I’ve see CSI all over the South, and only in Kerala have I ever found any woman wearing a bindi. I’ve known women who have wanted to wear it, including one who tells me that Varsha Pirappu (April 14th) is as important to her as Easter and Xmas. But wear it? Never! While it is taboo (including flowers in the hair like mallippu which some CSI women wear anyway) there may be some. So maybe I could change it to verboten but rare. In my family and among my in-laws’ there are women who have studied at about 7 different CSI/CNI colleges around the land. WCC in Chennai, I am familiar with, I have never seen a CSI woman wear a bindi. The choice of course is personal, and it is none of my business to advocate anything. Here in the US, at the few gatherings where I have officiated (like an India evening at school that hap’d to coincide with Diwali) I explained what the bindi is about to the non-Hindus (Indian and others) almost everyone lined up for an arti (including my Baptist prof from Texas) and tilak. Just as I expect to be left alone by harvesters, I do not want to, as much as, suggest any practice, observance to another. Explain if asked, suggest never.

a v.v.v.firm no-no/taboo for CSI/CNI/ECI/Assembly of God/Pentecostal Christians

Really? I grew up CSI, and always wore bindis for weddings and other dress-up occasions.

In India – I am talking of women only – among the non-Hindus the bindi is OK – no issue at all for RCs, but a v.v.v.firm no-no/taboo for CSI/CNI/ECI/Assembly of God/Pentecostal Christians. The position in Kerala I don’t know, because it has the largest diversity of Christian communities anywhere in the world. Anna moLey, what do you think? Jains are fine. Sikhs? It depends. Buddhists, it varies. Among the Muslims the bindi is rare, but surprisingly common at times. In Bangladesh…I will leave it to a Pakistani, “Where’s Pakistani girl with teep?”

Maybe Huntsman sees the tilak thing as one more thing to be taken on in the Mormon quest for universality.

What do you mean, to her credit?! Any combination of ghee + sugar can’t be good for a South Indian babe, unless she’s trying to pass on the old Indian tradition of diabetes….

@jyotsana – LOL thanks for that link

Maybe you haven’t but I have.

Neither rare nor common. For 1st genners, since it takes a while to get the green card, it means putting it off till then, by when fertility treatments begin to work. In older families (of the 50s and 60s) there has been adoption from the extended family. Otherwise adoption is generally frowned upon among IAs who prob’ly retain a quaint notion of th eold country, unlike Indian Indians who have moved on.

Ha. “

Uh, no Melanie. I don’t know what race, income or location you are, but your assumption that only whites are racist is so — inaccurate. I cannot speak for all of whitekind, but those of us who live typical whitepeople lives, and are not coddled or rich, or employed by politicians, or living in Portland (Maine or Oregon), have had to plan our lives around places we can and can’t go, and not because of some false esthetic about “color.” So I get your reasons for fearing racism because of personal experience. That racism exists, and the reasons you fear it, have been very clear to me all my life; life-threateningly clear. Very, very clear from all perspectives. Karma is a bitch. Ha.

Huntsman’s adopted kids of “another race” won’t hurt his chances. McCain had an adopted daughter from India and nobody in his party cared. Asian adoptions have been happening in this country since the 1950s and were remarkable for how easily they went, though I do think it is a questionable thing for people of a different background to take a child out of his/her ancestral lands and people. Inevitably some of the kids are going to feel deracinated. A few Korean adoptees have a web-site asserting that they were “kidnapped” by white people, though they admit they were treated well. Even adopted kids similar to one’s own ethnicity can be iffy–my brother’s adopted kids (Russian/WASP/Italian/Native American) have turned out more like their biological parents, though they’re better off than they would have been left to the mercies of those bio-parents.

If you think whites in tornado alley are that much different from anywhere else, well.. let’s just say they’re not, statistically. It’s been a running joke in the blogosphere of late, that whites in the still-mostly-white-places like Portland, are in an earnest status-contest to see who can get the farthest from some imaginary “redneck” living in rural Alabama, a type to whom they endow a sub-human status although they’ve never actually met any except in movies and books.

I do know of a few Indians (in India) as well as here who have adopted from India (one Indian-American couple I know has an adopted African-American child from here). Most adoption tales from India are about the immense amount of red-tape involved in the process. I like that the Indian government exercises a LOT of caution before handing kids over, but there’s no point to excess caution if it deters well-meaning people from adopting.

Mark of the devil I say! And I thought being a Mormon was bad! I think it’s just another rag head following the one we have right now as my good friend in SC says!

/teabagger mode off

Ha.