Poster couple

“It took us a long-list of nearly 500 names to arrive at Zia,” Sheikh Imtiaz Ali says about the naming of his newborn daughter while making his way on a cold Saturday afternoon to his apartment in Dokbawi in northern Seoul.

What’s so special about that? Well, Ali, 34, a Muslim-Bengali from India’s West Bengal, is married to Yun Sue-kyung, 31, a Korean.

“Our baby’s name had to have a ‘Muslim sound’ according to my parents, a touch of Korean according to hers, and be fashionable yet short for our younger cousins. Zia is all of that,” he quips. 

Quite apt for this love story, one that began in 2008 when Ali met Yun through her brother, a close friend of his. As we sit down in their apartment where ondol meets Tagore, the meal is fittingly fusion: Korean fried rice prepared by Yun, Indian-style chicken curry and dal made by Ali.

We rewind to the starting point. Ali, a graduate from India’s prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, came to do his Ph.D. in chemistry at KAIST in Korea almost a decade ago. He studied and worked with Yun’s brother and later came to help her through a traumatic accident. It brought them closer and came to typify the adage “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” when Ali described Yun’s accident scars as “flower patterns” in an interview with a Korean TV channel.

After marriage, Yun converted to Islam and became Sara Hayat Ali. Four years and going strong ― their life even being the subject of a documentary film ― Ali and Sara have come to be the poster couple for the 183-odd Indian multicultural families settled in Korea.

Cultures converge

The marriage has given both the best and worst of both cultures. Sara who had backpacked to India before meeting Ali likes the “happier and free-minded Indian people where even beggars are philosophers” but not the “laziness and sometimes lack of honesty.”

“While Indians don’t worry the way Koreans do, I don’t like the double-checking one has to do at times while doing business with them,” she says.

Ali, on the other hand, admires the “sense of responsibility, respect and nationalistic spirit of the Koreans.”

“When it snowed yesterday, everyone in our neighborhood came out with a shovel and cleaned up. No one asked them to,” he says. But the perfectionist and workaholic traits don’t go down well with him.

“I admire their spirit but they don’t spend enough time with their families. India ― with its ritualistic pauses ― gives people time to reflect. Balance is important,” he says.

Where do the two cultures converge?

“Both cultures have the same sense of respect for the family and elders. Though nowadays that’s changing in both countries,” he says.

What about influencing each other? While Sara has learned to speak Bengali, Ali’s mother tongue, he can converse fluently in Korean. Kimchi meets Indian spices in their kitchen. She can cook a mean dal and loves “baingan ka bharta” (a traditional Indian dish made of brinjals). Ali’s mother on her visits has been making the traditional miyeok guk ― Korean seaweed soup that is given to mothers recovering from childbirth ― for Sara.

Ali also claims to have made Sara break out of the makeup obsession that Korean women have.

“I tell her she’s naturally beautiful. She doesn’t need to layer herself.”

“In Korea we consider it a sign of laziness and disrespect if we don’t make ourselves look good always,” Sara playfully shoots back, deftly dabbing her face for the photo shoot and changing into a traditional Indian salwar-kameez, made by her father-in-law.

Drawing from his background in India where he hails from Mecheda village of Midnapore district, being the president of the Kali Puja committee (worship of Goddess Kali is huge in West Bengal), Ali now leads the Indians In Korea group which celebrated the biggest Hindu festival Diwali in Suwon last month.

“My parents encouraged critical discussions at home, I learned Sanskrit for a year and studied the Ramayan and Mahabharat. They told us to pursue what we liked,” he said.

How have they reconciled parenting styles now that there’s a new dimension to their story?

Discrimination

“As Tagore said, come out of yourself to understand the self. I want to be a better person and have it reflect in being a father. In Korea, they have books for everything. In India, we lack the formal method but information is passed on from one generation to another. My mother taught Sara the traditional way of massaging and bathing the baby, while she explained to my mother the scientific aspects of breastfeeding ― how the angles make a difference to the breathing and comfort,” Ali said.

With India struggling to handle its huge population and Korea seeing an aging population and pressure on its young to perform well ― leading to high suicide rates ― what will it be like for baby Zia?

“She will have the responsibility of straddling two cultures since she belongs to both. I want her basic education to be in India and higher studies/masters in Korea,” Ali says.

On being called the poster couple, Ali avers it’s not about being on television or written about that matters.

“I faced discrimination from the locals when I came to Korea. Many Indians back home have half-baked notions about Koreans. The idea is to let both sides know different aspects of the cultures. If my story has to do it, so be it,” he says pragmatically.

“The high comes from people calling and saying, ‘Your story gave us strength to marry a foreigner,’” he adds, getting ready to head to a screen test ― it’s for an advertisement on “social awareness in Korea.”

By Shalini Singh (shalininess@gmail.com)

Shalini Singh is a journalist with the Hindustan Times/New Delhi. She was recently in Seoul on a Kwanhun Club-KPF media fellowship. ― Ed.