Anshoo Tikoo Zutshi comes from a small community of Kashmiri Pandits. After leaving India to live in Finland with her husband Vimarsh, the couple and their 4-month-old daughter, Ariana, settled in San Ramon, California, choosing a location that reminded Anshoo of the hills in Kashmir. Anshoo shares her views on arranged marriage and along with daughter Ariana, share how they keep alive the Kashmiri language and culture they’re proud of.
We Belong is a visual series highlighting different experiences of South Asian and Indian identity. This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Photographs and interviews by CatchLight Fellow Sree Sripathy.
The portraits took place on February 19, 2023, in San Ramon, Calif., and the interview on June 19, 2023, via Zoom. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Where were you born and raised?
Anshoo: I was born in New Delhi and raised in Uttar Pradesh, which is a northern state in India; and in Punjab, another northern state in India.
Can you tell me about your background?
Anshoo: I belong to a Kashmiri Hindu family. My parents, my father, had to leave Kashmir a long time ago because minorities weren’t treated fairly in certain things. They wouldn’t be given preference in the college system or [for] jobs, and so he decided to move to West Bengal for his education. Then his job brought him to Delhi, and that’s where they had me. So that’s where I was born and raised.
How did you meet your husband, Vimarsh?
Anshoo: I was doing well in my professional career and my parents told me, you know, “Why don’t you get married? We have lots of family friends and their sons are smart, they’re intelligent, just go ahead and meet some of them.” And I was like, “No, I’m not ready yet. So I don’t think so. I’m gonna wait for a few years.”
And then they received [a call] from one of their family friends and he said, “Hey, my son is over here from Helsinki. He’s here only for a day and he has to fly back tomorrow night. Would it be possible for your daughter to just go and say hello, and we can take it from there? Maybe they don’t like each other or whatever.”
He [the son] was in Gurgaon, which is a satellite town of the capital of India, Delhi. And I was there too because I had just joined a new job. So my parents came over from Punjab and they told me “We’ll take you there. Let’s just go and say hello. You don’t have to get married to him at the first meeting. Just go and see whether you like the guy.” I thought to myself, well, I just have to go and say hello, and then obviously I can just say “I’m not ready” and I definitely don’t want to go to Helsinki out of all the places in the world.
Vimarsh and I meet in a coffee shop. My parents and sister are hiding somewhere. I notice that Vimarsh has a ponytail. I thought, well, that’s interesting. He talks to the baristas and the music volume goes down to a more comfortable level. So I was like, okay, I like this guy. The meeting ends after a few hours and we exchange numbers, My parents pick me up from the coffee store. My mom [immediately] says “It’s okay, we can say that, you know, it didn’t work out, so we won’t be taking this any further.” And then I, in a very soft tone said, “No, I think I did like him.” She’s talking over me in a loud tone saying, “We don’t even have to give a reason! We can just say it didn’t work out.” And I again, in a soft tone said, “No, we don’t have to say no. I mean, I do like him a bit.” My mom is still talking over me and my dad, frustrated, says “Listen, woman! She says she likes him!”
My mom got the shock of her life. “Oh, you do?” And I was like, “Yes, yeah, I kind of do. Can you give us some more time? I’d like to talk to him more.”
How did you arrive in the US?
Anshoo: He [Vimarsh] was working in Helsinki, so I married him and I moved to Helsinki with him where we lived for a few years. We had our first child, our first daughter, Ariana, and we got an opportunity to move to the United States through a job offer that he received. We thought it would be a good place for her to get connected to the rest of her Indian community because we heard there was a larger Indian community here, and then she would be able to pick up the language, other rituals, and the cultural aspects of our existence. So that’s the story of how we came to the United States.
What do you think, Ariana, when you hear this story of how your parents met?
Ariana: I heard a lot of thoughts that I never realized you had at that moment [addressing her Mom]. And also, this story is downright hilarious. And it’s a very sweet story.
In revisiting how you met your husband, what will you teach your daughters about love and marriage?
Anshoo: I was against the idea of an arranged marriage, when I got married, you know. I was raised in a very loving, open-minded modern family. And my parents were very, very supportive. But somehow, the universe played a part and, I did go in with an open mind. So it did work out. We do have a beautiful relationship, and we have two beautiful daughters.
Being in America here, and looking at the arranged marriage setup, from an American perspective, I always used to feel that it was something that was not good, that it was a system that was a forced sort of setup. But after my marriage, and after having seen other Indian couples living in beautiful relationships, in a loving relationship, having met through an arranged marriage setup, I will say I do have a very open mind about it.
I do see that other societies, in some form, arrange these things. Maybe it’s online dating, you know, you just go and select a profile and then take it further. But for the modern Indian family, I think it’s the same; you’re just enabling them to meet someone who they normally wouldn’t probably through their professional setup. So now I’m very open-minded about both things, whether it’s arranged or my daughters finding someone on their own. We are very supportive of that. The end goal is to have a harmonious relationship filled with love, filled with respect, and nothing else matters, honestly.
For Ariana, as she listens to these stories, it’s quite early, but she tells me “You know, Mama, I hear how you met Dad, and I see you with Dad, and I’m kind of not against arranged marriage. If you guys think somebody is good for me, you know, I’ll go meet him. I’m like, open to it.” So I think I would say that we view it not as a conservative practice anymore, but more of something that our society needs. It’s getting difficult for our kids to find people from their own culture or their roots. And so if we can enable them just meeting each other, bumping into each other somewhere, and if that helps them out, then why not?
