comments” part which was highlighted. 😉
I’ll fess up. I disliked your threadjack, especially since we’ve been there and done that “Oh no, Christians want to convert me!” discussion several times on this blog over the last few years.
i do think a lot of the soul saving business comes from white protestants, but newly converted indian christian (pentecostals, jehovah’s witnesses, etc.) are also into that sort of deal. i don’t think i’ve ever heard of anyone preaching and trying to convert people in my orthodox church. my mom, for a period of time, went to a lutheran church because our church was too far away, and she stopped because the minister gave a sermon about how those of other religions will go to hell. she was shocked because you would never hear that in the old indian churches.
on the other hand, living in the middle east, my best friend who was an indian muslim told me that i would go to hell because i wasn’t muslim. apparently, her parents had said so.
so, i guess you find a little of that in most faiths, though it isn’t common in my experience.
I somehow have special affinity for latina’s. I have found that for me,among various ethnicites,the latinas are the ones I am most likely to stay involved with long term (longest one 3+ years). I think its somehow natural compatibility between the two cultures.
To add to the questions in #26, here’s a couple more:
Which term would you use?
Dear Abhi,
How do you type with boxing gloves on?
^__^
Wtf, my mistake. I should have read the post a question by email thing carefully.
I am newbie here. I am mainly active in political and entertainment related blogs. So please bear with me if I bring up topics that havwe been discussed to death. I will try to be a little bit more thorough in my searches before I post new comments.
I’m really surprised to hear about Latino-South Asian couples having alot in common. My cousin married a Latina and they have had so many problems; she doesn’t like any type of South Asian music (it’s not like salsa (!), and I won’t repeat what her family stated about Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. My cousin speaks Spanish (hence the eavesdropping) and he says that just like alot of other ethnic groups, her family believes that they (Latinos) are the best and everyone else are below them.
Haha at 102.
But did you know that Rome is probably derived from urobsma, constructed from urbs and robur, meaning ‘strong city’, and that St. Valentine’s name has roots in valencia , meaning ‘strength, capacity’? The things one learns…
It’s late, short, and kind of crappy, but I delivered what I promised. Behold, The Chingo Singh Theme.
(If the Malkit sample sounds pretty trebley and hissy, it’s because I ripped it from a cassette. That’s right: DJDP is rocking it old skool.)
But Denise, you should hear my father explain it:
You say camisa, we say kamiz; you say dos, we say do; you say mesa, we say mecch; you eat tortillas, we eat chapatis…same same, but different.
In our family, so far, as far as I know, we have two Ind@Latin@ couples, and there’s still a lot of cousins to go.
131
Yeah, assholes are everywhere. Big surprise.
DJDP, You deserve nothing less than the Tamale King’s signature Nikes for your stellar effort.
This issue will rise up any time a minority marries different minority. Each will have the collective experience of being marginalized by the white majority, but will have their own individual methods for combating that. Also, minority A will more often than not take the white majority perception when dealing with minority B. For example, Indians will say “ching chong” when talking about asians, why? because thats what white people have historically done. Chinese people will joke about “Habibs that own 7-11’s” for the same reason.
White folks will also use this to builid sort of a “temporal solidarity” with whichever minority they happen to be in company with. So a white person will say to an Indian person, “I don’t go to that neighborhood, cuz you know, its not safe, [as in mostly black and hispanic]” The underlying assumption being, “you’re a minority, but still with us” But this same white person may be in the company of a black person and say, “I always get nervous when one of those ragheads get on the plane…” building that same temporal solidarity.
, “I don’t go to that neighborhood, cuz you know, its not safe, [as in mostly black and hispanic]” The underlying assumption being, “you’re a minority, but still with us”
yeah, whites should be sensitive to the fact that you, an Indian, would have far less to fear in those neighborhoods than they would.
Agree with your comment, but Indians in India say that too.
Making blanket statements about whites who make blanket statements about minorities is your way of building temporal solidarity?
137 very true.
for those who don’t agree your either white or your oppressed.
All my latino friends (lots) say extra-marital affairs are common in Latin America.
A guy Venezualean friend said recently, “a Latin man has to be good in bed coz if he ain’t, his wife will leave him for another man in a second”. Does this pose a problem in Indo-Latino marriages?
Latino culture is much more free sexually than Indian culture. I foresee alot of problems in that area especially.
Actually, I’ve seen it directly, being a part of an “Indian religious cult” that has gone global, I’ve seen about every mix of Indo – insert nationality/culture here mixed marriage that you can imagine.
The intense closeness of Indian families also is another threat.
Yeah. The first time I heard “chinky” was in India and I had noooooo idea what he (my Bengali friend) was talking about.
He was talking about the “oriental” looking people from the state of Sikkim.
142, 143
Fuckin’ puta chingao trolling, man
por supueso–it’s the infamous PG!
she of the ever-broadening and all-powerful sociological/ethnological eye:
“latinos are promiscuous”
“Indians are sexually repressed”
“yoga is about not masturbating and having blue balls”
“All indian women are helpless, hapless targest of physical and verbal abuse.”
am I missing anything here? what say ye compilers of the PG cannon?
PG? She’s innocent
Numbers 1 and 2 are straight from the mouths of Latinos and Indians themselves. You’ll need to inquire from them the accuracy of their claims.
Number 3 is wrong.
Number 4 is only partially right, but not enough statistics out to say how partial.
yes and in both cultures women over fifty grow beards and moustaches and turn into large saggy balls of dough while men begin to look like their wives did when they were pregnant…only with less hair on top of their head…
Cmon, PG, all Latinos? All Indians? “Them?” 🙂 Do you not see how this is funny? Using generalizations to justify other generalizations?