Made in India?
I never thought being of two different cultures would ever be a problem up until now. As an Indian and an American, I’ve managed to disconnect both of these worlds and live in them separately. In Queens I live the life of a progressive New Yorker. At home in Westchester County I am the dutiful daughter of two hard-working parents. I spend weekends there and curtail my freedom to please my family. Until now, it’s been blissful ignorance between the two worlds. But now I am in my mid 20s and have to deal with the one thing that might bring my divided life to a screeching halt: marriage.

This film documents my quest for cultural and emotional balance as I survey my family and my two distinct homelands (India and New York).

I interview my parents who explain the importance the tradition of arranged marriage. Chippy, Chikku and Tippu (my siblings) describe the hurdles they had to jump in order to survive as Indian-Americans in a racially and culturally homogenized community.

But no matter how far I dig into the flesh of New York, I cannot find solace and understanding between the two worlds. I turn my search to my native homeland, India, in hopes of finding a way to meld my two disparate lives.

With my sister as my confidant, Mumbai is the first stop in our journey to India. We enjoy a city unlike anything we expected. While at my friend Payal’s traditional wedding, I discover untraditional opinions that are polar opposites of general consensus I expected to find, completely failing to provide me with a quick answer to my problem, as I had hoped.

In Kerala though, my parents’ hometown, with its sweltering heat and random power outages, my grandma, uncles, aunties, and nephews try to help me realize the bliss of their simple living. They explain what family and tradition means to them. I begin to appreciate the love between to people who are in an arranged relationship.

But then my ultra religious uncle finds a suitor for me. He must have found the most innocent looking person on the face of the planet. But I am asked questions that make it quite apparent to me that Indians raised in different countries are wholly different people.

Through this documentary, I strive to learn how to bridge the gap between my American life and Indian life. I discover that perhaps, it’s simply a matter of having pride in my past, acceptance of my present, and hope for my future.