Mariya Ali

“I’d like to have a conversation with you when you’re free.  I wanted to know your experience of being a child of a mixed race marriage”, a good friend of mine asked.  She is married to someone from a different culture and struggled with whether it was wise for them to have children and how feasible it is to incorporate and intertwine two different backgrounds.

A (Sunni) friend of mine had a friend who married into the Bohra community. He was telling me how his friend never felt accepted. One of the reasons that mixed marriages are frowned upon is the issue of raising children. An often-used reason is that it’s hard to raise children and they end up “confused”. (Let’s be honest, my trusted friend Log Kya Kahenge plays a major part in this, but nobody will really come out and say it).

I would like to share my unique viewpoint as a child brought up in these circumstances. I thought the best way to approach this is through a list of pros and cons.

Pros

• I have a solid understanding of two different cultures
• I have the ability to connect to two different sets of people due to shared heritage
• I have a great sense of belonging, twice
• I understand two different religions (that believe in the same God – so really, there’s not much confusion there)
• I was raised bilingual
• I have two sets of friends
• I have contrasting families with very different ways of interacting with me
• I am proud of my heritage on both sides, so double the pride
• I have a skin colour that is brown enough to be considered “tan” and desirable to English people and fair enough to be desirable by Indians.  Win-win
• I have a cool story behind my name
• I get to have a very different relationship with both sides of my grandparents and experience their love in very different ways
• Both sets of parents have different interests, so I can do a wider variety of activities with them. (Plays with dad and bollywood movies with mum)
• Both parents have different cultural outlooks on parenting so I get to have the best of both methods
• I didn’t get kicked out of my house when I went to university
• My mum cooks Indian and English food
• Kheer as well as apple pie (It deserves a separate bullet point)
• I have a better ability to be open as well as respectful of adults
• I can bring aspects of both cultures to the other.  E.g. English manners and Indian respect for elders
• Hearing my dad attempt to pronounce Gujrati words is hilarious

Cons

• My mum had to work extra hard to raise me as a bohri Indian.  Incorporating English was easy as it was where I was raised
• Learning and retaining Gujrati was hard.  When half of the adults in your household don’t speak Gujrati, any family interaction was in English.  Essentially the only time I spoke solely in Gujrati was speaking to my mum, as my grandfather and brother communicated with me in English.  I make a lot of grammar mistakes in Gujrati, but at the end of the day, it’s better than a lot of people whose parents are both bohri.  I can communicate well in both Gujrati and Hindi
• I would sometimes (or maybe a little more often than that) resent having to go to Masjid, reasoning that as I am half bohri, I only need to attend 50% of the time.  I think pretty much all of my friends feel the same way about going to Masjid, so I don’t think this is exclusive to being mixed
• Some people look down on my dad because he is not “bohri enough”. I have to ignore multiple pleas from my grandmother to teach him Gujrati
• One of my parents had to take a back seat.  I think mixed children work if you predominantly raise them in one culture (the harder one to adopt).  As they grow older they will be more inquisitive and explore their other heritage, but at a formative age it may be better to stress one while incorporating some aspects of the other.

In conclusion, raising a child in a mixed marriage has some challenges, but I would say that the pros outweigh the cons.  Plus, I think my brother and I have turned out okay.

Earlier today I was walking to the ice cream shop with my 7 year old cousin Naqiyah, when she suddenly put her arm in front of me to stop me from taking another step. I looked down and saw that I was just about to step on a pine cone.  She picked it up and looked at it with the fresh eyes and wonder of a child. She touched it, inspected it and smelt it. She took a moment, paused her life and appreciated the beauty of something that I was just about to step on. This led me to wonder how many other small, beautiful things in the world we miss because we are too busy going about our daily life.  I took a moment to think about the things that I have experienced/seen in the past couple of days and have compiled a list of beautiful things and experiences that I didn’t stop to take in.  Better late than never I guess.

1. An instant connection with another human’s soul.  That feeling when you meet someone and instantly instinctively know that this friendship will be special and long lasting.

2. The smell of grass after rain

3. Directly looking into someone’s eyes and holding that contact

4. A random act of kindness from a stranger

5.  When you want to buy something and are slightly short of cash, then the cashier says “Don’t worry about it”

6. A squeezy hug

7. The patterns that are made by light through a stained glass window

8. Picking up a dandelion, making a wish and blowing it

9. Having a lady bug land on you and then crawl over your hand

10. A cat weaving in and out of your legs

It’s a shame that I missed the opportunity to stop and appreciate the true happiness that the beauty of these small things brought me.  One thing’s for sure though, going forward I resolve to stop and take a moment to acknowledge and enjoy the beauty all around me. From now on no more stepping on pine cones.

