Freedom to Speak

I ran into more than the veg/non-veg snag in a bigger way today with my Parsi woman friend.  It has to do with listening and talking.  It has to do with respecting what either of us wants to talk about.

I don’t feel like I have the ability to say something without being cut off and/or told she didn’t want to discuss the topic then.  I’m a fairly good listener and listen to her talk about whatever she wants to talk about for quite some time (just yesterday, she talked for 40 minutes straight with me saying very little, and I pointed it out to her so she realizes I’m doing that).  I don’t mind listening, there is a lot to know about her, from the simple to the complex, the chilled out to the serious.  It doesn’t seem, though, that my Parsi friend is quite up to the task of being the same.  I want to talk about something and I get told that it’s not the right time or it’s not the right topic.  This doesn’t happen all the time, but it has happened enough where I feel like I can’t speak freely.

The bringing up an issue at the right time (for her) is something I have mentioned previously.  It’s the whole prescribed way she wants to follow this getting-to-know-each-other process.  The problem is I don’t know what that prescribed route is exactly until I bring something up that doesn’t meet it.  This is frustrating and I’ve dealt with it so far by being patient.  I’ve pointed it out to her a couple of times but today we had a more serious talk about that because she cut me off again.

The right topic issue goes hand in hand with the prescribed route and right timing.  I have had a generally tough life by any objective standards up to now.  This had made me relatively serious-minded but by no means not relaxed.  I do like to talk about important issues but I do also like to talk about the most mundane things.  For my Parsi friend, being happy is of most importance.  This has generally meant that me bringing up important issues doesn’t seem to go right with her.  This one I can work on myself so I will try.  I will try to talk about much more superficial things, happier things.  When it comes to the woman I will marry, I don’t have any barriers to what I will talk with her.  I want to know about her and I want her to know about me.  A lot of it will come with time but a lot of it will come with discussions.  I pointed that out to her today and I think it mayhave sunk in.

I pointed out that people who are married for 10 or 15 years don’t just automatically get up one day and know about each other.  They know about each other because of situations that have come up in person (which we unfortunately will not be having anytime soon) or through conversations.  This seemed to be a novel idea to her, which is a bit disturbing.  It leads me to wonder why she wouldn’t understand something like that.  How else does she expect people to know about each other?

The other issue that came up today was that she was using terms like “being punished” when I was telling her something.  She felt like I was telling her what to do.  I found this really strange.  It gave me the sense that she thought I was almost scolding her like an adult would scold a child (I know she’s still treated like a kid by her parents, so that definitely has something to do with it.)  This was also disturbing.  I told her I am not interested in meeting someone who thinks of herself as a child.  I am talking to an adult and expecting an adult to listen and respond to whatever we talk about.  She said I couldn’t tell her how she took something, which is of course right.  But I made it clear that it’s important to know if the way she took it is the way I meant it.  And, I’m not playing games here, I’m being straight in what I meant.  I’m not changing my intention or meaning half way through.  I am not sure if she got that either.

This is interesting to me because it’s almost as if how things used to be with some men and women a generation ago.  I know of some situations, even today maybe, where women feel they are children to their husband.  I don’t mean a child in the literal sense but in the sense that they act like a kid and the man is the adult and the disciplinarian of the woman.  In these kinds of relationships, I’ve also seen that these women ask the man how things should be done, even if they know.  These are basic things.  It’s something I find very weird.  It may be something that used to happen a generation ago but I am not at all interested in that kind of relationship.  It doesn’t mean I don’t want to help my spouse improve and vice versa, but it’s to be done as two adults talking, not one pretending to be a kid and me being the adult.  That won’t work for me.

The other thing about all of this is that I don’t truly know how husbands and wives relationships were a generation or two ago.  How did they really treat each other?  What were the roles?  What were the expectations?  I know some of it as a geneal high level thing but I don’t know the day-to-day kinds of interactions.  Did women consider men as not just their husbands but also as people that needed to teach them things?  I know they did to some extent, but to what?  If this is true, then what other kinds of things existed that I don’t know about.  Here again is the problem of a 1.5 Generation Indian.  If I had been raised in India, I may have known this.  If I had both my parents living and together for years as a family, I may have known also.  But both of these things didn’t happen for me.  Add to that the cultural differences of being raised in the US and seeing how those relationships were (again partially) and you’ve got a lot of missing pieces here.  I’m just dealing with life as it comes day by day and minute by minute.  I don’t have any preset Indian ways to follow because I don’t know a lot of them.

