Work Vs. Home: 2 Different Cultures
The complexities of turning on and off my South Asian identity.
My aunt slipped the round dough into the hot oil, kneeling over it. I watched, wondering if it hurt to kneel like that for hours. Near her, several other women stood around a table, rolling dough into small circles and laughing. My aunt fried each flattened piece of dough and set it to the side, steadily making a small pile of hot, fluffy, oily pooris on a plate.
I hugged my shoulders and shifted from side to side. It was cold and I wanted to take my feet off of the cold cement in the garage and go inside.
One relative used the back of her hand to push the strands of hair away from her forehead as she steadied herself and continued kneading the dough. My mom’s other cousin twirled the long wooden sticks, the velans used to flatten the dough, and waited for more dough to come her way.
Inside, the clock struck 9:45 PM. Men gathered around the table with glasses of single malt, passing cards to each other. Boisterous laughter wafted throughout the the house, ringing against the low ceilings. Kids gathered in the dining room, snacking on foam bowls filled with roasted peanuts and chana ni daal to fend off their hunger after playing cards for 9 hours straight with all of their relatives.
At 10 PM, the women came in, each holding a round plate lined in green flowers and towering with the pooris and said, “Avijao! Dinner thayar che!” (Translation: Come here! Dinner is ready!).
100 family members lined up, each took a plate and piled poori, chole and daal on top with a side of yogurt and filtered onto tables in the kitchen, living room and dining room. The women who had made the pooris watched carefully as each person ate and only after everyone was finished eating, did they clean up and make their own plate of food.
The rhythm of the poori assembly line, the stove low to the ground so they could work in the garage, the implicit understanding that they would wait until every other person had eaten before they would touch the food they had been preparing for hours, was so rhythmically executed I felt like I was watching a movie.
Like clockwork, the women know where they were needed, what needed to be done and how to anticipate both the collective and individual needs of our community.
“Allergic to chole? No problem, we made you a special batch! Right over here.”
“Don’t like when the daal is too spicy? Here is the mild version for you and {{insert 4 family members here}}.”
Armed with this type of experience, I have always prided myself on being able to anticipate and fulfill others’ needs, often times without even being asked.
Sought after compliments for Indian women include:
“She smiles all the time, no matter what the circumstances are.”
“She is always giving to everyone without asking anything in return.”
“She is very tolerant of all situations.”
These all sound like good things, right?
Well, as a first-generation Indian woman in the US, I am here to tell you…it’s complicated.
As I enter my mid-thirties, as a more seasoned worker and entrepreneur, I am realizing that many of the lessons and values I learned while being raised often come directly in conflict with what leads to success at work in this country, where individual values & opinions are often valued over collective think and anticipatory accommodation.
I thought I would spell these out and talk through how I am dealing with each learning, in case it’s helpful to other Indian women out there struggling with the same discord.
Say yes when elders ask you to do something, always.
There is a decision-making hierarchy in Indian families. It goes older men > younger men > older women > younger women. Your right to refuse an order or suggestion decreases as you slide down this pre-defined totem pole.
For example, if you are a woman in her 50s being told by a man of the same age to take care of cooking dinner for everyone that night, you do it. Simultaneously, if you are a woman in her early twenties and your younger brother asks you to make him dinner, you do it. To not follow this order of operations is seen as disrespectful.
Now flash forward to one of my first full time jobs. I remember my manager put a meeting on my calendar titled “How to Say No to People”. Even though I laughed when he suggested it, I learned a lot. He pointed out times at work where me saying yes to people and extra work had led to a. additional stress for me b. important things falling wayside c. confusion for the team and him
Furthermore, he told me, kind-heartedly, that I didn’t have to “do every single thing he asked me” and I was “free to push back” if the strategy or task he suggested didn’t fulfill the goals we set each week and quarter.
This was astounding news to me. Subconsciously, I didn’t feel right saying no to a superior, especially a male superior. Furthermore, I didn’t know I could communicate struggle. Every time I got to a point where I knew I wasn’t going to get to something that needed to be done, I felt a tremendous amount of shame and tried to hide it, which at the end of each quarter ultimately led to more work for the whole team as we were building and launching new products, not simply keeping the wheels greased of an already well oiled machine.
My manager said to me, “Raise your hand.”
So I raised my hand.
He said “OK, now every time your plate gets too full, raise your hand and use that as a physical reminder to flag the team via email that you need help. That is much more useful and productive than trying to do it all yourself.”
That lesson in vulnerability and delegation didn’t fully manifest until my late twenties, but when it did, it was life-changing.
Keep the peace.
In our larger than life family unit, we’re always taught to “keep the peace” as a way to stay connected and avoid conflict. So if someone says something that is upsetting or coming into conflict with something you believe or desire, you don’t call it out, you move on to “keep the peace”. Note: The hierarchy also comes into place here. The higher you are on that line (older men > younger men > older women > younger women), the more pressure you feel to quiet your opinion and be tolerant.
Again, not all bad. Not every conflict is worth pursuing.
But here’s the thing. There is a consequence to avoiding every conflict and always keeping the peace. I’ve spent a majority of my time on earth feeling anxious when others are anxious and generally feeling responsible for the feelings of those around me.
It probably sounds nuts. It sounds nuts as I am writing it. But to me it was how I was raised — to think of everyone around me and accommodate for their needs and cover their deficiencies.
When I worked on a team with several people who were responsible for different things i.e. design, product development, business development, I was always hyper-aware of who was doing what and who was falling behind on things. I would — wait for it — take on the tasks other people in other departments weren’t able to get to.
Not only did this spread me so thin I was failing at my own tasks, but it presented a picture of the team to our managers that simply wasn’t true. Managers need to know when someone on the team isn’t performing so they can either provide them with more support or let them go.
By trying to cover for others, I was unintentionally presenting an unclear picture, slowing down the team and preventing important actions from being taken quickly.
Oops. I lived and learned and since then I have gotten better at delegating and focusing on my task at hand rather than pleasing and providing for others. But man, it took a lot of work to rewire my brain for the workplace when it had been wired for decades a very different way at home.
I’m still figuring out what parts of my culture I want to carry over to future generations, and which parts I would like to evolve as I continue my lifelong assimilation to American culture and think about my future phases of life.
As I continue this journey, will be posting several more tidbits about this specific topic. So follow me on Medium and Twitter for the next one! Coming soon.
Hope my journey is helpful to you in some way. =)
