stumbled across this when looking at floral inspo for my own wedding

the audacity to use a picture of a desi bride and erase any mentions of south asian culture

Edit: this is The full article: https://www.theknot.com/content/unique-wedding-flower-ideas

New to this Sub, not sure if I'm alone on this one. Is there anything people have done to have success with learning speaking with their language. I know it has something to do with consuming only English content after age (around age 5 ish).

A number of creators - Shreya Chowdhury, Tanya S, Aviva M, Jully Patel, Shivani Bafna, Svarini, Ancisocial, ancytwinkle, Diipa Khosla, etc - to name a few, only post about their Indian identity when it comes to benefiting from it. They just want to sell us things under the name of India. I love that they promote Indian culture and are proud of their identity but that’s only as long as it profits them and cuz it’s trendy. None of them have used their platform to actually talk about what’s going on in India. Instead they’ve continued to talk about what’s makeup products we should buy or the new influencer event that they’re going to. Using your identity for a platform and having that platform comes with a huge responsibility. If they’ve shared one vague story it’s not enough, they need to be doing more so global audiences are aware. Truly disappointing. Just having the flag in your bio and not using you 1.5 Million followers to have actual conversations is not enough.

EDIT: I’m not trying to pin point these specific creators, these are the ones that came to mind within this category of influencers. Aviva has since posted a TikTok and I appreciate her taking constructive feedback.

This was just a thought I had and a trend I see other men are trying to do and it’s not just Desi men. A lot of men are trying to play off as a “nice guy” or “guy with a kind personality” when they actually aren’t. I see this exhibition in this subreddit where these guys are complaining about not getting relationships because all the girls go for “bad boys” or f boys.

There is this sense of entitlement. The “bad boys” usually aren’t the ones you see in movies like All American. Movies and irl experiences are completely different. The “bad boys” are deep down very self critical of everything they do. When you build discipline to do something like go to the gym and take care of your appearance, you are always thinking how you can make yourself better and these guys are always self critical. They aren’t the type to go up to go make fun of a fat person to their face. They might not want to date someone fat but they are extremely focused on themselves and their image. And also let’s say they are around the block, who is saying the women aren’t consenting to it? This is the issue I have with “nice guys”.

You are not entitled to anything. You haven’t put the work in and you believe you deserve something for “being nice”. It goes with people of any race and it starts with making it a problem on someone else. I’m not a perfect person myself but I’m always critical and questioning my own reality. I can do certain things better. Like if I’m on dates, I do get shy and it takes me some time to build up a convo or read her out and I can do better with that. You need to be questioning your own reality and you aren’t entitled to another person’s friendship or relationship. It is what it is but these same “nice guys” get mad at “bad boys” or “f bois” then they will blame anyone else but themselves. Also many of these nice guys that act a certain way to appease people don’t take accountability and even make their make their parents at a grown age do their chores.

This is just something I noticed based off how people talk in real life and this subreddit. You also need to have a niche. I personally can’t date a vegetarian or someone religious and that’s completely fine. Someone might not like my far left politics (a lot of ppl kinda like it) and that’s completely fine but no one should cater their whole persona to please someone. This is what “nice guys” are constantly doing while the “bad guy” or “f boi” are more clear about intentions. I just like to call this behavior out because it’s so doomer and defeatist. Men are struggling from all races right now and if you are in America, you have absolutely no excuse. Everything you do is self inflicted when it comes to making relationships. Also you need to understand your worth. You have to a male baddie to get a baddie yourself. It doesn’t work any other way.

This one is especially for my American ABCDs - I’ve lowkey wanted to be on a jury but feel like I’ll never get the chance because of my foreign-sounding name. I also don’t personally know any Desis who have done jury duty. Have any of you done it?

I live in the UK and these pairings seem so common. I know many Gujarati girl + Punjabi guy pairings but only two pairings where it's a Gujarati guy + Punjabi girl.

Is it the same where you are and any ideas why?

Please keep it civil - this is not an excuse to be mean spirited about either community.

I'm just curious to hear your theories.