I also mentioned to my Parsi friend that I think this is the process (or journey to use her phrase) that people who are getting to know each other go through.  I was feeling bad and I didn’t want her or me to lose hope that these arguments were leading us nowhere and we should call it quits.  I also just generally don’t like arguments.  They make me feel really shitty.  I know some tough discussions are a necessary evil and we have to go through them but I do so very reluctantly.  I don’t avoid them, don’t get me wrong, but I do get into them reluctantly.  In order to try to smooth things and calm things down a bit, I said that I know when people get married, the first year to year and half and maybe even two years is usually fairly rough.  This is when they’re getting to know each other and each is pushing buttons that they don’t even know exist.  This is what happens in the traditional marriage route.  It doesn’t happen in the love marriage route, of course, because people get to know each other over time and then decide to get married, not decide to get married and then get to know each other. 

This leads to an interesting realization – I didn’t think of ours as a potential “arranged marriage” because we are not set up by parents nor are we already married.  We’re getting to know each other to see if we want to get married.  But in some ways, our getting to know each other process, is has characteristics of those who would have gone through an arranged marriage.

Paying the Price for My Father’s Mistakes

It’s a truism of life, and certainly that of Indian society, that a son pays for the sins of his father.  It’s something I’ve come across, subtly and directly, in day-to-day life many times.  It’s also something that makes me angry. 

I bring this up because now I’m paying for the sins of my culture – more specifically, of the men in my father’s generation and generations before him.  I was talking with this Parsi woman last night.  We talked about the veg and non-veg issue.  When she brought it up, I was very reluctant to get into it.  I know where these things end up.  I just didn’t want an argumentative conversation nor did I want this relationship with potential to go down the tubes.  Of course, I knew we had to have the conversation so we did get into it.

My friend’s ex-boyfriend was a vegeterian.  She decided to convert because of him.  Apparently, he never asked her to do that, but she thought he wanted it.  I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt to think she’s right.  I wasn’t there, I don’t know.  I also have no reason to doubt her judgment skills.  The other part of this is that she thought it was expected of her.  And this is where our conversation got interesting.  She said she doesn’t want to repeat the problems that her parents had and have.  They continue to fight even today.  She didn’t like it then and still doesn’t like it.

This raised a question in my mind – is this woman a feminist or a closet feminist?  I am not particularly interested in getting romantically involved with either one, especially the closet feminist.  I told her I wasn’t sure if she was or not, I didn’t have enough information, but this is the question that gets raised in my mind.  And it’s a concern, so I’m sharing it with you.  I asked her if she thought she could fix the wrongs of her/our parents generation?  She said she was not going to repeat the problems that her parents had.  She did not want to give up everything for her man.  It wasn’t right.

Now, I can’t argue with her there.  I told her there were many things in our parents generation that were just unconceivable today.  We do not do many things the same way.  There are still, of course, many things that we do.  I told her I was not interested in fighting the wrongs of yesteryear.  I want a relatively painless and simple life – there is enough that’s going to go wrong in our relationship, enough problems we’re going to face, that I don’t want this to be another issue.  I also said we couldn’t fix generations of problems in one.  This stuff will take 3-4 generations to undo.  She agreed but said she’s going to do her part.

Then I asked her if her issue of veg/non-veg was really about the food or was it about her being forced to follow “her man”.  Was this a rebellion against Indian custom or was it really about the food?  To me, they were very separate issues with very different implications for us – if it’s about the rebellion, then I’ve got a whole host of other things I’m going to be facing as she tries to fix the wrongs of our parents generation.  But if it was about that, then the veg/non-veg thing was not really about the food.  She didn’t like me bringing this up and saying it didn’t need to go that deep of a level.  I couldn’t have disagreed more.  This is an issue that needed addressing and you weren’t going to get to the bottom of it if you were not even recognizing the right root cause.  She and I have had conversations about my past issues and we went to deep levels to and I did it voluntarily.  She wanted to know, asked me about it, and I told her everything without hesitation.  So why was it different now?

Partly, I have to admit that I do get into this analysis of situations to identify root causes.  I do that with myself too, so no discrimination.    I’m an equal opportunity shrink.  I should have been a psychologist.  Anyway, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into this thing with her.  Maybe I should have just left it at the superficial level that she gave me.  But I didn’t.  I am not sure one night/day later if I wouldn’t do it again.  To me, it really does matter to get down to the root cause.  But, the thing is I like this girl.  I see potential there.  And I can tell she likes me.  She’s got things already planned in her head, I can tell that.  She’s already accepting “us” as a “definite thing” in some ways.  So I’m not quite sure what to make of it all.

