When we were growing up in Oz, we always segregated our friends. The Western "skips" as they were known in the eighties to one side and then the 'pakis, indians or anyone" brown to the other. With the western friends you could be free and open discuss issues at home, about culture and life. The Desi one, followed a strict script where you never had a problem, were about to handle insults and revealed very little to anyone beside all the smallest and greatest achievements in your life. I often wonder why our parents did this, competition? Desi mothers and aunts with very little to do, but to compete using their daughters as fierce tools to nudge forward. Someones elses daughter was always, 'fairer, prettier, slimmer or smarter'.
As a mother of a daughter, I couldn't even contemplate doing this. It's the Australianess that exists in my psyche - we don't need to compete and if we did, we don't actually say it, actions and success speak volumes.
A few weeks ago, I was attending a dinner and one mother in particular wanted a particular piece of information to be shared. She wanted all the women to know this - as she ate her dinner, she casually mentioned that she lived in the western suburbs. She went on to describe her new house and mentioned the school her kids attended. Slowly, she paused and made eye contact with everyone in the room, she announced the name of the school and then, told us that it was a private school, not once but on two more occasions wherever the opportunity arouse.
If I spoke like this with my Aussie friends they would desert me and call me a di#*head!
But it's perfectly normal in the Desi world. You got it, you flaunt it.