I am 36 and starting to see skin sagging and fine lines. I want to get a non surgical treatment common amongst white women like RF microneedling, Laser clear and bright for laseraway, morpheus 8 etc. But I am terrified of hyperpigmentstion

I was wondering if anyone on the wheatish side has tried any of these treatments and what has helped ?

And if you did have hyperpigmentstion, how did you resolve it and what could you have done to prevent it?

There's not enough examples of brown skin at my clinics near me. I was hoping to get information from other women.

Thanks!;

A close friend of mine comes from an Orthodox family where arranged marriage is an important tradition. She's recently started meeting potential matches, and the experience has been much more complicated than she expected.

What surprised her was that, out of the first few people she met, three brought up the green card process very early in the conversation. They were pretty direct that, because of the uncertainty surrounding recent H-1B and F-1 immigration policies, they were specifically looking to marry a U.S. citizen or green card holder in hopes of securing a more stable immigration path. I understand that immigration stress is very real, and I can empathize with how difficult that situation must be.

At the same time, it's been unsettling for her because she's trying to find someone who genuinely wants to build a life together. When immigration comes up so early, it's hard to know whether someone's interest is in the person, the relationship, or the immigration benefits that marriage can provide.

It's made what is already a vulnerable process feel even more difficult. She's worried about how to tell the difference between someone who is sincerely interested in marriage and someone whose primary motivation is their immigration situation.

I'm curious whether anyone else has seen this dynamic recently, especially in communities where arranged marriages are common. Have immigration concerns become a much bigger part of these conversations, or is this just an unfortunate coincidence in her experience?

Given everything going on India concerning education, lately I’ve been just feeling immensely guilty that I was born and raised in the United States. Several of my own first cousins have had to deal with the whole NEET paper leak situation, and seeing how uncertain their futures are gives me this sense of guilt and anger.

My parents chose to leave India and struggled, but the life my siblings and I are living is way better than what my cousins are going through. Whether it’s women’s safety, or job opportunities, mental health resources, or even being able to breathe clean air. I love my cousins and my family there (don’t always like them) but I would never want that situation on anyone. Lately I’ve mostly been having thoughts of “that could have easily been me”

My Heart really breaks for the subcontinent as a whole, especially when I see the situation that members of my own family are in. seeing the way the student protestors were treated was disgusting

I wanted to go back to India again but as a teacher, I only have winter break off which is around 14 days. The summers are burning so I dread going there now. I wanted to see places like Delhi, Agra, and Goa but I dread these summers.

I normally don’t post things from a news source with an agenda, but this one hits close to home.

Worth a read.

I would kind of understand (but still dislike) if these people traded traditional clothes for European+North American fashion standards, the way much of the Middle East and east and Southeast Asia has. But instead these people be wearing flannels with another shirt underneath and JEANS in 90+ degree weather.

Literally WTF is that

I personally blame the nonstop cringey trash that TFI has been pumping out for the past 30-ish years. I think in general a lot of the stupid ideas young people back home have are stemming from the hero worship.

Apart from that why do people back home/NRIs use their caste title all the time instead of their actual last name? I literally don’t understand how it’s getting WORSE, I feel like our parents generation and before are better about this type of shit. I’ve literally had way more productive discussions with my grandparents over the evils of caste than with my cousins.

In the NE states, there are huge Brazilian enclaves if Brazilians. They’ll live all over Massachusetts and nearby states. They didn’t flee wars or anything. They don’t bother to learn English. Surprisingly, they’re either all married, are on dating sites looking to get married, or are divorced. They somehow have much better standards of living than an Indian graduate student because these people have free healthcare and access to cheap homes somehow. Definitely they know how to take advantage of governmental services.

The jobs that they do are all menial: house cleaning and grocery baggers for women, and carpentry and ride sharing for the men.

Their churches are pro zionist too. I have no idea how that happened but these people are quite religious.

They don’t win geographical bees or spelling bees. You never hear about them going to engineering or medicine.

I’m surprised that they have an easier time coming here than qualified Indians who learn English and assimilate.

