Bravo’s ‘Love Without Borders’: Why Was Gurleen’s Dinner Party Faux Pas Insulting?
Cleaning up after a dinner party is insulting? Apparently, Gurleen Virk strikes a nerve with Shreyas Mehta and his friends on Bravo‘s Love Without Borders when she insists on helping to clean up after a dinner party.
Everyone was drinking at a party at Shreyas’ cousin’s house and Gurleen begins to clear a few plates toward the end of the evening. “Staff can deal with that,” a friend tells Gurleen. But she insists telling him, “Wait, I’ve got to clean up.”
Gurleen helps clean after a ‘Love Without Borders’ dinner party
And while helping the host with clean up is often viewed as being a good dinner guest in the US, cleaning up when you are a guest in someone’s home in Dubai is viewed as rude. The hosts gently try to tell Gurleen (a few times) that the help they hired for the party will handle clean up.
But she brushes them off. “I live by myself and this is just normal for me,” she says as Shreyas and his friend Neeta look concerned. They gesture to the server working at the party to come to grab the plates as Gurleen pushes back. “Just let me do it,” she insists.
At this point they are arguing over who takes the plates inside the house and Gurleen won’t let it go. “I need to feel like I’m doing something because I’m the guest,” she says as she walks into the house with a stack of plates.
Shreyas explains how cultural differences could cause an issue. “I know Gurleen is trying to help,” he says in a confessional. “But in Dubai, we usually have external help taking care of the dishes, cleaning the house, washing the floors. It should be the house help who actually takes the dishes first. And it makes it look like Panchali and Vijay didn’t hire good help.”
Shreyas defends Gurleen to his friends on ‘Love Without Borders’
Shreyas’s friend Bret seemed annoyed as Gurleen continues to clean. He wonders why she continues to clean, but Shreyas says he hasn’t had “the conversation” with her yet about how “things go in Dubai.” In fact, Shreyas defends Gurleen.
“Because she’s so used to it. It’s sweet!” he says. “We’re not disagreeing that it’s really sweet.” But Bret wants her to stop and expresses his frustration to Shreyas. Meanwhile, Gurleen walks by and makes a snarky remark. “I’m just saying, leave it,” Bret says to her, but Gurleen continues to walk back to the kitchen.
Gurleen returns and Bret gently tells her, “You’re also in somebody’s house.” Gurleen says she “doesn’t care” even though someone is heard telling her that her actions offended the host. However, Gurleen isn’t listening to anything and continues to clean. The guests look tense but she isn’t picking up on their concerns.
Gurleen says she wasn’t going to change who she was in Dubai
“It’s very important to me to be independent,” she explains in a confessional. “And self-sufficient. I’m still Gurleen. I’m still me. So anything I would do at home, I would do in Dubai. Cleaning up after myself or whatever, I’m just going to do that.”
Tensions don’t seem to ease after Gurleen and Shreyas move into their own apartment. Bravo’s Love Without Borders teases a chilly next episode as some of the couples being to experience conflict.
Love Without Borders is on Wednesday at 9 pm on Bravo.
