In my experience, beds in Pakistan and I assume much of desi culture can be considered a perfectly acceptable place for even newcomer, previously stranger guests to sit and socialize. In Pakistan and even in America, social gatherings can include people wandering into and socializing in bedrooms while sitting on beds. I think it has to do with the limit on space/multipurpose use of furniture thing we discussed before when talking about dining room tables, and as a result it is tied largely to wealth/class and whether someone has enough social spaces in their home without resorting to using bedrooms. In M's family and the vast majority of desi social gatherings I've been to, it's just a norm; a bed is nothing more than a place to sit during the day.
That's not true in my perception of American culture. I would never show a guest to my bedroom except on a house tour given to only close friends or family. Guests would never dream of entering a bedroom in an American house unless specifically directed to. Beds are considered very personal places, and I can't imagine anyone even sitting on my bed except me and my husband. Even when my own parents visit they wouldn't sit on our bed unless I told them they would be sleeping in that room, and then it would be clear that the linens had been changed and they could consider it their bed during the duration of their stay (and then I would not sit on "their" bed, probably.)
Just a cultural difference. Sitting on the bed at a Pakistani dinner party = usually not weird. Even today most social functions I attend in Pakistan and with our more diverse social group of South Asians - in all but large homes - dinner parties include bedrooms as spillover party rooms.
25 comments:
I've noticed that all my inlaws from either Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran feel like it's fine to come into my bedroom. For me, it's a total invasion of private space and makes me ultra uncomfortable. My MIL has a hard time not taking it the wrong way :/ Alhamdulilah she does her best to respect it. I feel really, really weird going into other peoples bedrooms at gatherings too, so your last post made me wince!
Having grown up in Pakistan, I find it perfectly normal to invite women guests in the bedroom. But these women do not enter the bedroom unless invited to do so. So they just sit in the living room when they arrive, and after a while the host will ask them to come into the bedroom.
Bedrooms are private space in our house. The living/dining/garden areas are for socializing..sometimes the kitchen. Socializing doesn't happen in bedrooms or on beds.
Its considered as 'indecent' to enter bedrooms of couples', girls', elders...
But for friends, its their only place that they can have full freedom. Its like their own. I can go to my friend's bedroom even if he is not there.!
You know that I'm a BIG fan of yours, so please don't take this the wrong way, but I think your statement that it's acceptable in Pakistani culture to go into someone's bedroom at a social gathering is a HUGE over generalization.
This particular issue is also dictated by status, as well. Not to sound like a snob, but I have NEVER been to a Pakistani (or Indian gathering) where I was led to a bedroom to sit down. No matter how small the house was. And, yes, I grew up in America, but most of my friends grew up there.
I was so confused by your statement about this being a part of Pakistani culture that I actually conducted a survey of my Pakistani and Indian friends about it. And not one of them said that bedrooms were part of the social gathering space for adults. A few of them were slightly mortified at the thought of taking a first time visitor into their bedroom.
You know, it may be in the better interest of people who are unfamiliar with Pakistani culture if you to qualified exactly where M. is from, so that you don't lump ALL Pakistanis into what may be a familial, sectional or regional characteristic.
to be honest,Faiqa,i do agree with the gori wife.at least in middle or lower middle class families in pakistan,at least in punjab where i come from,it is quite normal for guys to sit in the tv room or so called drawing room and women to sit in the bed room.i have seen it very often.even for first time guests.like when it is extremely hot in pakistan and living rooms usually dont have AC,lady host will invite lady guest to sit in the master bedroom where usually there is a AC.just an example.
My IL's are monied people though they refer to themselves as "middle class" they live in a sprawling house in a good neighborhood, and they do not entertain on their bed.
However, I have been to many middle class Pakistani homes in both the US and in Pakistan and in Dubai, and been served lunch and dinner on a dastarkhwaan on beds or been in parties where all the women chilled out on the bed in the master-bed room. I have also been in parties where the women sat in the kitchen.