To smooth this rather rough discussion, I wanted to talk about more peaceful things, more romantic things.  Of course, she resisted on that front too.  This is something she does a lot, it’s her yoga and meditation thing, and it bugs me.  She essentially says we should not prescribe anything, just go with it.  On more than a few ocassions, I bring something up, she cuts it down and says let’s not talk about that.  I’ve been annoyed by that.  On one level, she says don’t prescribe anything and essentially just go with it.  When that’s exactly what I’m doing, she is the one not doing it.  I found it odd.  I told her that and she was taken aback at it for a minute, as if she didn’t get it herself, but then kept going with it.  I didn’t want to argue, or make it into an argument, so I just let her.

Anyway, to smooth this discussion out, I asked her to describe how she saw her and me.  I was feeling rather shitty and feeling like I had no reason to continue with this.  I needed to get some idea of how she thought things would work so I could find a reason to stay connected.  I asked her to describe how she saw our relationship, with the give and take, the fixing of our parents generations problems, etc.  She said she wasn’t willing to do that.  She didn’t want to go into the future.  I wasn’t really going into the future in the sense of leaving the present, I was more of thinking what could be possible while still squarely staying in the present.  A few minutes later I realized maybe she is not able to do that while I can.  I told her I am asking this because I feel really shitty and need something to keep connected on.  She said she hadn’t understood that but then she did and went with it. 

And we had a great 30 minute conversation after that or however long it was.  She described a few things she’s imagined.  One was 10 days from now, she’d be leaving for the UK, and she’d be wondering when she’d see me next and how we’d talk, who would call, etc.  Then it was 10 weeks from now and similar kinds of things.  The third was 10 years from now.  She said she’d hope her husband had given her a nice house.  With a great kitchen!  And she described it in detail (clearly telling me the kitchen and cooking thing is a big deal to her even if the cause is a fixing of our parents’ generations problems or about the food.  I am leaning towards a bit of both and go back and forth on which is the bigger deal).  She said she’d hope to have at least one 5 year old by then.  And, she added, she wanted her firstborn to be a girl.  I asked her why and she wouldn’t tell me.  This perturbed me too.  It was such a simple question, why couldn’t she answer it.  If you don’t go with the flow on these things and get to know each other, how do you expect to form any kind of bond or convince each other you’re the right ones for each other.  You’re just cutting the whole getting to know each other process.

She then said she wanted to explain something that didn’t necessarily have to be at any moment in time, it could happen at any time.  She had this thought in her head that she would be married and her and her husband would be at a party.  They’d know half of the people and half would be unknown.  Her husband would be talking to someone and would want to introduce his wife (i.e., her) to this person.  They would catch each other’s glance from a long distance (so movie like, but not something I haven’t heard from women before, something about catching the glance in a crowded room at a party seems to be a very common thing among women).  In one situation of the event, he would nod to her and acknowledge by saying something like ”that’s her” to the person he was talking to.  In another situation, she’d come up to him and put her arm around him and he’d put his arm around her and then he’d introduce her.  She said, it wasn’t just an introduction, she wanted pride to be there when he said this was his wife.  As she was looking to describe it, that was the very word that went through my mind, she wanted him to be “proud”.  I told her this later and we smiled.  I also told her that in both situations, that’s exactly how I would have imagined it.  She was smiling and clearly feeling better and so was I.  It was a very nice way to end the rough conversation, which apparently I felt worse about it than her!

When I got up this morning, was not feeling good.  I wasn’t feeling really awful either but it wasn’t ecstatic.  I got an SMS from her a few minutes later and I didn’t reply.  I just lay in bed.  She then sent me another message about 20 minutes later.  I felt bad and replied.  I told her I was in the shower and just getting out and putting clothes on, which is why I couldn’t reply to her.  But I didn’t reply because I was a bit paralyzed.  I didn’t know what to reply with.  I was a little uncomfortable and frozen.  But I didn’t want to convey that to her because she takes these things to mean more than I want her to because I probably would have forgotten about it and she’d have remembered and it would have diverted the direction of our relationship (for the worst, I presumed).

