When I posted about the new book “Marrying Anita” (Bloomsbury, July 2008) a few weeks ago, I was cynical about the arrival of yet another published work exploring the institution of arranged marriage. (So were many of you. Questions rolled in about author Anita Jain’s desire to find a “broadminded” husband in India and her impetus for writing the book. These were coupled with a heated conversation about dating in the desi community. You can see her answers to your questions and mine below the fold.)

Despite my pessimism at the time, I promised to give the book a chance. And, I’m glad I did. I expected “Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India” to be a straightforward chick lit read about a 33 year old woman who moves to India from the US in order to find a husband. “Oh great, she wrote a well-received New York magazine article and then decided to conduct one of those how-I-did-xyz-in-a-year experiments.” What I found instead was a candid, straightforward, and intelligent memoir that combines the author’s search for a kindred spirit with her experiences adjusting to life in contemporary (and middle class) India.

Jain’s move occurs during the summer of 2005, coincidentally perhaps, at the same point in her life when her father had moved to the US – at age 33. “I moved to India, reversing the migration pattern of my father,” she writes …

Historians will tell you Delhi has been home to nine distinct cities through the ages, the remnants of which are scattered everywhere, like seeds from a flower; a poet’s tom fifty paces from my front door, an old fort not far past the Sundar Nagar market. But I will tell you that there are ten cities of Delhi and I live in the last, one with restaurants where one can order mushroom-and-goat-cheese farfalle, use wireless broadband, and go to nightclubs where girls in spaghetti-strap tank tops gyrate to the latest hip-hop influenced Bollwood hit.

Comparing Anita Jain to Jane Austen might be too much of a stretch, but there is something of Austen’s spirit in Jain’s work which paints a vivid portrait of a particular generation of Indian middle class society. Her narrative is full of acute observations about economic and social changes, class relations, and the dating scene in India’s capital.

Jain does not “consider [herself] some kind of arbiter of dating.” In our email interview, she said, “I was simply one person who took a journey and wanted to write about it.” Indeed, while she is trying to figure out how to go about meeting the right person, she is also engaged in an equally (if not more fascinating) struggle to find an apartment (it’s tough to rent an apartment as a single woman in Delhi; not Mumbai or Bangalore, we learn) and to make new friends (one of her good friends ends up being the sister of a guy she met through shaadi.com back here in the US). Continue reading →

A recent story I read in the New York Times last week began with this anecdote about a trip to the airport that I know many of us can relate to:

Yasmine Hafiz was passing through security at an airport near Washington several weeks ago when a federal agent stopped her. Something strange and metallic had shown up in her carry-on bag during screening. Now she needed to explain what the suspicious object was.

At 18, newly graduated from high school, Yasmine knew the drill all too well. A few years earlier, an immigration officer had demanded she present a visa to board a flight from Canada to her home in Arizona. It was as if, because she had dark skin and a Pakistani surname and was Muslim, she, an American citizen, still needed permission to enter her own country.

This time, the security agent began unpacking the carry-on bag until he found his quarry. It was a bronze disc plated with gold. “It’s a medal,” said Yasmine’s mother, Dilara, who was traveling with her. “It’s from the president.”

Yasmine had received the medallion in the White House the day before, when she was honored as one of 139 Presidential Scholars.

This airport story is not one-of-a-kind – many of us have been through similar experiences in recent years. What it is resemblant of, however, is one of the challenges many South Asian-American students face – despite widespread success in various areas of student life, from math and science to athletics, South Asian high school and college students in the U.S. still face misconceptions about their culture, religion, and background, often at the most basic level. One graduating senior from high school in Arizona, Yasmine Hafiz, who is described in the Times article above, at only 18 years old, is working hard with her family to change misconceptions of Islam that are common in American schools, discussions and media. She and her family have written a book, the “American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook,” that aims to “bridge a cultural chasm” (NYT) by giving a clear and light explanation of the basic religious and cultural tenets of Islam for audiences of all ages. This book is an “easy-to-understand, nonproselytizing explanation” of Islam that has become a popular and moderate explanation of the religion among Jewish mothers and Episcopal schools in Arizona, as well as the ministry of education of Malaysia. Yasmine’s younger brother Imran, a sophomore, explains why his family has written the book: Continue reading →