How do you maintain your connection to Indian culture and heritage?
Anshoo: One reason for being in the Bay Area was the availability of access to our community, and the ability to practice our rituals, celebrate our festivals. So Ariana is the older one, and she is going to be 12 soon. I take Ariana to a lot of Indian events where they are celebrating Indian festivals, and not just the regional ones. We are from Kashmir, so I’m not just taking her to a Kashmiri event, I take her to wherever there is any regional festival being celebrated so that she is exposed to this beautiful thousands of years old culture. We participate in Indian Independence Day celebrations, Holi, Diwali, all those important festivals.
And on my own, I teach the Kashmiri language to the Kashmiri kids who are in the United States and can not learn the language, because the parents don’t speak it. I am a Kashmiri folk singer. I continue to volunteer at all our events where I perform these folk songs so that they are not forgotten. We are a minority community. And sadly, I might be the only folk singer here in all of, not just California, but you know, the United States. I don’t know many. I could count on my fingers how many people sing here in Kashmiri, so I feel I have a responsibility to pass this down to the generations to come.
I teach Ariana Kashmiri folk songs, Kashmiri music, Kashmiri language, and then I also do Zoom classes for kids all over the United States. There are two parts to staying connected with the community. One part is where we go and participate in what other people are doing and the other part is where I am trying to hand this down to the generations to come where, you know, we don’t lose our language or our rituals.
What is something that people often say in Kashmiri that is a common phrase?
Anshoo: When we meet or when we are saying goodbye to people we say रॖतिस तॖ स्यद-बुथिस । “Ryitis tu Sadbuthyis” which means “May we meet again in happier and auspicious times.” We don’t say goodbye.
Can you tell me about one of the Kashmiri folk songs you sing?
Anshoo: There is this folk song that my grandfather used to sing. And sadly I haven’t heard it in years, but I sang it a few years ago and uploaded it to YouTube. And I cannot tell you how many people, to this day, I hear from who say “You know this has brought me immense happiness because we haven’t heard the song in a long time” and “Our great-grandfather and great-grandmother used to sing this” and “We’ve heard this after all these years.” So I’m gonna sing a line or two of that song. The song is about praatahkaal, the early morning time, and it just says “Praatahkaal, oh morning light, please fill me with wisdom, please fill me with light and please help me realize my spiritual journey.”
That song is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with me. Now, I’m going to ask a couple of questions to Ariana. Ariana, how has your experience been in school being an Indian and/or Kashmiri?
Ariana: In my current school there are a lot of Indians. And when a festival comes up, like Diwali or Holi I can wish them [Happy Holi or Happy Diwali]. We feel very connected to our heritage that way. But as far as being Kashmiri, I don’t think there are any other Kashmiris in my class or even in my school. So I really like to introduce my culture to others when a specific Kashmiri festival comes up or anything else that’s special in Kashmiri culture.
Do you ever feel like you don’t fit in? Or have you ever felt like you want to be more American?
Ariana: I have to say, I do feel very comfortable in both of my identities. I love learning more about American culture, and I love how diverse it is. But I also love embracing my Indian heritage because I love all the festivals and all the rituals and how we worship our gods. I think that’s very special to me.
Is there any particular part of you that feels more American than Indian?
Ariana: I feel more American in the way that, like, sometimes, how I speak my language, how I react to other people. I also feel like I have an accent and it makes me sort of stick out there. So I think that has kind of influenced me.
Can you give me an example?
Ariana: Like whenever I try to talk to my grandparents. I speak very quickly in English sometimes. And so when I try to slow down or say it in Hindi, I usually mess up, or, I have this thing where I can’t say the words so well so that they can understand me, which sort of confuses the conversation. And now they think I’m too American.
Does that make it difficult for you to learn the language?
Ariana: It makes it a little difficult because I’m just scared that I’m gonna mess up too badly and it’s going to, like, affect my relationships with others.
What do you think would make you more comfortable in trying to speak the language?
Ariana: Just hearing my mom and dad speak, or even just picking up [words], and also more practice would be great. I feel very comfortable speaking Hindi with my mom and my dad, because I know that I’m not embarrassing myself in front of them, they’re there to teach me. And so more practice with them would really help me overcome that.
Is there any way that you feel particularly Indian?
In my friend group there are not many Indians and my closest friends are not Indian. So whenever there’s a festival coming up or if it’s like a specific day in the lunar calendar, like, my Kashmiri birthday, whenever I say something and I try to explain it to them, they’re just staring at me blankly. And I’m like, “Oh, I wish I could explain it!” Someone else could help me explain this better.
How do you explain your Kashmiri birthday?
I have to actually say like, in the lunar calendar, there is this day, where the planets were aligned on your birthday and that’s the same alignment. So my Kashmiri birthday is on June 14, and, um, that’s the planet alignment and it changes every year as well, of course. So they haven’t heard of that, they’ve only heard of their English birthday, so it gets weird and awkward trying to explain that to them, about the planet alignments and everything else.
I understand. I’ve been through that too. How does your Kashmiri birthday come up in conversation?
I do say it’s my Kashmiri birthday. I just really want to share with them how we celebrate our culture. And I love hearing about how they celebrate their culture too.
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This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Contributors include Vandana Kumar, Meera Kymal, Mabel Jimenez, and Jenny Jacklin-Stratton. Learn more about CatchLight Local’s collaborative model for local visual journalism at https://www.catchlight.io/local
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