My Indian In-Laws
A gay man meets his husband’s family and sees his world differently
By the time I got married, I was thirty-seven years old and accustomed to fending for myself. I’m monastic and avoidant by disposition. If life gets to be too much, I tend to go off and get quiet.
I had spent time in a religious order and came out later in life. I never expected to marry. Therefore, I hadn’t spent much time imagining what it would like to be an in-law.
I had spent time in a religious order and came out later in life. I never expected to marry. Therefore, I hadn’t spent much time imagining what it would like to be an in-law.
I first met my now-husband Rahul’s parents on a Zoom call three years prior to our wedding, during COVID. They called from their perch at the dining room table, which is framed by a wood panel doorway behind them and is now intimately familiar to me due to regular family calls. Rahul’s mother Maya wore a sari and was seated. His father Narayan stood behind her wearing what I call a “wife beater” and he calls a vest.
We were formal at first, loving but polite. We talked about food and family. Maya Auntie learned about my nieces and nephews, and proudly remembered their names when she checked in on them on all future calls. Maya and Naryan introduced themselves to me using their first names, which I used as instructed for some months before a cousin pulled me aside.
“No, don’t call them that,” she said. “No matter what they say, call them auntie and uncle.” Things seemed good but I began to worry. I wanted them to like me and there might be another norm that I didn’t understand, quietly waiting for me to unknowingly violate it.
It was always the little things that caused me to feel that, in the thirty-five years before I knew my husband Rahul, we had experienced worlds with different unspoken rules. He eats rice with his hands. He insists on giving gifts when we go to someone’s home. And he calls the sink a wash basin.
One night, Rahul and I were eating a tomato salad when his eyes got big. He asked for the name of the brown liquid drizzle and I told him it was balsamic vinegar. A few days later, I discovered him tilting that dark brown bottle towards a waffle.
My cooking tends towards Italian and Mediterranean. I soon learned that if I give Rahul a plate of penne with pesto, he’ll season it with a bottle of soy sauce. At first, I thought he didn’t like my cooking but I soon realized that he is simply not encumbered with my preconceptions about sauces and foods. In our early days, this caused me to pause. If putting honey on eggs could be normal, what was next?
Three weeks before our wedding, Maya Auntie and Narayan Uncle flew to the United States for a whirlwind tour of the northeast. I was excited. I had developed a comfortable rapport with them in our online chats and looked forward to developing our relationship further.
A year prior, I had visited them at their home in Hyderabad, India. Every morning, we’d have our tea on the balcony of their high rise. From the fiftieth floor, I’d watch the migrant workers below build another high rise and wild pigs run around near their tent homes. At nighttime, their fires lit up the vacant lot like fireflies. On my first day there, Rahul’s niece Chetu taught me to eat with my hands. The Shenoy home was an anchor in a country that can be intense, crowded and full of new things.
In India, I finally understood what it was like for Rahul to be around my friends at home. Conversations were full of references and turns of phrase that I didn’t understand. Words spoken in accents took me just a moment longer to comprehend. On occasion, I would just stare blankly, waiting for words to register. “They must think I’m dumb,” I thought. It was as if there were a thin, invisible screen between me and the world.
During my thirty-seven years as a single man, I became accustomed to operating as a stray cat, wandering into people’s lives, playing the role of guest and surrendering to the customs of the other. I knew how to be a visitor.
During my thirty-seven years as a single man, I became accustomed to operating as a stray cat, wandering into people’s lives, playing the role of guest and surrendering to the customs of the other. I knew how to be a visitor.
Now, I was tasked with an inviting others into my world, which required some hosting and a sense of ownership. On their first evening in town, we took the Shenoys to a fancy rooftop bar in Manhattan. On the drive to the city, they noticed things one only notices in a new place: the material used to make bridges, the number of lanes on the highway, the quality of the air. “What’s that one?” They’d say, pointing to one of the many buildings in the skyline. “An office building?” I guessed. It felt foreign to be a host; to have all questions directed at me.
