This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 28, 2009 - She knew what waited for him before it ever started, but still, Reena Hajat felt she was stepping into the unknown as she and David Carroll entered into the kitchen of her childhood home.
On the table sat four mugs of black tea. Around the table sat Dr. Mala Hajat and Dr. Gulam Hajat. This November afternoon, no one would be heading into the Chicago cold or hitting the black Friday sales.
Carroll came with one question for the Hajats. They came with many more.
He started. I'd like to ask for your blessing for Reena and me to get married, he said.
Across the table, Gulam Hajat saw the nervousness in Carroll. That didn't surprise him. But he wasn't ready to give the two his blessing.
In some ways, he knew what they'd face as a married couple. Gulam Hajat is Muslim, born in Malawi. Mala Hajat is Hindu, born in India. Though both are Indian, when they married, they faced struggles specifically because of their differences.
Hajat and Carroll also come from different religions: She sees herself as interfaith, observing many traditions; he's Christian. But unlike her parents, they're also different races. She's Indian and he's black.
Gulam Hajat began his questioning. He wanted to know about Carroll's family and how he was raised.
"It does matter," Gulam Hajat says. How a person is brought up, what they're exposed to, it matters.
And he knows. The Hajats raised their three girls as openly as they could, exposing them to everything. One became a lawyer. One works in public health. And then there's the youngest, Reena, who sat across the table with the man she hoped to marry.
Hajat, now 29, grew up experiencing different cultures, religions, races and ways of living. But instead of picking one, she chose to celebrate and fight for them all.
REENA FROM THE BLOCK
At the same kitchen table, more than 20 years before, Hajat remembers her parents reading the newspaper, talking, having tea and toast with Albert. The family's handyman was Polish and joined them often for breakfast. Hajat remembers his broken English, but even more, how he was always welcome. To her, it sent a significant signal.
"Everyone's good enough to sit a your breakfast table," she says.
The same was true for faiths and traditions -- all welcome. Hajat's family celebrated Christmas, decorated a tree and shared presents. They feasted together for the Muslim holy day Eid, which celebrates the end of Ramadan. They lit candles for the Hindu holy day Diwali, which is the Hindu festival of lights. When they visited India, she went to the Hindu temple with her grandmother. When they stayed with her cousins in Chicago, she'd attend Islamic school.
"I really felt like I had everything."
But Hajat's parents worked to make sure she knew what to do with it all. Often, they'd ask her and her sisters -- was their a void in their lives? How did they feel about all they learned? Around the table, they'd talk.
"There was a space to process," Hajat says. "And I think without that, I think I would have been pretty confused."
Instead of confusion, Hajat found understanding, which deepened her appreciation of people.
Growing up, she was already quite a people person, her mother says. One year when she was younger, her mother asked Hajat to organize a block party for the 25 families in the neighborhood. Hajat put on her rollerblades and canvassed the neighborhood.
"I only had to tell her once and she did it every year," she remembers.
"I was known by her name," her father says. "'That's Reena's dad.'"
Both Hajat's parents had grown up modestly. As physicians, they did well here, but they wanted their daughters to understand all the things people face. Hajat worked, both in her father's pediatric clinic and at a part-time job.
And instead of attending the nearby suburban high school, she went to a private high school in the city of Chicago. Every morning, her father drove her there. He avoided the highways, the routes that would have let them race past the poor parts of the city. Instead, Hajat remembers driving right through them.
Those drives showed her poverty and made her question how it happened. It showed her something different, as did working at her father's clinic, which was in the southwest part of the city in a mostly black and Latino neighborhood.
Hajat had all the pieces for a life of service.
Still, the direction she chose surprised her father. "I thought she would probably go into finance or accounting or something like that," Gulam Hajat says. "And this came to us as quite a surprise."
Hajat went to Occidental College in Los Angeles to study sociology. After graduating, Hajat began attending a Christian church, which was affiliated with the youth center where she worked.
"And I think during that time I questioned whether or not I wanted to subscribe to one religion," she says.
Six years ago, Hajat moved to St. Louis to get her master's in social work at Washington University. By then, who she was and what she believed had all come together. It wasn't about any specific creed for Hajat, but a relationship with God that was personal, meaningful and all her own. Just as anyone had been welcome at her family table, now she worked to extend those attitudes to people in St. Louis.
