#Quip battery movie#

If you have a love marriage, you go into it with these ideals of romance - especially since India is fed Bollywood movies - but in an arranged marriage, you go without many expectations, so everything’s a bonus. When a person in my social group can’t find somebody, they turn to their parents and say, ‘Fine, I’ve looked, it’s not working, please find me a match.’ I know people who went the traditional arranged marriage route and met only twice before the wedding and are now very happy. On arranged marriages: In my social group, I’d say 50% of people are in love marriages and 50% are in arranged marriages. My spice tolerance is medium high, but I know people who bite into chilis! They go to restaurants known for very, very spicy food, and they’re wiping their sweaty foreheads the whole time. My comfort food is a simple bowl of dal and rice it hits the spot at the end of a long day.

On family dinners: We primarily eat roti (bread), rice, dal/curry, and vegetables, as well as chicken, mutton or fish. Jugaad is so ingrained in us that it was hard for me to even think of examples! And when kids with disabilities felt isolated during lockdown, a friend and I created a Facebook group for them. For example, when we had a leaky pipe, Vir attached a bottle to catch the water droplets until the plumber arrived. Having limited resources, like we do in India, makes you creative and resilient you keep looking for solutions until you find one that fits. On creative problem solving: What I love most about life in India is a term called ‘jugaad,’ which means solving problems using whatever resources you have at your disposal. We do a havan every couple months, as it makes us all feel good. When our kids were little, they’d sit in our laps, but nowadays they recite the mantras and put in the offerings. It’s the way we solemnize births, weddings and deaths, but it’s also how we celebrate birthdays and anniversaries and just cleanse the atmosphere of the house. You give offerings into a fire - like grains, ghee, and other Ayurvedic herbs.

On a favorite ritual: Our family likes board games and movies, but something we love to do together is a havan. There’s also a funny novel called Polite Society by Mahesh Rao, which is a modern-day Emma set in high society Delhi. And in the book Chup (which means quiet or shush), social scientist Deepa Narayan-Parker examines how women - even successful bankers, engineers, doctors, lawyers - have been taught to stay silent within their families and communities and not stand up for what they believe in.

#Quip battery movie#

On representative movies and books: The movie The White Tiger feels very real to me, as does Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. People in different parts of the country live in completely different ways - with their own cuisines, languages, clothes and cultures. Instead of saying ‘I live in Mumbai,’ I often say, I live in ‘my Mumbai,’ since I don’t live the same life as somebody who lives in a slum or somebody who lives in a chawl (multi-family tenement houses, where a family shares one room). In India, there is a huge divide between rich and poor. On an upscale apartment: We live in a three-bedroom apartment within a gated community. “Gayatri means ‘warmth, sunshine, wisdom,’ and Vir means ‘brave,'” explains Gopika. He puts together 1000-piece puzzles and built his own radio and battery-operated car. Gayatri is an old soul, who likes writing poems, playing her ukulele, and cuddling the family bulldog. Nowadays, Gopika’s kids are 17 and thriving. Her recent book, Beyond the Blue, shares her beautifully honest story of raising a child with autism in India. After learning all she could while fighting for her son, she became an autism therapist and is now one of India’s leading disability advocates. “I moved back because this crazy, over-crowded, chaotic city is home.”īut when her son was diagnosed with autism at age three, Gopika struggled to navigate the school system, face a crushing social stigma, and find resources and books on autism written in the context of a developing country. “I’ve lived in Mumbai my entire life, except for two years doing my journalism masters in Boston,” she says. Gopika’s background: Born and raised in Mumbai, Gopika is now married to Mohit, a lawyer, with whom she’s raising twins, Vir and Gayatri. Here, she describes arranged marriages, a deep reverence for grandparents, and raising a child with autism in India… Today, for our next Parenthood Around the World interview, we spoke to Gopika Kapoor, a writer and neurodiversity consultant, who lives in Mumbai with her husband and twin children.