As a teen, I would often converse with the person in the seat beside me. On two separate occasions, I met girls with very similar stories: they were in their twenties and visiting boyfriends in India that they had gotten to know over email. One was a German girl dating a Muslim boy; the other was an American girl dating a Hindu boy. I met them approximately three years apart, but it never ceases to astonish me how similar their stories seemed.
They had gotten to know their boyfriends through some interaction on a website, and ended up swapping emails. After that, they had corresponded for a time, getting to know each other (and falling in love). The boyfriends, in both cases, had visited the girls in their home countries once. In both cases, I was meeting the girls on their first trip to India—though I met the German girl on her flight to India and the American girl on her flight back to the US.
Both of them had a lot to say on the subject of the obstacles that lay in their paths in the form of religion. I listened, but it wasn’t a subject that was very interesting to me at the time, beyond analyzing the cultures and why people insist on laying those obstacles before inter-religious and inter-racial relationships.
Both girls were fascinated when I said that I was the product of such a marriage, and were fascinated to hear my parents’ story. They expressed surprise when I explained that my parents simply got married, neither of them being particularly attached to religion or cultural tradition. They would then go on to wonder aloud whether their boyfriend would be willing to entertain this as a possibility (both of them found it doubtful).
I met the German girl first, when I was fifteen. She was cynical, fairly certain it wouldn’t work out in the end. Perhaps because I met her first, she had much wisdom and many observations to share that I had never before thought to consider. I was still in my youthful fairy tale mind, convinced that love could conquer all. She was very laid back, and willing to foster the relationship for as long as it lasted, even if it was not going to be for life, or even for that much longer.
The American girl was more specifically critical in her assessment of her situation. “Why can’t he just say no to his parents?” she would complain to me. “I don’t know if I can live with a man who can’t stand up to his parents.” She then went on to exposit about the differences between American and Indian culture,* naming things that were very familiar to me and leaving me to shrug and smile. I offered some advice based on observations I had made, but I got the impression that she wasn’t interested in my opinion as much as she just wanted to vent.
I kept in touch with the German girl for a few years afterwards; the American girl and I went our separate ways after our flights and never corresponded. I do know that the first girl’s relationship lasted through that trip and for some months afterwards before her boyfriend caved to his parents and broke things off.
*I am aware that both of these are very culturally diverse nations. This is meant to indicate the experiences of India and American culture as lived by myself and this one girl. It is not meant to be a generalization.