You're totally not being shallow. That would annoy the hell out of anybody. Heck, she annoyed me just reading an account of her behavior.

whistleDick I bet you his girlfriend constantly pounds into his head on the "shallowness" of others hence his fear of being shallow.

I read this incredible wedding announcement-incredible in what a giant piece of shit the woman was. She too went on an Indian spiritual journey. Well guess what she did? She ran over a little girl and killed her. What did this horrible incident teach her?

She said something like "Coming out of this, I feel like it was a test to help me grow as a person in my spiritual journey. I became alot stronger-like it was almost my destiny"

Not.even.kidding.

I wish I could find the link so I could post it.

I never met her, and I'm already sick of her. I'm sure she's very nice and all, but that behavior is really, really annoying.

And THESE are the people that make me afraid to express my spirituality or culture in any public setting. Let me explain: I am a Shakta Hindu who has also trained in Shinto mysticism, my paternal lineages extend from Japan and Ireland (great-grandma was a war bride from Kyoto). Maternal lineage is Rom and Lithuanian. The Rom tribe my great-grandmother belonged to kept a lot of Hindu traditions and traced a lineage near the mouth of the Ganges. I grew up being taught to revere all faiths and practice the tenets and traditions of both sides. I wear kimono and sari on the appropriate holidays, keep religious traditions, and various other things. I work in religious charity as well. But you know what? None of that matters to anyone but me and I get that. That's why I don't bother people with it.
But then, oh then, I go to visit my Indian friends who own a shop in the next town (usually on a holiday, so yes I'm wearing a sari) and I immediately get mobbed by some idiot with a bhindi and Ugg boots who wants to talk to me about her Hot Yoga class. Or worse getting told off by some PC peon about "cultural appropriation". LW, people like your girlfriend make it very hard for other non-Desi people who truly respect the faiths and cultures of Asia to go about their lives unmolested and unmocked. I hope she was just having a Punjabi case of Jerusalem fever and gets over it, otherwise tell her to knock it off or you're walking off.

People who go off the deep end over other cultures are usually pretty shallow. This act is straight out the 1960s, inflicting pictures of your vacation on a bunch of people who weren't there, never will be and don't care.

Mrs D is Japanese by ethnicity and birth. We could have stayed there for the last going-on-forty years, and I would still be a gaijin - literally an outside person. Sounds harsh, but that's reality. I like, and miss much about Japan, but I have never deluded myself about reality. There are places in this town I won't go either.

Is it shallow of me to be bothered by her new look and attitude when she's feeling so enlightened?

That you're even worried about it signals to me that you're NOT shallow at all. Your gf just might be. Also, what Amy and everyone else said. Give her another month to wallow in it, and if she hasn't snapped out of it by then, walk. She might just come to her senses then.

She sounds obnoxious.

I knew a gal who spent two months in London and would "accidentally" slip into a (really bad) British accent sometimes. She "just couldn't help it." But then her cell would ring, and she'd be talking to her boyfriend, no British accent to be heard.

I was also at dinner with a group of people, and this girl was going on and on about how she'd spent a summer in Italy. And oh, it's such a BEAUTIFUL place with BEAUTIFUL people, and she just ABSORBED the Italian language, and she dreams in it sometimes. My friend whose mom is Italian (and speaks it fluently) tried to speak it with her, and she just kept saying "Beautiful! So beautiful" over and over again in Italian because, turns out, that's all she really knew how to say.

You never see the the truly worldly people acting this way. My boyfriend's parents have lived all around the world and speak fluent Spanish, Hindi, French, Arabic, English and the language native to the part of India they grew up in. Their knowledge of the places they've lived in and the languages they know are TOOLS -- and they use them in social, travel, and business situations to great effect. But you NEVER see them trying to stand out as "exotic" to impress random people.

tl;dr LW's girlfriend obviously doesn't get out much, and she's using a one-month trip to India to seem more worldly than she is.

Yeah, the whole thing is sort of a high-concept version of "Guess what? We stopped at this place on Highway 92 and saw The World's Largest Popcorn Machine!" There's always an excitement about having seen something different from your normal surroundings. But there's also this obnoxious thing among anti-Western Westerners that regards almost any non-Western culture as being more enlightened than our own. In the case of India, I blame The Beatles. But Indians themselves don't seem to agree, considering how hard they're working to try to Westernize their country. Safe food, non-poisonous water and not having to burn wet peat for heating makes up for a lot of "culture".

So yeah, bear with the situation for a little while longer, and see how it evolves. Eventually she may get tired of the fabric and linguistic knick-knacks. There is probably little you can do to influence her at this point. If it doesn't start getting better in a few more weeks, consider your options.

Also, I LOVE the headline for this column. It sums up my opinion of the original book.

Cousin Dave,

Don't forget rape. Apparently rape is like super popular over there.

I've talked to alot of my friends and the reason many prefer white American males is because they don't have those weird old world notions about women.

I think white women need to live in places and cultures where you are constantly told you are a piece of shit simply cuz you have a vagina. I lived through it and it SUCKS.

Yeah, I remember reading the "Eat, Pray, Barf" book too, at the urging of a friend who was so impressed by the author's "journey" that she considered her a guru.

The book seemed to me to be one of the most self-indulgent, self-centered screeds I'd ever read. It was all about HER. Seems like the LWs girlfriend is all about herself as well.. no room for the unenlightened in her flowery paradise..they're too "shallow". Yes, it IS pretentious. I think you're being very kind to the girlfriend, Amy. But LW doesn't say how long he and Guru Girl have been together. If this is really the first time you've taken a clear look at her, run like your hair was on fire, boy-o.

I've been stumbling down Buddhist path many years now, and you're right, Amy. The real deals don't dress in robes and speak in flowery language.

"I've talked to alot of my friends and the reason many prefer white American males is because they don't have those weird old world notions about women."

But... but... It's the West that's guilty of rape culture! Right? That's what they told me!

@sofar, re pretentious pretending to speak Italian, oh my, life imitates art: LUCIA! (a series of books by E.F. Benson). Lucia fans will understand the thrill.

LW, you have the most annoying girlfriend in the world! Nothing is more obnoxious than the "I'm-not-really-a-white-person/American" "other"-culture convert. And the least impressed people are those who are actually from the place in question. Let's hope she gets over it quickly.

@Mephyle, thank you for the introduction to E.F. Benson's "Lucia" books! I just read a sample on Amazon and they are the funniest things I've read since P.G. Wodehouse! I must get to the library soon!

Also, I LOVE the headline for this column. It sums up my opinion of the original book

Ah yes "Eat, Pray, Love" Wherein a woman leaves her husband to find "herself" and some claptrap about fulfillment and somehow finds it only within a relationship with a slightly richer man who seems to have all the same character traits, and the bigger bank account, as the husband she left.

I'd like to chalk this up to youthful silliness and tell LW to ignore it, but costumes and affectations put me off, too. If you're not a native or trying to blend in with them, and it's not Halloween, it's a costume. It's something straight off the Stuff White People Like blog.

Maybe LW can gently kid his GF about channeling her inner Austin Powers and tell her she looks shagadelic.

My wife wears a sari, and she's anything but Indish...that said, she looks fantastic in it, so I don't mind her little eccentricity. She doesn't affect the same attitude as the LW's girlfriend though, so that is a good thing. Frankly, as far as she's concerned, she's just wearing something comfortable that looks great on her, and that crosses all cultural borders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM9__IGZ9Ow

Reminds me of a skit from Goodness Gracious Me...

If you dare, tell her that she appears to be living in her "spiritual ego."