Angela Lin 0:14
Hey, everyone. I’m Angela Lin.
Jesse Lin 0:16
And I’m Jesse Lin. And welcome back to but where are you really from?
Angela Lin 0:20
Today we have a special guest Shibani Joshi.
Shibani Joshi 0:24
Hello, hi there.
Angela Lin 0:26
Well, we don’t know too much about you and our listeners don’t know too much about you. So why don’t you introduce yourself, what you do what you’re all about, and then we’ll get into the key topic that we want to cover for today.
Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Shibani Joshi 0:41
Sure. So I’m thrilled to be with both of you today and for everyone listening as well. My name is Shibani Joshi, I am a business and tech reporter, and journalist, I have a bit of an unusual background when it comes to that I, I started my career on Wall Street studying business and worked on wall street for a number of years ended up going to business school, and doing strategy and business development for really big companies. And then decided to follow my passion, which was really what I wanted to do was to get into business journalism. And I did that at the time that the Fox Business Network was launching in New York City. And that’s when I made the leap, and began my on air career as a business and tech journalist. I ended up anchoring my own market show, I had my own dedicated tech segment across Fox News and Fox Business. And I’ve been tinkering with tech toys since I was six years old and that’s what I brought to the table that I really, really love. And that’s what I continue to talk about now, just from more of a freelance independent place. And I also speak and talk about to women and business professionals, I teach an executive MBA class about strategic communications, I talk about personal empowerment and sort of the ever elusive work life balance phenomenon because I’m, I’m living it and breathing it. And this is stuff that, you know, I’m trying to find my best practice best practices on. And I talk about this all the time, and experience the ups and downs of it. And it’s what I like to also incorporate in and, and what I talk about, and what I talk about is living an authentic, balanced life, that is of excellence. And that is very different than being perfect. And that is very different than being ambitious. It is something that I’ve been working a really long time on. And it is a work in progress. I tell you what.
Angela Lin 2:55
I believe that and so basically, in summation, you are way more accomplished than Jesse.
Shibani Joshi 3:03
Not at all.
Jesse Lin 3:04
Y’all was like, I’m I’m really excited to like, unpack what I learned from this conversation. So very, very, very excited.
Shibani Joshi 3:12
All, good.
Angela Lin 3:13
And in tying it to our podcast theme, how would you best to answer but where are you really from?
Shibani Joshi 3:21
Yeah, I’m from anywhere I want to be at that moment. You know, I my parents are from India. I grew up in Oklahoma in the oddest of places. I’m like a country girl. I watch college football. I do all of those things. And and then I moved to New York. So I am a city girl at heart. And now I’m in the burbs. And, you know, depending upon what I’m doing and how I’m operating. You know, I’m from I’m from everywhere. And sometimes I feel like I’m from nowhere. All of the above.
Angela Lin 3:55
That’s lovely. Yeah, we hear you on all those things. Yeah. Jesse’s in New York right now. And I also used to live in New York and we grew up in the most burbs of burbs in Orange County? No, yeah. I get it. Yes.
Jesse Lin 4:10
I want to say I love the answer. I think it’s so positive. Because I feel like a lot of the times, usually with our guests, and even among ourselves, we kind of default this default to this kind of like resignation. So you have like multiple layers, you’re like, the first layer is very positive, then the second layer is like, Okay, and then the last day you’re fine, like, okay, like this is I know, this is what you want, like you want the ethnicity and then finally give it to you give it to whoevers asking. But it’s really nice that you start with something like very positive.
Shibani Joshi 4:38
Yeah, great. And I you know, I think it’s a fair question. I mean, I think that I, I take it as a question of curiosity and not offense. I mean, maybe I’m naive in assuming that and I have struggled with my entire life people. Where are you from? What, what ethnicity are you and you know, I think people don’t look at me and necessarily think that I look Indian even though I am Indian and I people in India know that I’m Indian. But I think I have this sort of ethnically ambiguous look also where I think people are curious and are interested in knowing more, and they don’t know how to ask it other than, where are you from? Or Where are your parents from? Or where are you originally from? or whatever, all those phrases that we’ve heard a gazillion times, but I think just assuming the best in people is always, you know, a good good philosophy.
Angela Lin 5:31
All right, we’ll need to have that positive outlook rub off on us, on our cynical mindset.
Shibani Joshi 5:38
It’s a hard time right now. So I get it to where I’m particularly cynical right now, with everything that’s going on.
