Meet the parents
When I was 18 years old and had my first boyfriend, he met my mother on our first date. By accident, but still. On our second date, already on the following day, I met his family for a homely Sunday lunch. Father, brother and his girlfriend and even the grandparents too. A couple of years later, when I got into my second relationship, the boyfriend once again met my parents on our first date and about a week later I met his parents. Though some of these meetings happened unplanned and me and both of my former boyfriends were always nervous, it was a very casual, natural thing to do. No pressure. Just like introducing a friend. So I never really quite understood what it meant in India to meet the parents.
Regardless of how the events have shaped out in the past, meeting the parents is a big deal for me too. Or even just sharing the information about a relationship for that matter. I think it must be a mix of both uneasiness over bringing someone new to a malfunctioning family and seeing how they could possibly fit in — though sometimes I think no one in their right mind would. And on the other hand it’s anxiety over my parents giving their approval on my choice and happiness, even though I learned to live my life independent of their opinions a long time ago.
I remember two years back, fresh into this relationship, when I was supposed to let my family know that I had found the love of my life and was about to move to India for him. Even if it had not been such a huge thing as relocating on the other side of the world, I thought that it was crucial to share this kind of information about my life with them as soon as possible. That’s what a family is supposed to do, right? But it was still nerve-racking, as I believed my mother would never ever approve of my decision and would have me thrown straight into the loony bin. And that’s in a country with such liberal views on family and relationships.
I’ve been yapping on and on at my boyfriend throughout our whole relationship, trying to make him tell his parents about us and introduce me to them. I’ve felt like a dirty, little secret. Embarrassing, unwanted, unwelcome. I haven’t understood the need to keep me as a secret, as we’ve been pretty serious straight from the get-go. He’s been avoiding the topic, giving me ambiguous replies and deadlines and even straight out told me a few lies regarding the matter. To be fair, he has also tried to explain the situation to the best of his abilities, but I just wasn’t able to wrap my head around it entirely. In India, you don’t introduce girlfriends to your parents, especially firangi girlfriends. You introduce about-to-be spouses.
A situation like this requires a lot of understanding and adjusting of expectations from both partners, but hopefully with enough patience and work the day will eventually come when you both are ready to get out of hiding. But how are you supposed to go about it then, once there are no secrets left?
It happens quite often that I feel merely an exotic item on display, an intriguing guest, but not entirely welcomed into this world and the Indian culture. And that is what I most feared would happen now too. That I wouldn’t be welcomed into the family. I tried to get my boyfriend to coach me to meet the parents and teach me to be as desirable a girlfriend as possible. What were his parents like? How do they function as a family? What do they wish for in a future spouse? But trying to prepare for the big event was as difficult for him as it was for me, because he had never before introduced a girlfriend to his parents. I did a lot of reading online, trying to find as many stories as possible about intercultural couples going through the same process, if they had any useful experiences or titbits. Reading the stories just eased my own anxiety mostly, but I did get a few practical tips too to go by on the first meeting. But otherwise I feel my own experience shaped out very differently and the things that helped me the most went unmentioned in the other firangi stories.
It’s challenging, after such a long time, to know how to act and be out in the open. Meeting the parents here is already such a huge leap in the relationship and comes with a lot of pressure. And to add on the extra stress of being a foreign partner and having waited so long that in the end the secrecy became a norm, it can — and for us it did — cause a lot of anxiety in the weeks leading up to the big revelation.
I was feeling especially nervous and guilty over the long period of time we had kept our relationship a secret. When I told my own mom about us no longer than a few weeks into the relationship, the biggest reason for it was that I knew she would feel so hurt, if I kept something like that from her. Coming from a culture where secrets are perceived more as lies I felt quite certain that my boyfriend’s family would be so angry about how long we had lived in a lie and kept them out of the loop, how we didn’t even really give them time to adjust to the big news or wrap their heads around having to welcome a complete stranger, a firangi into the family. But I never realised there was a big difference in perception in Indian families. Secret girlfriends, or boyfriends, are the norm.
It took me a while to find this fine balance between the reality in this culture and my own — somewhat idealistic — principles. Before that I had been consumed and almost paralysed by the guilt and anxiety, but once I was able to let go of it and in a way to forgive myself, and my boyfriend too, for taking such a long time to come clean, it was easier to move on to actually preparing to meet the parents.
I know very well that a firangi daughter-or son-in-law isn’t exactly what Indian parents dream of. Even the idea of it is so far-fetched and utopian that it would never even cross their minds. My future in-laws had never met a white person, let alone talked to one, and both of them coming from rural villages — though currently living in Jaipur — and being members of a very different generation had quite traditional, conservative views on how life is supposed to be. My mother-in-law doesn’t even speak English. So the task ahead of me, of completely charming the parents, terrified me in all its magnitude. Make it or break it, make it or break it, I kept telling myself. I was desperate for them to approve of me, even though we live independently at a great distance from them in Vizag and my boyfriend wouldn’t base his decisions on their opinions.
I was focusing on what they might want, what they might need. The only thing that was wrong with me really was also the only thing I couldn’t change. But I was ready to find out about anything else and learn and improve myself, so I could be forgiven for my greatest flaw. I read long lists online from how to address the in-laws and dress appropriately to how to spend time with them and behave at meals and basically how to even breathe.
