Henna

So I have a good friend who is Indian, and a few of us slept over at her house on Friday. It was nice, the four of us know each other pretty well and it was kind of a last hurrah for high school because I leave the day after graduation. In any case, her family is interesting because they are so eager to embrace American culture and yet so filled with Indian culture. It seems that for many cultures coming to the US it's hard to keep that balance--they fear that if they become too American, they will lose their heritage and the tradition that was once so important to them, and often Americans see other cultures as stuck up because they are unwilling to assimilate. I don't think that view is accurate and I certainly see merit in learning from other part of the world, but it is interesting that the Indian immigrants I know seem to take little issue with Americanization. Maybe I am wrong in this. Maybe there is a secret side to Indian culture that they hide so as to impress white people--if that's the case, it's working.

The thing about this family is that it's clear they have not given up all of their culture. My friend, A-, does bharata natyam, and she eats only Indian food at home (except cookies, sometimes she makes American cookies). This is a bit unfortunate for me because I don't like rice, but her family is always so excited to have white people over, and they find ways to be accomodating, which makes me a bit guilty. But the thing is that our families are actually pretty similar. Her dad and my dad work at the same company, and her mom is taking classes at the university here. A- has saris and gorgeous Indian clothing that she wears for dance or for cultural festivals like folklife, but you'd never know that unless you actually went to her house or watched a performance. One other thing that struck me as odd was her accent--usually it's some sort of an odd half-British accent, for which I have no explanation, but when A- talks to her parents her accent suddenly becomes a thick Indian one, and sometimes I couldn't tell if she was speaking English or Hindi.

All four of us had henna done at her house. This part was odd to me--it's always seemed to me that henna is one of those things white people do when they want to act multicultural or that white people use as a stereotype of Indian culture that is actually inaccurate, like churros for Mexico. But there we were, and A- was saying "wow, you're good at this," and the tricks about making it stay longer with lemon juice and whatever else are the same as the ones white people mention when immitating Indian people by doing their own henna. So I guess I'll learn to accept that no every stereotype or cultural symbol is inaccurate, and my only concern is that it won't come off in the next two weeks and I'll have this nice string of flowers drawn down my arm for prom...