I looked across the river at Brooklyn and could see the Greenpoint neighborhood, where I’d lived a decade prior. In my twenties, my time was my own. I wondered in and out of various creative friend groups, never getting close enough to feel truly responsible for another person. I remember dressing down, wearing old sneakers and skinny jeans, always trying hard to look like I wasn’t trying too hard — or get too close.
Maya Auntie requested that the waiter prepare a non-alcoholic beverage. In a room full of men wearing button-down shirts and jeans with white sneakers, Auntie wore a colorful sari, which added an air of dignity to her request.
The first three attempts at the drink were too sweet and Maya Auntie waved them away. I admired her honesty. Luckily our server, Fernando, seemed energized rather than exhausted by the challenge of getting it right. When Maya Auntie finally approved of the beverage, we all clapped and Fernando grinned, proud of his accomplishment.
The next day, Rahul’s sister Pooja and her twelve year old daughter Chetu joined us. Chetu danced with excitement as we loaded her bags into the car. As we drove through Queens, Chetu put her hands to the car window and admired a row of brick homes. “It’s just like Harry Potter,” she said.
I recognized the tendency, in a new place, to romanticize the mundane. I was fifteen when my grandparents took a group of us to Italy. As I looked out of our bus window at the little towns speckling the mountainside, I imagined that the clothes in the windows were hung by little old ladies wearing old-fashioned babushkas on their heads. I saw a worn down, abandoned house in the hills and said: “It’s so rustic.” Even the poverty seemed quaint.
Chetu still saw the world through the lens of her imagination and I knew that I had to protect her experience. From this angle, I could see that my childhood hadn’t just happened to me. Someone had driven the car so I could look out the window and enjoy the view.
On the way from New York City to our home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, we stopped at a Perkins that sat in a strip mall next to a car dealership off of the highway. On our way into the restaurant, I turned to hold the door for Maya Auntie and realized that I had lost her. I scanned the parking lot and spotted her in the distance, gently caressing a rose bush while Naryan Uncle took a photo.
At our table, the Shenoys stared blankly at the large plastic menus with photos on them. I held up the menu in the style of a teacher reading a book to the class. “This is a pancake,” I said, pointing to a photo as a table of doctors nodded.
When it came time to order, we decided that I would write down all of the orders and pass them onto the server to save us any confusion. Part of me felt overwhelmed that the task of ordering food was suddenly much larger and less relaxing than when I was flying solo. But I also noticed how activating it was to take the lead. I moved from one person to the next. “Okay, what do you want?” I’d say, then repeat back the order.
At a diner, I tend to order eggs and potatoes. The Shenoys ordered eggs, stir fried vegetables, pasta, and pancakes. When the food arrived, Maya Auntie picked up a pancake with her hands and eyed it while Chetu stirred ketchup into her pasta Alfredo. They loved the hash browns most of all.
In our three years together, Rahul never spoke Hindi in front of me outside of a word or two here and there. With his family around, he started saying words that caused his family to laugh instantly. “What is it?” I said. “What did you say?”
“Chillar” he said, and they all lost it again.
I smiled blankly.
“It’s a form of Hyderabadi street slang,” he told me. “It translates directly to low class,” he said. “It’s hard to explain. The word itself is what makes it funny.”
I felt left out in the way that Rahul must when my friends and I talk about obscure female American celebrities. “It doesn’t really translate,” he said, trying to comfort me.
“Has Rahul taught you any Hindi?” his sister said, trying to keep me in the conversation. “Well, one word,” I said. “But I shouldn’t say it in front of his mother.”
After reassurance was provided, I said a phrase that I first heard when Rahul yelled it at a car that cut him off. The phrase is “chutia benchod” and it roughly translates to sister fucker. Because I hadn’t grown up knowing its power, there was a disconnect between my breezy intonation and the meaning of the word.
The Shenoys howled.
As we got back into the car, Rahul made a joke about passing gas before getting into the car for a long ride. We all laughed, like chillar.