So this is where we are now.  I’m still going to meet her next week.  Oh, I didn’t mention – she told me after our veg/non-veg conversation that I needed to think it over and let her know how I felt.  Not about the veg/non-veg thing but about the whole bigger issue of feminism fighter thing.  While I didn’t call her that, and clearly said I didn’t have enough information, she found me labeling her and didn’t like it.  I found that interesting – she seemed to know what I had concluded even before I had concluded it.  Was she indeed a feminist or a closet feminist?  We almost finished our conversation then.  If I had let it die, which I did not, I don’t know if I would be still in conversation with her.  I probably would have pulled the plug on it this morning if we had finished our talk at that point in the night.

Let’s see what’s next.  Let’s see where we go tonight.  We’ve exchanged SMS’s again today, things seem good, but this is not out of my mind, it’s very much there.  I need to come to terms with the conversation and the veg/non-veg thing.  Oh, I guess I should also mention that I did think – maybe I shouldn’t care about this diet thing.  Let me just forget about it.  This girl and I seem to have the same things in common in terms of what I want and what she wants (again, up to what we know now).  I went back and forth on it for a bit and didn’t conclude on anything.  This is something I do on these kinds of things, I let them sit for a bit.  Let them just sit.  For good or for bad, I just let them be.  And if it comes up again it does.  If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.  In this case, it of course will come back up again.  I’ll deal with it then.  Until then, I’m happy not thinking about it.  I know, I know, not such a great thing to handle things.

These are the majority of things that came up.  They’re not all exhaustive.  I want to mention that. 

The Fatal Flaw, Compromising, and Love

I am reading a book that mentions a term, the “Fatal Flaw”, that I quite liked.  It made me think of a recent development in my life and I wanted to incorporate the term.  The problem is that it doesn’t fully apply.  But because I liked the term, I’m going to use it anyway.

I run into a Fatal Flaw when it comes to finding love.  Actually, it’s more than one flaw.  There are many!  (Yes, I am screwed up, but that’s not where I’m going with this.  I’m leading up to a specific point, so read on….)  These flaws, or issues, keep recurring in my love life.  Is it time I compromised on them?

The most recent situation where a flaw has come up has to do with the Parsi woman I’m talking with.  I’m vegeterian.  She’s not.  Fatal Flaw.  She’s not only non-vegeterian, she’s a total foodie.  She throws house parties where she cooks and invites friends.  It is not only therapeutic for her, it’s what she’s known for as she told me.  We ran into this problem last night in our conversations.  We ran into it before but it didn’t seem like a big deal.  Or more accurately, it was an issue that we didn’t explore, but conveniently let slide in light of other great conversation we were having.

So now what do I/we do?  We do get along well.  It’s been a very short time, just two weeks if that, but we gel well up to as much as can be imagined so far.  Of course, ups and downs happen but there seems to be a soft edge to how we handle each other’s feelings and issues.  We address them, but in the way that I would like to address them with my spouse.  She and I are compatible in that way (a big thing!).

There are other flaws as well besides being vegeterian.  There is the issue of how much Indian or Western one is.  This goes back to the whole 1.5 Generation Indian blog’s premise.  This multi-heritage issue seems to come into my life on a daily basis, on small and big things.  It has come into my love life yet again.  There is the issue of where to live.  In her and my case, is it India, the UK or the US?  I’ve got my contacts in the US.  She’s just gotten established in her job in the UK.  There are other fatal flaws, but I can’t think of them right now.

So, the question now arises, which it does all the time – what do I do about this fatal flaw of vegeterianism?  Do I compromise?  If so, how?  The typical scenarios fellow vegeterians run into has to do with whether it’s okay for her/him (i.e., the other half) to maintain being non-veg, whether it’s okay to cook at home, and whether it’s okay to use the same utensils in cooking.  Some are even so strict as to have a problem with eating at a restaurant that cooks non-veg.  For me, the same utensils thing is kind of silly really.  I’m not that fanatical about being vegeterian.  You have to be practical too.  The issue of eating in a restaurant that cooks non-veg is also not an issue for me.  I’ve done it millions of times.   Her consuming non-veg and it being cooked in the house are a slightly bigger issue for me.  How big?  I don’t know.  I’ve never reached a solid decision on it.

This Parsi woman has hinted she’d be willing to “convert” without me bringing it up or her using the word.  She ran into this problem with her ex-boyfriend apparently.  So it’s not new to her.  But being big on cooking and feeding people, it is no doubt a big issue for her.  Even if she converts for me, is that really right, morally/ethically as well as practically.  Morally/Ethically, is it right for me to ask her or let her convert?  Practically, if I do go along with this conversion, how much of her will be compromised?  It’s a big part of her.  Clearly, it will affect her.  She says there are ways to work around things.  Is this one of those things that can be worked around?  And, just as importantly, at what cost?  Will she resent me for it?