I did pick up a few useful tips, such as calling them “uncle and auntie”, which I have to admit still feels very strange to me, because in Finland only blood relatives would be given those titles and in-laws I would call by their first names (horror!). Many people had opted to show their respect by touching the in-laws’ feet, which probably would have made mine very happy too, but I decided not to do that after consulting my boyfriend, as he would’ve felt very uncomfortable, since he so rarely uses the gesture with family. Instead I greeted them with a simple namaste, pressing my hands together close to my jaw and slightly bowing my head. The level of the hands and the bow signify an expression of respect and I would say this is the least you can do to take the in-laws’ traditions into consideration. I’ve also been learning Hindi, slowly but steadily, for a longer period of time now. I’m not really able to hold up even a simple conversation in Hindi yet, but I’ve learned some common phrases to use in everyday life and also specifically memorised a few questions and compliments for this special occasion.
But otherwise I didn’t really feel like all my reading was of much help. In the stories — and I have to admit in my own head too — the emphasis was too heavily on either the firangi partner changing themselves and going by the Indian customs only or them just stubbornly sticking to their own ideals and habits. Everyone was focusing so much on the differences and how they should act that they seemed to forget the most important thing: getting to really know each other as people and showing how much the relationship really matters.
When we were just a day away from the meeting and I was sitting on the train on my way to his family house, a realisation hit me. This is it. Not that it would be my only chance to make them like me, but that this was my only real shot in several months to let them get to know me. The real me. I had been so fixed on my flaws and compensating them somehow that I had completely forgot all the good things there were in me, the amazing qualities that do make me a great wife to an Indian, first-born son. And I had not even thought much about letting those sides of me shine bright, but to only portray myself as I imagined they would want me to be.
I knew that my in-laws had many concerns and fears too. They didn’t understand how I could be an (agnostic) atheist, because obviously I must believe in something, which translates into belonging to a religion. And they were worried about my eating during our first visit to their pure veg house, if I needed to devour beef at every meal, when in reality I eat much, much less non veg than my boyfriend. How would I dress, what would we talk about, what would I be like? What would the neighbours say, what would the extended family say? They were afraid that marriage or family would not hold a great value for me. They believed that a Western girl didn’t know how to build the kind of commitment that most Indian marriages are founded on. As I’m closing in on my 30s, they thought that I must have divorced multiple times already. But most of all they also feared if I didn’t like them either. They feared that I would either whisk their beloved son back to my own country or that we would stay here in India, but they wouldn’t be warmly welcomed into our house.
The stories about the Indo-Western couples I read online all had one common denominator: the long fight and struggle the couples had to go through to finally get the parental approval. I read so much about the mutual resentments and cultural clashes, even among the westernised Indian families, that — though prepared to patiently endure — I was certain that we also had our own uphill battle ahead.
Honestly, based on what I had heard about my in-laws from my boyfriend, I already liked them quite much. My father-in-law, a slightly goofy, care-free and adventurous man. And especially my mother-in-law, a very bright and sensible, self-taught woman with skills to turn everything in her hands into gold, or at least delicious dal and beautiful garments. I shared so many interests and values with them that I was sure, if I got them to look beyond the passport and the colour of my skin, they would eventually like me too. It’s just that we are all complete strangers, so foreign to each other, I told myself.
I’ve always been quite a gambler in a sense that, when I get a good feeling about my cards in a game of poker, I often lay it all on the table and go all-in. I don’t do grand gestures per se, but I did really want to do something special to show my in-laws straight from the get-go what kind of a girl I genuinely am and how seriously I took the situation too.
So I planned a little gift for them and found a pretty box of organic chai and a painted postcard of mountains on my solo trip to Nepal just before I traveled to their house in Jaipur, where my boyfriend was already waiting with them. I wanted to show them that I too already carried them in my thoughts even when I was alone. And I wanted to write them about my true feelings in my crappy Hindi, so they could have that as a reminder of me in the future too. My boyfriend was a bit against this idea, as it made him feel awkward with all the shared feelings they rarely do in their family. But I told him that even though I did understand where he was coming from, this was not about him, but about me. I needed his parents to see the real me and I was that kind of girl who did these things.
After an awkward first evening, which still did go surprisingly well even with all the interrogations, I gave them the gifts next day and as my sister-in-law was reading the card in Hindi, I could see the fears and doubts melt away in my mother-in-laws face. I really wish I could’ve been able to say then and there in Hindi how I felt like I was at home, but I guess she knew it too, as she clumsily hugged me, which is something that rarely happens in an Indian house, and whispered thank you.
Dear Uncle and Auntie, Aap se mil kar bahut khushi hui. Mujhe pata hai ki ham kai chunautiyon ka hoga, parantu aapne beta ko pyaar karti hoon aur main aapne parivaar ka ek hissa hone ke lie tatpar hain. Aur mere lie parivaar hamesha ke lie hai. // Uncle and Auntie, I’m really happy to meet you. I know we’ll face many challenges, but I love your son and I look forward to being a part of your family. And to me family is forever. Sincerely, Johanna
Oh, by the way, my mother didn’t try to have me committed into a mental facility either, but after a long, deep breath told me to just follow my heart, like she wished she had done, when she was young. It’s a funny thing with parents. Maybe they do always give their approval, if you just give them the chance and meet them halfway.