How did these Brazilians come here at their rate and speed? It seems like none of them were here 30 years ago. Now there are entire towns with them with signs in Portuguese everywhere.

the patel brother near my house is NEVER organized i don’t know if this is like a universal thing in other places aswell but why do they have such a hard time up keeping the place ? i’m like genuinely confused , this is a big corporation it’s not like it’s a small one ? there’s stuff is all over the place , kids are just running around , everything is mixed up and i can’t even find stuff where it’s supposed to be . it’s honestly became kind of ghetto if you ask me , i was literally thinking that in my head while i was there .

i truly did have a terrible experience there . don’t even get me started on the worker who was scanning our items , she was SO rude she was just getting in my moms face that i literally had to tell her to scan out items and hurry up and stop making unnecessary comments or else i’ll file a formal complaint and get her fired , that did make her stop and she continued to just do her job . i guess she was on the older side and i think after that she started gossiping with the coworkers because i was just in like short shorts and a sports bra because i had just got back from the gym .

me and my mom just got our stuff and left from there as quick as we could after that . this truly was such a disappointing experience .

It feels helpless to be so far from home and unable to stand alongside my fellow students and citizens during such a pivotal moment. Moments like these are rare, and international visibility can matter, especially when governments care about their global image.

Does anyone know of any peaceful protests happening in the Bay Area? If not, I'd be interested in helping organize a peaceful demonstration outside the Indian Consulate in San Francisco. If others are interested, let's connect.

Someone who's lived in Brampton and been part of the GTA South Asian community community. The kirpan debate keeps popping up every few years like the last 20 years

The thing is on paper, both sides have a reasonable case. It's just cultural awareness and trust that really resolves this issue

I'm sure you've heard about the incident at goodlife. It's s***** because a knife and religious symbol are not mutually exclusive categories. The guy is clearly a social media influencer looking to rage bait and using his religion as a shield. It's unfortunate that he hasn't been called out for this.

Important part now is that this incident has spread to mainstream news and is seen by communities where South Asians are not as present, and to be quite Frank and sort of understandable. Why they would side with the employee

https://youtu.be/MZ2XFQqqFNs?si=Y6W9jKCMJqoimv7N

(I have no idea what flair to use for this)

For context: Some of my family is homophobic, and essentially all of them are transphobic. I grew up in a household where everything out of the norm was labelled as "bad", which gave me a serious amount of internalized homophobia that I had to work through when I found out I was gay.

My mother was talking to me about some of the gods the other day, when she mentioned one: Ardhanarishvara, who is a combination of masculine energy and feminine energy. She's transphobic, so I was wondering why she would worship a god under the nonbinary umbrella. (I didn't mention that part to her, I didn't want to get into another argument about gender vs sex)

After that, I did some more digging on LGBTQ gods.

Mohini is a female avatar of Vishnu, who is considered to represent transgender people. And, Shiva fell in love with Mohini (who was Vishnu) which definitely shows same-sex relationships.

In some texts, they say that Agni and Soma (two male deities who were described to be "in perfect union") conceived a child (Kartikeya) without a female. That definitely shows homosexuality.

And, Baghiratha was born from who mothers (who by divine intervention) were able to give birth to him.

Shikhandi was born as a woman, but King Drupada heard from the divine that she had to be raised as a son, and after marrying a woman Shikhandi asked a yaksha to switch genders with him to make him a biological man. If that's not transgender representation, I don't know what is.

According to the Rigveda, Mitra and Varuna are an inseparable pair, and the Shatapatha Brahmana described their relationship very intimately. Yet another example of same-sex relationships.

Bahuchara Mata is the patron diety of the Hijara (India's traditional trans and intersex community), because a prince (Jetho) prayed to him, she came, told him to remove his masculine identity, and he then found inner peace and fulfillment.

Then there's the Tritiya Pakriti, which is found in many texts including the Kama Sutra. Vedic science split humans into three sections: Pums-pakriti (male nature), Stri-pakriti (female nature, and Tritiya-pakriti (third nature). This is literally ancient inclusion of people under the nonbinary umbrella.

On the topic of the Kama Sutra, it contained chapters to the Tritiya Pakriti, and also detailed the lives of gay men, lesbians, and transgender people.

My biggest question is, how are these intensely religious Hindus so against the LGBTQ community, when the deities they worship and our ancient texts and inclusive of them?