paki times.

I haven’t been feeling well so I decided to stay in tonight and get some rest. I decided it was time for me to pop in a Bollywood film (I have two of the more quality ones in my collection), as it has been at least a couple years since I have watched one.

The Bollywood film (Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gaam) is all about a wealthy family whose son decides to go for a boisterous, personality filled girl who happens to live in a village. The wealthy father has a fit about how the son is ruining the family name and ends up disowning him. There is a ton of dialogue about how much you owe to your parents because they ultimately love you more than anyone ever will, and well, they are your parents, DUH.

Why did I get a random hankering to watch a Bollywood film? It happens about every two years. I found myself thinking about being Pakistani a bit more this week (it isn’t really a common thought) because I attended a professional development where one of the presenters was Pakistani.

It was quite neat to see another Pakistani woman who had chosen education as her career field. I haven’t ever met another Paki elementary school educator- one of our family friends was a college professor, but education wasn’t exactly one of the fields our culture encourages us to go into so I was intrigued.

The actual professional development was quite good, reinforced some things I felt I needed to hear as an educator in this new setting. It was all about teaching language- including valuing a student’s mother tongue, which of course brings up ethnicity and culture.

While she was presenting, she would randomly share stories about her upbringing (her first language was Punjabi, as well) and mentioned that she had two boys and is married to a Taiwanese man (last I checked there aren’t a bunch of Muslims in Taiwan). She also mentioned that her parents had passed away in their early 50’s. This all got me thinking, and wanting to get her to myself so I could get a little more insight on her personal life story.

Towards the end of the workshop, I had an educational question and she sat down and was working through some things with me. She was really easy to talk to, and it had already been established that I was also Pakistani and that Punjabi was a language that I had once known. I quickly blurted out a few personal questions, to which she told me that she had been in arranged marriage situations with three different men, but since her parents had passed away, she was able to marry someone that she actually loved. It was a quick conversation, and I know it may seem wrong to feel reinforced but she ultimately said that she was only able to do what she wanted to do because her parents died.

Sometimes I second-guess myself and my choices. Especially as of late, as would be expected on such a life-changing chapter. I also know there is a lot of judgment involved from outsiders (I know, I shouldn’t care what other people think, but I’m human) and it was one of those stories that made so much sense to me once she said it. Some people would be shocked, or think it is ridiculous, but it is a fact of that specific culture. Either you’re right or wrong, and a middle ground does not exist. More often than not cutting all ties (on your own or through a life circumstance such as death) are the only ways to free yourself.