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

[fred_mouse]

In the city, there were a number of cheap food halls, and almost always the stall with the vegetarian option was westernised Chinese or related cuisine. It was pretty much always cheaper to get a large and share it than it was to get two small serves -- the large came with rice and three dishes. Lot of students I knew split dishes that way. And it was usually a dollar cheaper to get a vegetarian large than a meat one. There might be more than one stall with vegetarian options, but if there was only one, it was stir fry veg (maybe with some kind of nuts), omelette filled with cabbage and onion, and hmm, failing to think what we always ended up with as the third.

Off Hay Street Mall there was an underground one at the west end which could be accessed from either the Mall or from William Street. It was pretty grotty, but cheap and might have been open more hours than some of the other ones, because I certainly remember going there more often. There was also the one in the bottom of the Carillion arcade. The other one we went to regularly was The Old Shanghai in Northbridge, although I think there was a wider range of food options there.

All probably more than you need, given you were talking about going to Hungry Jacks/equivalent as a small part of your question!

There were also a lot of yum cha places, which were a good option for cheap, because you could get just a couple of dishes. Trickier to be vegetarian, but when there was surprise meat it was alway pork or chicken, rather than beef. I used to frequently go in to the one in Northbridge near the corner of James and William Streets and get a bag of the sesame rice balls, which were either red bean or lotus seed filling, because that was very much a cheap way to get a vegetarian meal with protein in it (My guess at price for the early 2000's would be $3 for three). Vegetarian steam buns were available in a lot of places. I know that UWA sold steam buns for a while, but I don't know timing there.

There was also another entirely vegetarian restaurant in Northbridge, which I liked a lot more than Utopia, and I think it was still running by your time period. I believe it was called the Happy Buddha, and it was away from the busy parts of Northbridge, and did all you can eat options from a buffet. Lots and lots of faux-meat options.