The issue is also if I can convert to being non-veg.  I know many people who were vegeterian at some point in their life, converted, and re-converted.  They started in one place and went back and forth.  I’ve not been one of those people though.  I’ve never had any non-veg food in my life with one very notable and funny time.  I was at Taco Bell, hungry as heck, ordered a bean burritto, got it, dug into it, and realized it was a beef burritto.  My stomach curled, I had a bad taste in my mouth, and I was vomitting it up, even though I had nothing in my stomach and I had only eaten a bite.  It was a strong reaction.  My body just wasn’t used to it.  Of course, I suppose I could get used to it.  But that’s the next question.  Should I get use to it?

This leads to the question, why am I vegeterian to begin with?  I’m veg because of my religion.  I’m not a big religious dude in many ways.  I’m much more spiritual and care about doing the right thing than following rituals (mostly because I’ve lived without family and in the US, I didn’t know enough rituals to do them on my own, and no one really around me who would keep it going.  I would have probably just gone along if someone was doing it and in the few situations where I was surrounded by people who were my religion, I did go along with it).  The religious reason has to do with the issue of life and living beings.  Vegeterians are so because they don’t want to kill animals by and large.  In my case, it’s indoctrinated in my religion.

So, even though I’m not that religious, the thing is that my family is all vegeterian too.  At a practical level, this is an issue.  My mom would have a problem with it.  While that is a criteria, I have to also admit that I would go ahead with it if this girl is right for me and my mom wouldn’t be too happy about her being non-veg.  There are many reasons for this, including my age (and her age, she’s looking to get hooked up too).  It’s not easy to find someone who you seem to connect with in the right way – same communication style, values (which is a very ambiguous term for me and I never understand when people say they’re looking for people with the same values), behaviors, and interests.  Our personalities are similar and complementary/supplementary, as far as I know now.  Other things will come up and more is to be discovered.  I am cognizant that this assessment is based on two weeks of phone conversations.  It’s based on Orkut pictures and comments.  It’s based on things she’s told me.  And it’s based on my own general sense of her.  But, it is only two weeks and it is only over the phone.  I know that.

I’ve thought about contacting some of my veg friends to see how they handle the situation.  I know a couple of them who dated people who were non-veg.  In some cases, they’ve even gotten married to people who were non-veg.  How do they deal with it?

Where to now?  How do I compromise on this fatal flaw?  Is that what I need to do for love?  If so, how exactly would it work?  On the other hand, will she compromise?  How?  At what cost?  How do we find a middle ground on this so we can move forward?

Spontaneity and Marriages

When I say spontaneity and marriage, I am not thinking arranged marriage.  So please get that thought out of your mind as I explain to what I am thinking.

The Parsi woman I referred to a couple of days ago does not live in India.  She lives in the UK and is visiting India for a three week vacation.  In that time, she is doing a lot of travel.  We’re both making time to talk to each other during this busy period for both of us.  I call her while she’s in some 15 X 2 character-sized town name in South India.  Last night, we talked for about 4-5 hours I think (with Airtel disconnecting every 30 minutes on the dot).

While we kept talking, I suggested to her it would be nice to meet her in person before she left for the UK.  Would she be interested in doing that?  She agreed.  And I went ahead and bought a plane ticket to Mumbai.  I debated about going via train because it would have been cheaper but I didn’t end up doing that mostly because tickets were already reserved and I would have to do it through tatkal.  I could have gotten it on tatkal actually but then I thought it’s such a short time frame and I have so much to do, let’s just fly out there.  If nothing works out, then I’ve just spent money on doing the romantic (or stupid, depending on your perspective and personality) thing of flying out to meet a woman I’ve only talked to a few times but seem to have things in common with.  And that’s something I should emphasize which I haven’t mentioned yet – there do seem to be things in common in the few times we’ve talked (hopefully, it’s not a projection of commonality but that there is actually something there!).

I’m headed to Bombay in a couple of days.  I leave in the late afternoon and arrive early evening.  She will not be arriving in Mumbai until around 9pm so I am going to pass time at the airport (it’s good I bought this data card, even though it’s from Airtel and may not work when I get there…score, another Airtel dig!).  I mentioned I would need to get a place to stay while asking her where exactly she lives.  She suggested I could crash at her place since no one will be there except her.  I found this kind of interesting and it told me a lot about her (and me to her when I said that sounds good).  Therefore, I will be there the two nights – late the day I arrive and the next day.  We will spend one whole day together before I fly back out the next morning.