The problem with words is that everyone has a different definition of what they mean.  Although there are so many dictionaries in existence, it’s essentially our own interpretation that guides how we understand our interactions with others.  If you truly think about it, the majority of our experience in the world is communicated through this flimsy medium.

I’ve realised lately just how ambiguous communication is.  I have struggled, despite being articulate, to communicate my point succinctly.  Then it dawned on me: although I was saying the words, essentially the language that myself and the other party spoke was completely different. Which in all honesty, was quite a revelation for me and not something that I have  put much thought into in the past.

So I wonder, how many times have I walked away from a conversation not truly understanding what the other person meant?  How many relationships have been affected negatively or positively by this subliminal force? What aspects of our lives come together to shape our innate dictionary?  Our interactions with others? Culture? Family? Experiences? Our interpretation of the other person’s body language and tone?  Context?  I suppose, based on my own experiences, it’s all of them.

I was watching an interview on the Oprah show, where a wide range of people were interviewed and asked what the term “vulnerability” means to them and interestingly, none of them had the same definition.

Apparently, it is supposed to mean:

• capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt, as by a weapon:
  a vulnerable part of the body.

Mariya, 75% of the time you are smart, articulate and funny.  You talk a lot of sense.  The other 25% of the time, you regress into this primitive emotional state”.

I quote directly, but this a paraphrase of what was said to me by a dear friend.  So as I do, I have obsessively and laboriously analysed this nugget of information.  Yes, 75% of the time, I am me.  I embody the things I talk about: I am optimistic, I take obstacles in my stride (for the most part – except a few scarring experiences that I consciously choose not to entirely heal from) and generally, pretty content and happy with myself.  But then there’s that 25%.  That quarter of my life where I turn green, lose complete control of my emotions and turn into an over-sized, out of control vehicle of sheer, utter destruction (minus the superhuman strength).

And then he said it.

What I am hearing is you are a victim who is vying for attention”

This hit a nerve.  Not because it was insensitive, but because it was oh so true.  It was also most definitely not the first time I have been told this.

When the realisation sunk in, my response was to fall deeper into this victim mentality.  I justified why it was okay for me to feel this way.  He just doesn’t understand, I thought. Deep down though, I knew he did.  I knew he had cut through all of the self pity, the self deprecating narrative that my Hulk lives by and seen it for what it was.  He saw the green monster and reminded me that I’m Bruce Banner.  Aside: Thank you, #Yourock.

This morning, I woke up a slight hue of green (not literally – although I hope the imagery made you chuckle).  I am quick to give out advice on loving yourself, living authentically within possibility and letting go of the past.  I strive to spread the concept of creating the best version of yourself, but I don’t live by this 100% of the time.  There’s still that shirt-tearing, fist pounding 25% of the time when my Hulk takes over.   I woke up to an underlying feeling of guilt and disappointment in myself, because I allowed myself to regress back into the person that I so desperately want to get away from being and ran in the opposite direction from the person that I decided and committed to being.

So I wonder: Am I the Hulk or am I a Hypocrite?

Perhaps I am neither.

perhaps I am both.

Perhaps I am human.

“I don’t want to see this”, I click.  Facebook asks me why.  Am I offended by the content? Do I find it inappropriate? Is it spam? No on all counts.  Sometimes, I just don’t want to see how great other people feel.  Sometimes, I’m quite happy not having the highlights of other peoples’ lives constantly shoved in my face.  Sometimes, I just don’t want to buy into the illusion.

Nobody is perfect.  No relationship is as happy as Facebook pictures and statuses misguide you into believing.  Nobody is as happy, social, skinny, or whatever it is that you may think while perusing (read: stalking) other peoples’ profiles.

Studies have shown that facebook (and other social media outlets) can cause depression.  In a world where we are constantly using the superficial lives of others as our measuring stick, it’s hard to really live up to these (false) ideals.

I’m guilty of it too.  I look like my profile picture maybe 10% of the time.  I untag pictures that are unflattering and I only update my status when something positive happens.

So next time you hide a post, don’t worry, you’re not the only one that does this.  And facebook, you may want to add “I don’t want to fall into a spiral depression because of others” to your reasons for not wanting to see posts.