Angela Lin 5:45
Yes. Well, something that stood out to us because it really relates to kind of the core identity pieces, cultural pieces that we’re unpacking on this podcast is that you recently wrote an article for Elle Magazine, right? Where you discussed, kind of like the other side of Indian matchmaking, that really fun Netflix show that we may or may not have binged and so seeing that you had written this very personal experience, we thought that you’d be a perfect guest to speak on this topic, amongst others. So that is the main topic that we’ll be talking about in today’s episode is kind of where, you know, where does the concept of arranged marriages live within our communities, you know, cultural context, how does that differ when it comes to being Indian American versus someone in India, and your, any other, you know, personal learnings that you’ve had, through your own experience that we can unpack here?
Shibani Joshi 6:55
You know, I preface everything that I say by saying that these are my personal experiences, and the explanations that I have lived or that, you know, have been shared with me, I don’t have the deep context of, you know, historical knowledge or even regional, I mean, it’s very regionalised. In in India, the culture, the tradition, the language, the food, all of these things. So my experiences, hyper local, right, for the area that my family’s from, which is Maharashtra, which is the state in which Mumbai or Bombay is in. You know, arranged marriages do seem like an archaic concept, and from my parents explanation of the reason why it makes sense is, I do believe that there’s a benevolent factor in there. And I think it comes from believing that there’s more compatibility when like, is with like, so as many compatible categories and features that you can match up, you take out or you eliminate the complexities and the reasons for there to be discord differences, struggles, all of those things, and having been in a marriage, um, I sort of understand that logic more than I did 10 or 20 years ago, is that marriage is very complex marriage, it can be difficult at times, and if you are fighting and having differences in so many different categories, whether it is socio economic, religious, traditional, whatever it is, right. Adding more layers of differences and complexity can just make your life more challenging. And I think so I do think it comes from a benevolent place. I also think that society was just was just different. I mean, you were not meeting people from different parts of the country. There was no internet, all of these things. And so it really just became a matchmaking system that would match people based on lots of different data points.
Thank you for walking us through that. Because like Jesse said, we knew very little about, you know, all the ins and outs. And so it sounds like from what you cover, then your parents did not try to inflict that on you, or did they, and then you kind of, you know, push back and then found your own way.
So the way that a quote unquote arranged marriage happens in the United States is, is very different. Maybe there’s similarities across different cultures, but there’s, there’s a lot of, you know, behind the scenes, arranging that can happen, you know, somebody’s parents might have called my parents or are you, you know, asking, oh, is, you know, Shibani interested in getting married, and then my parents would ask me, and I would say, No way, you know, I’m going to do my own thing, and I’m going to school and you know, whatever it is, and so, old school, Indian parents would still talk and they still, quote, unquote, network and say, and then they kind of leave it to the kids and say, do you know, do you guys want to? Do you want exchanged phone numbers? Do you want to talk whatever it is, but there is no, there, there is some orchestration and some conversation happening beside behind the scenes, and again, they are factoring in the categories and the characteristics that, you know, they would have done in India. You know, we we really struggle with balancing or, I did, you know, sort of balancing what, you know, what I thought would make a quote, unquote, happy marriage, and what is the recipe for happy marriage, I just didn’t have the research, I didn’t have the data, I didn’t have the questions of like, what to look out for, except for that checklist of what I knew was important to my parents, and to my culture, about a partner, Indian, educated, tall, handsome, you know, of the same religion, you know, whatever it is, whatever it is, those checklists. And, and what I know now is, gosh, that’s not enough to guarantee a happy marriage. Because, you know, after I had done all of the check, checklist, check off and I had married an Indian man, and I had married somebody who was equivalent to me in education, and ambitious, and, you know, a family person, and, and tall and all of these things. My marriage still didn’t end up working out. And now I look back, and I think, I didn’t know what to really look out for it, because I never had those conversations. And I, I wish I had, and I wish, I wish, you know, that would be a part of the dialogue that we have as a community instead of, what does it look like to others? What would the community think? How successful is this person that the like, outer trappings of, of really success, you know, what success looks like either physically, in a career, you know, whatever it is, it’s, there’s so much more to a person, and there’s so much more to making a successful marriage than those external, you know, those external categories. But I also think that some of them are important, you know, but I just didn’t have it’s like learning a language. I didn’t, I was never trained in that language. And I wish I had been and I think, you know, I’m changing that in my own family. And, and I think that’s the benefit of being in this country, is that we can talk about these things and experiencing experiences things differently than maybe our parents did.