This jet-setting roundtrip to meet a woman is not something I’ve done before.  But my work is going to get even busier starting mid-January and I don’t know if I’ll be able to meet her in the UK for quite a few months.  Plus, there’s no point in spending that much time and money over the next few months talking over the phone only to find out when we meet that we wouldn’t be attracted to each other.  But that’s not what drove me to want to meet – I thought there was enough in common (or, perceived commonalities) where it’s worth meeting her so that when she is back in the UK and we keep talking (should we stay interested after meeting) we have something to build on.  We would have met each other and would be able to relay our new conversations back to this face-to-face assessment of each other.  If she pulled my leg, I could revert back to her mannerisms when we met.  If she was serious or sad or happy, I could picture her.  (I know, I can be such a girl sometimes, but that’s what happens when women teach you how they like you to be since you’re in high school and the things you learn about what makes long-lasting relationships when you read all those damn articles over the internet!)

As an extension to this last thought of meeting face-to-face, I have to say that meeting and then building on that over phone conversations is important.  I am big on non-verbal cues and gestures.  I’m big on vibes.  It has to feel right.  I have to get the positive cues.  (Another example of the way I perceive and intake information and data that is similar to women!)   But more so, I have to get them in the way that I like to receive them.  I know that sounds kind of bad.  It may even come across as appalling to some but that’s not how I mean it.  As many undoubtedly agree with me, I believe that we all have a style of communication (verbal and non-verbal) and finding someone who matches it (complements, supplements, is the same, all of it) is very important.  You can only get so much on email, IM, and phone.  There’s nothing that beats in-person communication.

I will be going out to Bombay in a few days to spend two hours of one night, one full day, and a half of the next with this woman who may or may not become my lifelong partner.  Kinda crazy.  Kinda stupid even.  Especially in this very busy period and with deadlines the first week of January that have a huge impact on my career going forward.  But also very much the kind of thing I would do.  Also very exciting. 

Who Are the Parsis?

I recently came across a woman on one of the matrimonial sites.  She is half Punjabi and half Parsi.  In talking with her, I realized I came across a very big unknown – who are the Parsis and what is their religion?

I didn’t know that the Parsis were originally from the Middle East, going along my lack of specific knowledge of Indian history.  Along with not knowing their history, I didn’t know their religion.  I thought they were Hindu.  In fact, Parsis follow a religion called Zoroastrianism.  When this young woman and I were talking on the phone, she told me that Parsis were originally from the Middle East, Iran to be specific.  To be honest, when she told me that, I thought they would be similar to Muslims and that Zoroastrianism would be similar to Islam.  This was not a good thing to learn.

Why was I a bit surprised and perplexed?  Here is where we run into a big issue of what is the right thing and what is the right thing for us.  In my mind, the right thing is that a guy and a girl should be together if they are in love (and they’re not breaking ethical and moral laws of any kind).  Religion should not matter.  But, that’s far too ideal, even for me.  Religion does matter if it’s very different than yours.  It doesn’t matter if you are Gujarati or Punjabi or Marwari.  You’re generally Hindu.  It does matter if you are not Hindu.

In addition, there are degrees to which religions are more acceptable (to me) than others.  For example, Christianity or Catholicism is not as big a deal to me as Islam would be.  Hindus and Muslims can and should get along in day-to-day life.  There should not be the kind of animosity that has existed in the past and comes up ocassionally around the world between the common man (i.e., between Indians and Pakistanis).  But when it comes to marrying someone, then religion does matter.  And not because we may believe in different Gods, though that is an issue, it’s more so because different religions tend to have different ways of life.  Their expectations, behaviors, and way of viewing situations can be different.  This is where marrying someone from a religion different than yours can be problematic.

I, for one, have had more than my share of difficulties in my life.  My future life, and that to when it comes to the most personal of relationships of that with a spouse, I do not want it to have problems that can be avoided.  I want a more peaceful life.

So what should I do in the case of this seemingly nice Parsi woman?  I don’t know her well enough to not have religion be an issue.  In fact, I’ve never met her.  If I had met her for a different reason and then we became friends and interested in each other, perhaps the religion concern would have addressed itself.

On the other hand, I think that maybe it doesn’t matter at all.  If the other things are in place and this is something that can be worked around to suit both of us, maybe it is something that can be pursued.  But, again, because it is an unknown, would I be getting myself into trouble that is better avoided?