![\"sindoor.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/sindoor.jpg\")
<\/a>\nMy baby cousin at UCLA still hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forgiven me for joining Facebook. His objection is not that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m too old for it or that I lessen its \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cool factor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with my elderly presence\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe just hates the program and apparently I was the last<\/em> person he knew and cared about, who was not on it. That had more to do with pragmatic causes than most anything else; I was happy on Friendster and consummately preferred it to MyAss or the more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153global\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\/Brazilian Orkut. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have time to maintain profiles on a plethora of time-sucks. And most relevant of all, I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be bothered to get an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alumni\u00e2\u20ac\u009d email addy from either of the schools I managed to graduate from…and once upon a time, you needed such official stuff to participate in the Facebook-orgy.<\/p>\n\nNot anymore. And so a few of you began inviting me to join it and I pointedly ignored such requests…until one of you was Facebook-stalking a guy you thought was sooo cute.<\/p>\n\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s his friendster link?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, I asked.<\/p>\n\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not ON friendster\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only on Facebook!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, then I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But you just HAVE to see this one picture\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I have a feeling you know his friend.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You know how I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never been a bridesmaid?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yeah what does that have to do with anything??\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m signing up for this bullshit right now, so A) you best marry his ass and B) I best be in some sort of poufy outfit, twitching out of boredom on an altar in a year or three.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Omg, whatever you want, just SIGN UP\u00e2\u20ac\u009d…and so I did. But I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bother uploading a pic or filling out my profile, not for a while. Then, I was asked to write something about social networking and I needed more information about FB, specifically a sense of how intuitive it was to use. I noticed, upon logging in, that I had been \u00e2\u20ac\u0153poked<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d approximately 40 times. I also noticed that several of my far-flung friends were considerably more active and in touch on FB than they were on Fster. This puzzled me until I realized that they were destroying all of their free time defenestrating each other via \u00e2\u20ac\u0153SuperPoke\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, proving their music IQ via some guessing game which was far superior to the one on my iPod and playing Scrabble online via the hyper-addictive \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Scrabulous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n\n Well, I saw her Facebook…and now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a believer. I will happily eat the words which initially expressed indifference towards this program. The recent app explosion transformed FB for me, from a site to ignore to one which I am now constantly logged in to…which brings me to this post.<\/p>\n\n Now that I am spending a ton of time on there, my inner, dilettante-sociologist is hyper-stimulated. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much to discover, like…<\/p>\n\n Here, read all about it. I’ll post the group’s “description” for you:<\/p>\n\n Description:<\/strong> This group (also a support group) is for all the desi people that are in a relationship (dating, engaged or married) where your partner is Indian but is from a different state in India or is from a different religion or caste. \nThis type of relationship can’t be called interracial, so it can be called an ‘Aviyal Relationship’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even realize there was a term for this situation\u00e2\u20ac\u201done I have been in for almost half of my dating life. While I tried valiantly to date Malayalee boys, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just to make it easier\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on all 349 people who were potentially involved with such an alliance, I went to a college that had no Malayalee male undergrads and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t attend our local (read: more than 100 miles away) Syriac Orthodox church. I was far more likely to encounter Punjabi Sikh guys at U.C. Davis\/Fresno\/Modesto\/Yuba City and predictably, that is what I often dated.<\/p>\n\n I had been making Aviyal all the way through college and I had been oblivious to it!<\/p>\n\n Whether by circumstance, i.e. being one of a handful of South Indians at a school dominated by Northies or by choice, i.e. just plain falling for someone, this is a cocktail we will see more and more of, no matter what our respective parents think of such emotional collisions. One of you, who comments regularly, is a Tamil married to a Punjabi; sometimes, the comments which inform me of this detail also contain other bits of information, which illustrate how challenging such a union is. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m assuming both parties involved are probably Hindu, which makes things nominally easier, but when you add interreligious components to the conflict\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6sometimes, that is exactly what you get: conflict.<\/p>\n\n When one of the only Malayalee girls I grew up with got married about a decade ago (she was a bit older than us\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6because I remember that even her younger brother was two years older than me), it caused quite a stir, since she, a Namboodiri, had fallen in love with a Mallu Christian she had met at school. This was the source of much discussion and concern, as our parents pondered whether this was a harbinger of their own future disappointment.<\/p>\n\n Years later, I felt compassion for her, once I realized what the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153odds\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult enough finding a match who is Malayalee, finding one who is Mallu and<\/em> of the same faith narrows the pool considerably\u00e2\u20ac\u201despecially when you take caste or in the case of Christianity, multiple denominations in to account. It may seem counterintuitive, since Kerala\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Christians comprise a disproportionate share of Malayalee Americans, but yes, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to find a suitable boy. My father never forgave the Catholic church for what they did in the 17th century, so the thought of me marrying one was inconceivable. MarThomites were out because they were anti-feminist-Mary-haters who shamelessly chose not to revere the dead. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n We were fiercely Orthodox and unlike many Malayalee couples, both of my parents were Orthodox; my mother didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u0153convert\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to marry him. So for me, Orthodox it would have to be.<\/p>\n\n Do you have any idea how many single Orthodox Malayalee boys there are in America, who are over the age of 32?<\/p>\n\n Approximately two.<\/p>\n\n I have a Sikh friend who is a few years older than me, who is also single, because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rather Orthodox himself, and most Sikh girls he encounters want someone sans beard and turban. One of you posted a NYT Vows link recently, all because the groom was Muslim and the bride was Hindu and yes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll admit my non-existent eyebrows rose heavenwards upon reading it, because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m conditioned to do. We are marinating in aviyal, whether we know it or not (pass me the drumsticks, btw\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and keep the arbi to your damned self).<\/p>\n\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably end up in an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153aviyal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d-marriage of my own, so I confess that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m partially motivated to explore this<\/em> aspect of growing up in the diaspora, out of self-interest. But I also remember a certain thread where it was brought up quite a few times, so I know it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on your mind, too, along with potheads on celluloid and Shah Rukh Khan-endorsed colorism. If you have your own thoughts to add about aviyal, sambar or rasam relationships, speak.<\/p>\n\n There are many mutinies within which we can participate; the struggles associated with dating \u00e2\u20ac\u0153outside\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the precise group we were born in to, perhaps more than any other uprising, often involve the most upheaval and anguish, even if one’s intended is also a shade of Sepia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My baby cousin at UCLA still hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forgiven me for joining Facebook. His objection is not that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m too old for it or that I lessen its \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cool factor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with my elderly presence\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe just hates the program and apparently I … Continue reading \n
Aviyal Couples<\/strong> \nType: Common Interest – Dating & Relationships \n
For example: An Indian from Mumbai is in a relationship with an Indian from Bihar or an Indian from Tamil Nadu is in a relationship with an Indian from Kerala e.t.c or an Indian who is Hindu is in a relationship with an Indian who is a Christian or an Indian who is a Jain is in a relationship with an Indian who is a Brahmin e.t.c<\/blockquote>\n\n
* Aviyal<\/strong> – a south indian vegetable curry that has a mix of different vegetables. [Facebook<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n