Jesse Lin 14:25
Yeah, yeah. I think, um, you know, when you were describing the way that the arranged marriage works, there are a few things that would like lit up light bulbs. For me, the first thing was like, is this really that different from how our parents got married? Like, not really, they don’t call it an arranged marriage, but it’s not really like they had a plethora of choices. It’s largely, the choices are largely dictated by the family. And there’s usually some kind of compatibility there, right? So like, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t very likely marry somebody that’s like way out of your socio economic class. Because they’re usually looking for someone that is like in the same same boat. So, yeah, it’s so interesting because I never thought about it in that way. Because for some reason, I always ascribe some semblance of agency to my parents, but I’m like, did they really have a choice? I don’t think they really did. And, and the last thing you mentioned about having the conversation with, you know, parents preparing us for these choices, I felt like that really resonated with me. And I probably with Angela too, because oftentimes, we kind of like we’re like, faulting our parents, like, you know, they never, they never guided us to these decisions. But the reality is that they don’t even have the experience, right, like Angela’s mentioned that her, her dad is her mom’s first boyfriend, and like, first and only choice, so they don’t even have like, the way to prepare us for making these decisions. So that kind of brings me to my question, which is like, do your parents see the current situation in terms of there’s, you know, there’s still arranged marriages, but then there’s still there’s this kind of like, you’re free to make your own decisions on who you want to love who you want to marry? And like, what do they think about these two dichotomies?
Shibani Joshi 16:13
So that’s a great question. I don’t know what they think. Right? Yeah, I can tell you that I have a 35 year old brother who’s not married yet. And they are like trying to get him married. And he’s like, I’ll do it when I’m ready. And, and then my sister married who she wanted to marry, and he’s not of the same religion. And, and I have lots and lots of examples of that with my direct cousins also. So, you know, my parents never because of how they raised us in this country. And what I think they accepted as the norm is that they couldn’t force us to choose a certain mold. And I know that for my own kids, you know, is there’s so much that I’m teaching them about, about their culture and their values. And ultimately, they get to decide if you know, what parts of the culture they’re going to carry on and what parts they’re going to say, it just doesn’t serve us, you know, I see that straight up. And you know, how, what I hear from my cousins and my family in India, you know, and it’s something that I wrote about in this Elle piece, which was my parents came over here, and your parents came over here, and in the year that they did, and those values of the country that from which they came from, are frozen in time, from the date that they left. And so my parents have come here with 1970s values of India, and even my cousins, they’ll say that, that’s old school, India, you know, people I, you know, I, I told, you know, my own family didn’t know that I was getting that I was divorced or divorcing, and I was so terrified of disappointing them, of them, like abandoning me of, of like, what their reaction would be, particularly the family in India, because I just thought, wow, they are just gonna think this is so taboo, and I’m bad, and, you know, I’m just, you know, of bad morals, and whatever it is, and my cousin was like, eh, this happens all the time here now, you know, and he just kind of shook it off, and my aunts and uncles, they’re like, it’s okay, you know, they were super actually cool about it. It was my parents, and my parents and my family that had come from India that live here, that I felt like had the hardest time because they had not seen how India had modernized, how divorce was becoming much more common how these lack of arranged marriages that people were doing, quote, unquote, love marriages much more often. And that society had changed. And I think that that’s, that’s, and again, and that’s part of what I think, you know, I’m passing on my concept of Indian culture is is what they passed on to me, which for my kids is gonna be like, decades and decades and decades removed, right? So I get that they may not carry some of that stuff off. It may not even in and for people in India, it’s like so out of touch, right? So we’re all operating with these time capsules of what our culture is, was without real time checks, and every time I go to India, I have real time checks, you know, I’m like, Oh, this is normal. And this, people are going to bars and they’re doing this and doing that and like, what do I think is happening there and I appreciate that I appreciate the opportunity to recalibrate because life has changed there. And, and, and what I think of what my culture is, is, is an ever evolving thing. Just like who I am, you know, and that that’s kind of that’s It’s kind of cool. I think.