I would say that my ILs are somewhat wealthy and Westernized (they don't have a private jet or anything, but I mean they have a big house with cars and servants), but I'd wager that for the majority of sort of more average Pakistanis, middle class and lower middle class, this is pretty normal.
One could theorize that "Pakistani culture" is kind of a misnomer since what "Pakistanis do..." is very much contingent on ethnicity, region, class, etc. but wouldn't that be true everywhere. Sometimes one does end up making generalizations for the purpose of being conscise.
Hahaha I remember someone on SSF saying Pakistanis found it okay to burp loudly at the dinner table and I was just like, um, my dad does that, but NO ONE in my IL's family would find that even remotely okay.
hi gori wife
you know this is the biggest problem that i ahve with my inlaws, they waltz in and out of my bedroom...i mean they look through stuff as well. i cant stand it, i think they are so retarded for doing so! you know my sil once went into my bedroom and read a letter from my friend, she also looked through some photos that a friend had sent which were in an envelope. it is demeaning to our relationship, its like we are not husband and wife but stupid school kids that they can just come and go as they please...aaarrrggghhhh my blood is boiling just remembering. you know what we have to lock our "things" away now.
Thanks everyone, for your input. Clearly not a cut and dry issue, this bed thing. Who would've known such controversy could exist about hanging out in the bedroom?
Faiqa, not taken the wrong way at all. I will write more about where my husband is from. It's important to highlight that my experience is so small in comparison to what Pakistani culture "is" versus all the variables of ethnicity, race, etc. as LuckyFatima said.
My family is kind of both...we go into the living room, but once it is occupied by the men watching sports, some women linger into the kitchen, the bedroom or stay seated at the dining room table. We are all second generation Americans living here, so it's not like we are traditional traditional Pakistani's. We have our moments yes, but this kind of arrangement is common for us.
However, it is only common with us aunts/uncles/first cousins. I wouldn't let my second cousin twice removed walk into my room lol. I would only allow those extended relatives to come in, when they are invited. I did that when my cousins wife who I didn't know to well come in my room to remove her niqab and be comfortable (then when I went to her house she did the same to me).
We don't eat dinner in the room though. But I'm in NY. In Pakistan though, not all people have dining rooms so their bedrooms and living rooms are sometimes in one.
I've sat in bedrooms a LOT. My husband, however... Men get the comfy couches and coffee tables, while women have to sit in the bedroom with nowhere to place their glasses or cups. I'm not a huge fan of the arrangement, and it will not be happening in my house.
this is an interesting conversation. one of my pakistani friends (who is very liberal in his political views btw) who are in the u.s here has a general segregation between male and female during parties, but his wife insisted if such segregation exists, it is the men who should go to the bedroom - so i have been in a bed room, yes! i was amused rather than annoyed :)
The whole issue of why women have to have the bedroom while men get the comfy couch - from my experience (and maybe it's only because my husband is a Pathan and therefore quite conservative): (What my husband would say) Men are perverse and constantly think of sex. If men were escorted to the master bedroom where the host lays with his wife, they would all think about "oohh this is where xx and yy lay at night" and then would picture the host's wife in bed. (pls remember I'm only saying what my husband would say). Women don't think that way. Therefore, when there is no other location for women to go it is only logical that their non-perverse minds would enter the bedroom while the nasty-minded men would have the living room! Makes perfect sense to me!
sorry, but why don't we fix the 'perverse' minds of menfolk rather than trying to accommodate it. this is whole concept behind forcing veil upon women too, that the men are always thinking about sex, and it is woman's job to be modest to not arouse a man. this isn't the first time i am hearing this argument, but it is quite contradictory to the modern values that are accepted universally.
I agree Najeeb, and as much as I wish it would happen universally, it just doesn't. I've found that the one-guy-at-a-time approach works well, and keeps my reputation intact (so that I remain someone worth listening to). While we each work on our own men we should work on educating our sisters, who in turn educate their own husbands. There are just too many men who were raised with a different value system regarding women, and unfortunately due to this it will only work against our cause if we try to fight openly about it. I spent years fighting and getting angry before I realized it was the wrong approach altogether.
