Hindu girlhood in the diaspora

[lovecatcadillac]

I'm writing a novel set at an all-girl Catholic secondary school in Perth, Western Australia in the year 2003. It's based in part on my own young teenage years, and features multiple POV characters, including one girl who is Hindu and the daughter of middle-class Indian migrants. I'm not South Asian or a person of colour, and I grew up with parents who were quite anti-religion, so I'm trying to be very purposeful in writing this girl's experience.

I have a handful of questions about life in the Indian/South Asian diaspora in the early 2000s, specifically regarding teen girl sleepovers, how religiously based vegetarianism might shape social excursions with friends, and recommendations for resources on how religion might factor into a 14-year-old Hindu girl's internal life.

1. In one chapter, a group of 14 year-old girls meet up during the school holidays to see a movie and grab some lunch at a Burger King-like restaurant (i.e., a low-cost fast food joint that serves beef burgers). This is based on an afternoon in my own teenage years. However, it's occurred to me that if one of the girls was an observant Hindu, she would be likely to have been raised vegetarian, and thus might not want to eat in a restaurant where even the vegetarian options might have been cooked in close proximity to beef. With that in mind, if a young Hindu teenager in the diaspora was seeing some friends, how likely is it that she would simply eat a vegetarian option at a restaurant like Burger King? If she wasn't able to eat at a burger place, would a pizza joint or a fish-and-chip shop be more appropriate?*
2. One of the key chapters in the book centres around a sleepover birthday party held at my Indian girl character's home and attended by her friends. In conversations on and offline, women from diaspora communities (particularly South Asian) attest that they were not allowed sleepovers with friends as kids. In my own childhood, I had two different friends who were South Asian (my best friend from ages 9-12 was a migrant from India who emigrated as a baby, my best friend from ages 16 on was from Malaysia and emigrated in her mid-teens). Both girls were allowed to have sleepovers: one could only have sleepovers hosted in her own home, whereas the other was allowed to stay at other people's houses. As I've conceived my character thus far, I figure she emigrated at around age 5. To write my character's parents, are there certain hallmarks of a parent from a South Asian migrant background who would be more likely to allow sleepovers, or host sleepovers in their home?
3. I've begun researching Hinduism to see how it might factor into the worldview of a young Millennial teenager who is kind, creative, a bit eccentric, accepting of others' differences and has some trouble speaking up for herself with her friends (but is learning more about what it means to assert herself). Thus far, I haven't found a lot which is from a young, female, Millennial perspective. If anyone has any insights they would like to share, or recommendations for resources (e.g., memoirs from the South Asian diaspora, YouTube/TikTok accounts, blogs, etc.), I would appreciate it immeasurably (and would, of course, acknowledge your contribution if I ever manage to publish this darned thing).

* I figure that she might be unlikely to eat fish either, but wanted to throw fish and chips there as a possible option for something that young teens in the early 2000s in Perth might eat. Sushi wasn't a common food option in the time and place the story is set, and ice cream doesn't seem right as this chapter takes place during winter.

Comments

[winterbird]

Yeah I wonder how much the veganism thing was also influenced by like... *thinks* potential circles re: affluence etc. and also area? Idk, but veganism wasn't something that was easy to do on poor immigrant budgets (which is my experience re: my parents and the people's parents around me) unless the entire family agreed to do it, so what was happening around the UWA direction for example seemed extremely like...lofty/indulgent to us (but also we didn't really know anyone who went there. For almost all of us in the social group I'm referring to, I think I was the only one - or maybe one of two - to go to university, and we were the first in our respective families to ever attend a university).

(As an example, ECU Mt Lawley had zero vegan options as a campus, and also no vegan options just about in any of the eateries nearby. I think even if we'd gone to the nearest shopping centre (the Galleria) we'd have still really struggled?

That doesn't mean vegans weren't around at ECU at the time! They just weren't speaking up or affecting how we were eating in university friend groups (tbh most of the vegetarians I knew were in high school, any friends I made at uni actually were all just straight up omnivores).

I didn't have vegan friends at the time re: university or high school. People were either vegetarian because it was cultural and the whole family was doing it, or... actually that was the only reason. Also it's cheap to eat vegetarian, and it was especially so back then when so many people were growing stuff practically in their back garden/s. We had access to quite a bit of free home-grown food in exchange for Mum ironing for people, or cleaning their houses, the barter system was very alive and well in at least our little pocket of Embleton back in the day. Even a lot of what Mum made at home was vegetarian, or 'vegetarian with an extremely sparing amount of meat added.'

It wasn't until I was an adult going through her recipe book that I realised she stretched a bolognese sauce by grating tons of carrots in, because carrots cooked down create a 'mince-like' texture. And that was solely because meat was a lot of money. And I remember her 'yucky brown soup' (literally what we called it, she insists we loved it AND YET THAT'S WHAT WE'VE ALWAYS CALLED IT) and that was literally just clear vegetable (and faintly meaty) broth with a monster amount of vegetables cooked down with what in retrospect was an amount of meat that equalled about two leathery bites per bowl sadlfkjdsa And our favourite 'treat' dinner - crepes with lemon and sugar was like... flour, eggs, milk, sugar, and lemon, and two of those ingredients were free/in the neighbourhood re: barter.

It wasn't until my late 20s, I think, that I started meeting people who were becoming vegetarian or vegan solely due to lifestyle choices, and not because of like...religion or 'the entire family did it so I did it too and now I'm just used to it' (which was K and her siblings).

Donut King in the Galleria was also huge at least in our friendship groups because the iced coffee/s etc. always came with two free hot cinnamon donuts. I don't think they do that anymore T.T

And yeah that giant chip deal at the place near UWA sounds amazing! Honestly large chips + sweet chilli sauce + sour cream got us by many cafe attendances where we were pooling our money together and looking for the cheapest + most filling thing in the menu. It's funny in retrospect how much that kind of ruled our decisions. I can't imagine how like...say having an immigrant family making a decent income would change the landscape but it would!!

(Annalakshmi opened at the Bell Tower around 2000, I know it took longer than they expected because K's brother was frustrated he couldn't get back to work there in the kitchens. Hare Krishna I don't actually remember much about, we just kind of went in there like little famished creatures and ate as much as we could among the monks and then went out again to be little full creatures instead. We were more likely to go to Moon Cafe for v i b e s salfjkdsa - also they used to have that awesome cheap pasta night deal)