Two and a half years ago, Hajat became the executive director for Diversity Awareness Partnership, a nonprofit that promotes diversity in St. Louis.
As she settled into life and the challenges that came with diversity work here, Hajat attended professional groups' events. One night, she met a young man who was working in corporate America but ready for a change.
Soon, Carroll and Hajat were dating. He began a career with Urban Futures, which mentors elementary and middle school students in South St. Louis. Then, this year for Thanksgiving, the two headed to Chicago.
On the way up, they prepared for the coming interrogation.
HERE COMES THE BRIDE?
The questions continued in Hajats' kitchen, and Gulam Hajat watched Carroll and his daughter relax. But through the two hours and tea they shared, he didn't ease up.
How would they raise their children? How would they handle discrimination when they visited India?
Would Carroll be a Denis Thatcher, husband of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and support his wife in her high-profile career? Or would he be a Feroze Gandhi, who Gulam Hajat thought couldn't handle the success of his wife, India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi?
They covered issues of race, class, religion and gender, all things Hajat works with each day at many levels in the community.
Finally, the questions ended. Still, Gulam Hajat wasn't ready to give Carroll an answer.
"I have no objections," Gulam Hajat remembers telling the couple. "But I will not give you a yes or no answer until I've talked to a family member. But I will get back to you."
Carroll and Hajat returned to St. Louis and waited.
FIRED UP
Hajat is petite, but her deep belief in people and their rights isn't small at all. Sometimes, Carroll says, she kind of sticks her foot in her mouth correcting the things people say, but that's who she is. This awareness is a part of her.
Jackie Masei met Hajat a year ago. The two sat down to talk about Masei's work writing and directing a play based on her experience moving to St. Louis while in a gay, interracial relationship. And while Hajat comes across as very professional, Masei says, there's a real fire burning there for issues of diversity and social justice.
"She's not just filling a seat at the Diversity Awareness Partnership," says Masei, artistic director of Playback Workshop Theatre. (Masei's mother is African American, Native American and Irish and her father is Samoan.) "She was really on fire about the importance of bringing diversity awareness to St. Louis and how kind of deep it is."
Hajat carries that fire with her, Carroll says.
"That definitely transcends all parts of her life."
Much of their social life gets taken up attending events for local nonprofits. But at home, Carroll says Hajat is goofy. She loves kid's movies, like "The Incredibles," and is always looking for an excuse to buy something new for her niece so she can watch it herself.
And despite how she was raised, Carroll doesn't think Hajat's path was laid out for her. It was a choice.
"But at the same time, whether they knew it or not, they were kind of forming that," he says of her family.
For a while, Gulam Hajat asked his daughter about her work. What are you doing, really? How does it work? She brings diversity training to all kinds of people and businesses, she'd tell him, to people who are highly educated and not. It's not just about race or class, but religion and gender and sexuality. And then, she invited him to an event at an electrical plant in Peoria.
Both her parents came. Then, they understood, he says.
And they weren't the only ones. In September, Hajat was named one of 25 Inclusive Leaders by the St. Louis Business Journal. In November, the Bank of America named her one of five local heroes in St. Louis and gave the partnership a $5,000 grant.
And in the past two years, the Diversity Awareness Partnership has trained more than 2,000 people and worked with more than 50 different organizations and groups. In January, the partnership will unveil a new poster featuring the Cardinal's Yadier Molina, the Ram's Oshiomogho Atogwe and Erik Johnson from the Blues.
MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
After his daughter and her boyfriend left Chicago, Gulam Hajat consulted his older sister, as it's a tradition to talk with a family elder. The two decided that if the couple wanted to marry, they'd have the family's blessing. He told his daughter as much over the phone.
He says she was very excited, but she already knew he'd say yes. Still, it was important to her to honor the custom.
In February, Hajat and Carroll will marry in St. Louis. Right now, they're planning all the details, looking for the perfect place, a bakery, a florist. Hajat knows the ceremony will be interfaith. She'll wear a red lenga, traditional Indian bridal wear. He'll wear a black tux. They'll say 'I do,' and then start a life together.
It's a life that won't always be easy, her father has told her. Things won't always be rosy. But after his interrogation, he's confident that they're prepared for the things that lay ahead. And, someday, Carroll says, if he and Hajat are lucky enough to have a daughter, he'll put any man who wants to marry her through exactly the same thing.