Should we hide all the kids, too, after all they are much more proof that a couple had sex? ;)
I've never heard of this bed-reminds-men-of-sex logic before, though; I personally think it's part of a men-are-more-important approach, part of the same logic that lets men help themselves to food before women (which, when changed in my house to "women eat first", shocked quite a few Pakistanis...). Then again, it may also just be related to the whole public vs. private divide, which associates women with the private (home and bedroom) and men with the public (work and living room).
Mariha, not to get personal, but if you accommodate the man's 'need' every single time, how are you ever going to change it? I am not a religious guy, but the prophet I know was a compassionate soul who cared deeply about equality and justice. It is an opportunity that many of us got here being in a country like U.S to bring about that, but it troubles me that most often we are making it easier for men to follow the lives their parents lived decades ago. Change has to come from within, from where we have control, and yes from our homes..
I have to say that I have more than once thought about what exactly happens on those beds I was sitting on, so I guess my mind must be like the men you talk about. Have got to find a way to fix that :) Either way, I much prefer to be in the kitchen if there's going to be gender separation, like Miriam said.
As of now, I haven't yet given up on the "fighting and getting angry" approach yet. We'll see if that gets me anywhere. I feel lucky that my husband is right there beside me fighting, it makes it easier to stay my course.
Good grief people. It's not like I know how desi men's minds work because I'm NOT one. I was only stating what my Desi husband explained to me. Goodness!
Oh, and just so there's no confusion. I don't abide by every whim my husband or any man may have. If something is explained to me, and I find it logical in that situation/context, then I'll go with it. Incase you haven't figured out, I'm white - and for me to suddenly stand up in the middle of a room full of Desi men and claim what they're doing is wrong would be ludicrous. I discuss things in private with my husband, and I adapt to his culture as he adapts to mine, equally. He doesn't agree with some of the things I ask him to do, just as I don't agree with all that he asks of me. But that's marriage - give and take.
I totally get the give & take thing, aka_Mariha. We're all just doing our best to try and figure out the best way to deal with these situations, and that might be different for each of us. I don't begrudge you and your husband figuring out what works best for you guys. I appreciate your comments here, hopefully this discussion will help someone else who stumbles over here looking for advice.
Thanks, Gori Wife! And you're right, every situation is different for each of us. We only know how to do what works best for our own relationships. I started out with Najeeb's mindset, and all it did was get me into a heap of trouble within the community, and I had to learn to accept certain (not all) things even if I didn't like it. For me, it's crucially important that I try really hard to understand certain things because I'll be making a permanent move to Pakistan in a few years. So, my ideas tend to lean more towards the conservative, traditional Pakistani (and Pathan at that) mindset. You and your husband seem to have worked out a great compromise to situations. Thank you for sharing your life with us. I really enjoy reading your posts as they relate so closely to my everyday life as well!
This was so great to read - I've been told many times (in India) to go into somebody's bedroom and sit on the bed with the other women. Whatever the reason behind this manner of socializing, I can't help feeling extremely uncomfortable every single time. But I do it, because that's what's asked of me, and I try to respect the person whose home I'm in.
On the other hand, I'm still struggling with how to keep people out of my bedroom when they're in my home. I'm just not comfortable with having that space become a public one, and am particularly disturbed when parents allow their children to play there after they've heard me explicitly tell them that they may play anywhere *except* that room.
Hi GoriWife,
I enjoyed reading some of your posts. I grew up in India (Bombay) and my wife is all American from PA. Over the past year my mother has had to live with us for longer stays due to her permanent resident card requirements. Initially she would freely enter our bedroom and attached bathroom to get things she need, etc. My wife was quite freaked with this and told her that this is not acceptable in an American home. My mother was quite accepting about her sentiments. This in spite of the fact that when visiting India, my mother has no problem with my wife going into any bedroom. Interesting, the things we subconsciously take for normal in the light of our cultural upbringing.
Post a Comment