Then thin, invisible screen was still there. But we could look at it together and laugh.
A week later, we drive to Cleveland, where Rahul did his medical training. Our rental house was in an impoverished neighborhood, a block from a housing project.
“It looks like a postcard,” Pooja said. “So cute.”
Chetu stood looking out the window.
“Look, a person!” she said when someone walked by, and the others hurried over to get a look. India is a crowded place. The Shenoys were not accustomed to empty sidewalks.
That night, we ate at a formal American restaurant with some friends. I looked across the table at Maya Auntie, whose eyes looked wide and sad as she took in the strange options on the menu. Taking my cue from Fernando, I went to her side. She looked disappointed when I told her that they did not serve hash browns, but I found her another option of fish and potatoes. Potatoes tend to translate well from one cuisine to another. Maya Auntie was happy. I felt accomplished that I knew how to help her. I was starting to feel like a son-in-law.
Rahul’s other sister, Naina, and her husband, Abhi, joined a week later along with their daughters, Adu and Anu. We rented a fifteen-passenger van and as we pulled off, I asked if anyone needed to use the bathroom. As I heard the words come out of my mouth, I felt, for the first time, like I could maybe handle being a father.
In Brooklyn, we ate breakfast at a hip version of a diner. Our waitress had a beautiful Afro and Maya Auntie asked to take a photograph with her. I wondered if this was kosher, but the waitress was happy to oblige. “Don’t be controlling,” I thought to myself, taking a deep breath.
I took the orders as usual. We went to the Statue of Liberty, which I had never been to despite living in the city for six years. On the boat ride, Rahul and I answered emails from our wedding vendors. We were just two weeks away from the big day. When the stress of this began to get to me, I would imagine writing about the trip, focusing on color and detail. This would help me tap into a more mindful part of my brain and take me out of my pre-wedding stress just enough to stay present.
Rahul has a cousin in every American city. That night, we met some of them in Brooklyn Heights. Maya Auntie found the April weather cold and wrapped a blanket over her head. At the restaurant, Rahul’s sister warmed her hands over a decorative candle.
The young people went home after dinner. Maya Auntie, Naryan Uncle, Rahul and I walked on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, taking in a beautiful nighttime vista of Manhattan. Without the crowd of young people, it felt like us grown-ups were having a quiet moment. We took a photo of Maya Auntie wrapped up in three blankets with the city behind her and looked in the windows at the fancy apartments with their chandeliers and minimal artwork, wondering what families might live in a house like that.
The next day, we prepared to leave the city.
“It’s colder in New York,” someone generalized.
As we pulled onto the highway, an ambulance drove by.
“So posh,” Pooja observed.
When we got back to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where we live, the Shenoys were relieved. New York was similar to Hyderabad. They liked Harrisburg, which had lawns and parks.
We took a two day break after our travels with Rahul’s family. I reverted to my monastic ways, spending quiet time looking out my window and journaling. I remembered being single, with no one else to worry about. But the quiet was different now. It lacked the energy of taking orders and answering questions. By the time the rehearsal dinner rolled around, I realized that for the first time, I missed the Shenoys.
When the food came at the rehearsal dinner, I looked across the table at Maya Auntie. Her eyes would tell me if she needed help and if she did, I would find a reason to go over and help her find something with a potato in it. She smiled back at me. This was our thing now.
Being needed was starting to feel a little less foreign. It made me feel like a part of a family, in a way that I hadn’t since I was a child and was dependent on my parents. It was different from this angle, but just as comforting.
The next day, we were married. Our families stood on either side of us while we tied ourselves together with a rope and circled a fire seven times, imagining seven lifetimes together. It was a windy day and as the fire grew larger and larger, I could see the worry on the faces of our guests. I imagined the fire might reach Rahul’s clothes or the altar and wanted to back away as my brother-in-law Abhi came to remove the flames, but Rahul and the rope anchored me to the altar. As the smoke cleared, I took solace in knowing that whatever happened, we were tied to the same fate.