Angela Lin 20:01
That’s super interesting. And I love that you assign this time capsule type of analogy to it, because I don’t think Jesse and I have talked about it in those terms, either where when we talk about our parents values, I think we do make the mistake of making that assumption that it is the prevailing continued values and culture that’s going on in Taiwan, which is where our motherland is. And so it’s really lovely to hear from your side that your experience with divorce is that your family actually didn’t care that much. Because I think, for us thinking about that topic, it was a lot of like, well, as far as like, we know from our parents, right divorce and something even Taiwanese culture, that’s like taboo, and no one does it. And like, we have, I don’t know if you use the same term, but we constantly talk about like saving face, right, which is exactly what you mentioned before, the outward appearance that you have, and like the honor and the dignity that you’re providing to your families through your actions. And so for, for us, like even talking to my parents a while ago, many years ago, at this point by we were talking about relationships, and exactly what Jesse mentioned before that, like they don’t have that much experience, either, because they didn’t have dating and all that stuff. But when we talk about when things are rocky and whatnot, we had mentioned, my brother and I mentioned very briefly in the past, like, well, did you guys think about divorce at any point, you know, and like, that’s not even, that’s not an option, like that’s not within the realm of possibility. So just don’t even talk about that. And so that’s why I think we carried that feeling of like, well, modern, you know, modern time Taiwan must also think the same way. But really great to hear that, at least in India, that is not the case. And I think it’s time for us to have a little like, gut check with what reality is like, like, in our own motherland.
Shibani Joshi 21:56
And whether or not it serves us, I think that that’s something that you know, the saving faces is what you know, and in our culture, we say, you know, what would people think? And that’s always in the back of our mind. So like, what, what would our neighbors think? What would our family think? Well, you know, there’s a lot of this outward facing concern for saving face for maintaining status. And it can be, I guess, motivating in some circumstances, but I just think that it takes to Jesse’s point the agency out of our own lives, and I, I just in struggling with deciding to divorce it was, you know, it’s funny, because when I was, you know, I didn’t talk about it with many people, but with my quote, unquote, American friends, right? It was just like, no big deal. Okay? What like, think about it, move on, whatever you decide, it’s all good, like, just move forward. But I really felt this personal crisis of, can I be Indian? And be this quote, unquote, you know, good Indian girl, or traditional Indian girl, do these things like, can I hold my culture? And also get divorced? Or do I have to pick one or the other, and I really thought that I had to pick one, because there would be no space for me, you know, there’s just the tradition that we have, when we go to a Hindu temple, you have these ancient family names, and there’s gotras four of them and we all come from, you know, one ancient family. So you, you go when you share the family name, or whatever, and the priest blesses you. And I thought, like, what do I do in this circumstance? Do I go with my married one? Or do I go with my, my, you know, my pre married one? And like, will the priest even bless me anymore? Am I allowed, you know, like, I had these real crises of feeling like will I get rejected within my own community? And, and, you know, at some point, I just, I had to choose what my gut was telling me to do, my heart was telling me to do, I had tried everything that I had could for years and years and years, and I had just hit the end of the road. And at some point, I just thought, I choose me. And if that means I can’t do this, or I can’t do that. So be it, you know. And what I realized is, is that there are things that you can do right, to maintain your independence, your power, your you know, all of these things, but I think it’s it’s a it’s our own concept of what we think life should look like. And I am very fortunate to be able to act upon circumstances to create a life that I think is is really right for me, and I and I and I walk alone in that path, you know, I think I wrote in that Elle article, you know, I didn’t see my, my parents for a year, because my dad was so adamant that divorce is wrong. And he doesn’t believe in divorce. And he doesn’t think that I should divorce. And, you know, I had to be willing to walk away from them in order to walk my own path, and that was what I had to do. And I was for I, you know, I just, I got to the point where I tried, and I tried to keep it together, and I tried to do everything I could do. And then I just realized, I have to do what’s right for me, and it might come at the sacrifice of relationships, including with my own parents.
Angela Lin 25:52
Well, we respect you for picking the best parts of what is going to work best for you and not thinking of culture as something that is so rigid that you can’t make it your own. I think that’s something that we’re constantly talking about on the show is like, how do we redefine culture and identity for ourselves? So I think I’d love to pivot this into a more positive way where you’re already talking about some of these, you know, good things that you chose for yourself. I’d love to hear a little bit about like, what are the positive lessons and learnings that you got out of this very difficult experience that you had and how that’s affected the way that you are carrying yourself and the things that you’re choosing to pursue in your life as well. Like you mentioned, speaking engagements, and, you know, choosing the best life for you and like, how did this all affect that and how you’re carrying things forward today?
