I urge you to break off your engagement immediately.

Aww man I'm South Indian too but his parents' acting seems totally stiff to me! My parents say "ayyoooo" all the time too, but in a way that seems less wooden to me? But I still love that he put his parents in his show, even if they can't act, because of what it represents to them as a family.

I dunno, rich white women? Who, as a group, can be annoying, but are probably the least offensive and awful demographic out there.

...What?

I have spent most of my life feeling angry and frustrated by the many people in my (Indian) family that are Sai Baba devotees. I am so in awe of the young people who came forward to report their experiences of child sexual abuse at his hands -- difficult enough under any circumstance, but unfathomably difficult when you're making accusations against a "God-man." Not to mention the credible allegations of his extensive ties to criminal networks, his unconscionable exploitation of donations by people living in poverty to fund his lavish lifestyle, etc.

I tried to have these conversations with my grandparents, who were good enough to actually hear me out. I showed them videos on YouTube of Baba's "miracles" (comically inept sleight-of-hand tricks). None of it changed their convictions. They were happy believing in him -- and that's all very well, but devotion to Sai Baba is inherently enabling rape culture (and was perhaps enabling actual child abuse while he was still alive).

Now that I live in the US I have bumped into a few white American Sai Baba devotees and they always act uncomfortably familiar with me when they realize I'm Indian and that my relatives are fellow Baba fans, like we have a connection between us. I don't know how to tell them that I feel the opposite -- that we come from fundamentally different places and I will never understand their decision to worship such a dangerous and repugnant charlatan.

On the bright side, thanks to the Guardian piece, I had the opportunity to read this fantastic essay by Victoria Patterson taking down Franzen's blatant sexism on Edith Wharton: https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/not-pretty-on-e....

What's incredible to me is how quickly Franzen concluded that, because he wrote a shitty sexist thing and people (with a restraint and generosity of spirit that I don't think he deserves) pointed out that it was a shitty sexist thing, he "can't win" and must therefore resort to writing facile feminist caricatures in his boring novels to punish women for criticizing him. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that there was any other option, like maybe taking on board the criticism and modifying his communication accordingly.

Totally agree. I have received an apology along these lines from a white friend once, and another apology from a very dear friend (who is also a woman) who had made an insensitive and vaguely victim-blaming remark about a sexual harassment incident to me once many years before, and both times I really appreciated the carefully worded apologies. I hadn't forgotten the things they'd said and it made me feel better to know they hadn't forgotten either and recognized that they were in the wrong.

P.S. Death to "curry" and long live dosas.

The Good Indian Friend will definitely, definitely not give you the finger when you talk about all the colors you saw when you went on holiday to India.

Sometimes a guy just wants to have a wet pen!

lol "invented pronoun" as though every other word in the English language were discovered carved into the side of a mountain