I said yes, in case you were wondering. Yes, I am the other half of an interracial couple.
The funny thing about being in an interracial relationship is that in a world where everyone is always talking about race, that’s the last thing on my mind when I’m with C. To me, he isn’t a white man and me a brown woman. He is my best friend who understands and loves me. That’s it.
To think that there are people out there who consider us to be some sort of an abomination really amazes me. Keeping that in mind, race tends to rear its head in almost all other situations.
C and I come from totally different worlds– two worlds that, when we are together don’t matter much, but when we step out of our little bubble, is swarming around us. I am a PAKISTANI-AMERICAN and he is a born and bred Caucasian American. His family is Catholic, mine is Muslim.
Each of those things represents a lot of differences. However surprisingly, they have all come together to create a really great and compatible ‘us’.
Over the past few years, I have been watching C trying to UNDERSTAND MY CULTURE, and it has been an entertaining and fascinating journey. I won’t lie, the journey part has mostly been from his side, I tend to sit back on the sidelines with amusement and adoration, watching him stumble around my family trying to figure out what’s the right way to eat something.
However, after four years I have learned that it doesn’t matter how he eats my mother’s chicken biryani – hands, forks, spoons, with yogurt, without yogurt, or even with naan (flat-bread) *the horror*- what matters is the fact that he enjoys eating it.