Shibani Joshi 27:28
Yeah, I love that I love being able to pivot and move it forward. You know, I think we’re talking about the perceptions of divorce and thinking I can’t get divorced as an Indian was just also thinking that divorce needed to look a certain way it meant having different you know, we even though we’re Hindu or Indian, we celebrate Christmas and we open presents together and we do Thanksgiving and we do all these Indian and American things. And you know, my concept of divorce because we didn’t have you know, we didn’t have it in our family was that is what I saw on TV. And what I thought America and unquote american people did. And so it was two birthday parties and two Christmases and like all of these things. And I think it was also part of what I really struggled with because I was like, I can’t do that, you know, I just can’t do that. It just doesn’t – that feels so hard. And um, you know, I think now in our, like normal like society wide dialogue, we’re having these honest conversations and you know, Gwyneth Paltrow throughout conscious uncoupling and I never read that book. But I think, you know, what it brought out was that there’s a different face of divorce a divorce can look in different look different than maybe what we thought it could look like. And then I think the other thing is, is that you know, what I am, I, you know, I am very excited about is, you know, I get to talk to people about this and not specifically about divorce. But I think my Elle piece that I wrote, I think that it was hugely healing for me. But then I also think it gave people permission, I received hundreds and hundreds of comments and emails and you know, just DMs of thank you for writing this, I resonated with this. This is my life. This was, you know, my my sister’s life, my brother’s life, whatever it was. And I think that, in speaking our truth and talking about these things more within our communities, we give one another permission to break the taboos and to break the rules and change the rules and only by talking about them, can we do that and I felt like I have such privilege in my life. And I have a platform and I’m you know a person that’s you know, in the media and it looks like my life is perfect, but my life is far from perfect. And and I would love to demystify that, that and shatter that perception, and then give people permission to do the same thing because if my life, you know, if this can happen to me, then maybe it makes you feel better that it can happen to you or it did happen to you or it’s happening, you know, whatever it is, it’s happening in your life. Because sometimes we just need examples to give us that feeling that we’re not alone. And, and I just, I just felt so full, like my heart so full by the responses that I got in response to that piece. And it really just made me feel like it wasn’t easy. And it was a huge risk. But I’m so glad that I took it. I think difficulties in life are test us, they challenge us, they grow us, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be who we are without having gone through the hard stuff. And this was my heart stuff. And I am on the other side of it. And I’m a stronger, better person for it. And I’m just I can only feel grateful for that, because there’s a lot harder stuff that’s out there that I know about. So I feel pretty good about, you know, the hard stuff that I have. I even feel lucky about that.
Jesse Lin 31:07
Oh, wow. That’s amazing, like a good a good way, a high note to transition over to the ending part of our podcast. Welcome everyone back to the fortune cookie segment. Because we always like to end on a sweet treat. What are your – what are your hopes for your kids in terms of love and dating?
Shibani Joshi 31:28
Oh, I love that. That’s so beautiful. I think about I want them to be again, I go back to your word Jesse agents, I want them to have agency over their life, I want them to I think the most important thing for finding a good partner is is to know yourself first. And so I want them to know themselves well enough to ask questions about what’s important. If you don’t know yourself, you don’t know what questions to ask. And so I would I want them to know themselves well enough to ask not just of themselves, but of their future partners what’s important. I want them to I want them to be happy. I want them to be with whomever makes them happy. I don’t want them to be deluded that marriage is easy. Marriage is a journey and marriage takes work. And I think that I think that it’s worth fighting for. And I think that they need to know that just like anything else. I think that’s also one of the the traditional elements of Indian culture is you don’t necessarily – it’s assumed that the marriage is gonna work forever. And I think that that you can’t assume that I think you have to work hard at it. And then I don’t know love is a is is is worth it. I still think that love is worth it. And I hope they each experience it and experience it many times if that’s what their path path calls for. So it makes me happy just thinking about that. Yeah.
Angela Lin 33:10
Love it. Okay, well, Shibani thank you so much for joining us on the show. We really loved hearing from you and really appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing as much as you did. If our listeners want to find you or hear about any upcoming projects you have, where’s the best way that they can get in touch or to follow along with your journey?
Shibani Joshi 33:33
Yeah, you can check me out at ShibaniJoshi.com. I have two blogs on there. I have a tech blog and also just my personal writing and essay writing which I wrote write about all sorts of things including some of the things we talked about today. And there’s a contact me form you can always reach out to me if you want to shoot me your thoughts. I always love that and you can find me across social media as well.
Angela Lin 34:00
Awesome, well and listeners if you enjoyed this episode, the topics that we covered or you have your own experience with what we talked about, feel free to write us in at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com, we’re always out for listeners submitted stories as well. So do write us in and come back next week because we’ll have a fresh new episode for you then as well.