Communities of the Third Culture

I still go to dawats, those Bangladeshi dinner parties where the men prattle on about religion, politics or football, the women discuss jewelry, religion, politics or football and the children run around like chickens with their heads cut off… and discuss football. (Hey, we live in Pittsburgh).

By this point in my life, I’m often the oldest non-married individual who willingly chooses to attend these events. I have almost no connections with the “adults” – I find the “unkels” to know nothing substantive about politics or football. And there’s only so many times you can banter with the aunties about when you’ll get married. “Dorkar ki”? (“What’s the need?”).

Dorkar ki?

So I hang out with the childrens. Most of the Bangladeshi’s in my age group have left Pittsburgh. They’re either in DC or NYC or somewhere else. Luckily, some of the youngsters are now old enough that we can discuss matters of some importance. Such as football.

When the older ones come home, they ask me why I continue to go to these dawats. My first reason is that I have to be the driver-bhai for my parents or else they may just hole themselves up at home and never go out. My second reason is that I do enjoy seeing the youngsters grow up. They’re dealing with many of the same pratfalls we saw growing up – the difficulties of navigating the Third Culture, attempting to create an identity of substance out of being Bangali and American (and sometimes Muslim).

Some of my close Bangladeshi friends, who moved away, claim no attachment anymore to this local cultural community in which they grew up. They have their own communities, so to speak, in Pittsburgh and in their new cities. I don’t fault them for this detachment. They don’t know the new kids and their complaints about the unkels and aunties would be the same as mine.

Arrre, ami jete chai na!

My personal community among my old Bangali friends was created because my parents dragged me to these dawats and onushtans (huge national cultural gatherings such as FOBANA or Bongo Shommelon) as a youngster.

If I follow my friends’ lead, I’ll largely be discarding that greater community, full of characters with diverse and sometimes contradictory views on life, the universe and everything. I may or may not enjoy the company of everyone in the Pittsburgh Bangladeshi community but the natural diversity of people within it will, in all likelihood, trump the self-selected diversity of my circle of friends.

Parentsra kicchu buje na!

My greatest concern is that my (future) children will have to deal with unique challenges of culture, religion, geography and society that will best be handled by associating with a similarly strong community of individuals going through the same difficulties but at different paces and coming from different societal, cultural or religious viewpoints. There’s only so much to which I will be able to relate, no matter how hard I’ll try.

Let me put it another way. It is said that the greatest gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people to whom you would never have introduced yourself, had life not done it for you. The same can be said for a natural cultural community.

In a largely nuclear, de-centralized world, how do we replicate such a community. Do we even want such a community? I just don’t know how the new Third Culture will emerge, if at all.

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