"Ni me Captain Bhangre da, soniye bann giddhiya di rani!"
He's the most adorable little boy, and I can't take my eyes off of him as he dances around the room, half singing and half speaking the lyrics of a popular song to himself. I want to join him, and almost do! He forgets that I am in the room, and when he is reminded of my presence, he shyly hides behind his mother, who is making more chai for the two of us. I have never visited a desi1 home, for fun or for research, without having at least two cups of chai. This is some of the best I have ever had.
"Badmash," she sweetly says to him in Punjabi as he grabs her right leg and peeks at me from behind it. "He is such a trouble-maker!" she says, making a face at her five-year-old. He makes a face back at her, picks up a blue-and-yellow inflatable beach ball, and runs out into the backyard, leaving us alone in her tiny living room.
I will call her Vandana. Although I have never met her before, she interacts with me with an instant familiarity. She speaks animatedly, her eyebrows and hands accentuating her thoughts as our conversation takes us from her home village in Punjab to urban Patiala to New Delhi to London to New York and finally to the Bay Area. From a Punjab with 6 p.m. curfews during the 1980s to a Manhattan with no curfews and no limits. From a mere hope of becoming educated to boldly moving to Patiala to make her dream a reality.
"I think you will understand when you are married," she said to me. "To some families, all they want is boys, boys, boys. It makes them look good. All of these boys come from women. But these types of families don't want women. There is no sense in that. How can people not want to have girls when all children, boys and girls, must come from women?" She shook her head.
Vandana kept referring to the pressure she felt to have a son; all of her sisters-in-law had sons, and her husband, who was the least financially successful of all siblings, felt added pressure to have a son. "I didn't understand," she said sadly. "He is such a kind man, and he used to comment on how beautiful all little girls were. I think in his heart he wanted a little girl. But he prayed for a son only. I don't think it was really his choice, not really what he wanted. It was what was expected of him and of me."
Vandana clearly remembered the day that her physician asked her if she wanted to know the sex of her child. "My husband and I looked at each other," she said, speaking slowly as she remembered the nervousness that question elicited. "The doctor did not understand what a big question that was for us. We weren't expecting that question. Or maybe we weren't ready for it. I waited for a few minutes and then said I would like to know."
I asked her how she would have felt if her child had turned out to be a girl.
"Look, I don't think that would have upset us. It would have been a difficulty to deal with my husband's family. There is always judgment on the woman if she can't have a son. And the first child is important." She smiles knowingly, adding, "I know you will ask me if I believe these things. I don't. But I can't question them like others might, maybe like Indians who are born in this country." Her smile grows. "Maybe I should ask you to question all of this for me! You can speak to my mother-in-law!" We both laugh heartily.
As our conversation continues, I am reminded of the striking distance between our experiences. At another moment, through a different pair of eyes, we could be sisters: everything from our skin tone to the shape of our hands to our postures and gestures bear a striking resemblance. We speak of Hindi movies, of our favorite foods, of the Bay Area with a similar affection. And yet we live worlds apart in so many ways. Vandana fought hard for an education, which was always expected of me. Vandana never questioned the fact that she had to be married by age 25 at the very latest; at 25, I can barely fathom marriage. Vandana feels judged by Indians born and raised in the United States who speak of Indian-born women as passive and submissive; I ponder whether I have ever made anyone feel like that, whether I have made the biggest assumptions about women on the basis of birthplace. Vandana and I share a common culture, ethnicity, and even a city in the Bay Area — yet our individual relationships to each differ strikingly. Life has happened to us, and to her husband, in different ways. In reminding myself of these schisms, I constantly try to think of new ways to ask old questions, of the best ways to interpret and contextualize the conversations and information that women like Vandana offer me.
One of the beauties and challenges I find in ethnography is that it constantly forces me to reposition myself, to redefine where I find my place in my loosely-defined "community" at different moments and from different vantage points. My conversation with Vandana, one of several women I interviewed this week, pushed me a bit more than other conversations because of our striking similarities which masked striking differences. Vandana reminds me that there are no stories free of complexities, that situations involving family and reproduction are always wrought with tensions and discomforts that are difficult to analyze from the distant perspective of a researcher and even the intimate perspective of a family member.
You can't get away with assuming that all South Asian men want sons and all South Asian women are pressured into having sons. You can't simplify matters of reproduction to issues of choice or lack thereof. Clearly, factors that may seem totally separate — from financial situations to immigration status — influence family planning and reactions to children in subtle but significant ways. Feelings of being controlled by these external factors draw seemingly disparate lives and narratives about reproduction and children closer together. The variety of ways in which South Asian immigrants in the Bay Area balance, respond to, and live these complexities reflects the staggering diversity of this community.
As I am saying goodbye to Vandana, I hear her son call out to me, "Bann giddhiya di rani!" He is leaning in the doorway, his hands playfully on both of his cheeks. He is at the age where it is hard to tell, simply by looking at his face and listening to his voice, whether he is a boy or girl.
I remind myself to return to this point: What marks the turning point when children assume the explicit roles of girls and boys in the eyes of their parents? When does this happen, and does it vary for different people? When both girl and boy children require the same feedings, diaper changings, and responses to late-night (early morning?) crying, how do they become "girls" and "boys" to their parents? To their aunties, uncles, grandparents? Forcing myself to take a break from anthropologizing, I smile, salute "Captain Bhangra," and am reminded that, thankfully, Life has not yet happened to him.
– Sunita
1. Desi describes people or things that are of South Asian origin. A desi home is a residence of a South Asian (in this case Indian) person; desi actually comes from "desh" which means country and is used to refer to India by some.
Sunita Puri is a 2005 Summer Fellow of UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center.