Embracing the Other

My mind has been racing non stop ever since I learned of the tragic Sikh Gurdwara shooting in Wisconsin. This evening I've been thinking about two things in particular. The first is the idea that someone could be so deluded by hatred for an "other", meaning someone different, or outside the mainstream, that they would feel the need to shoot them. The second is the extreme suffering my fellow turbaned Sikhs have been experiencing across our nation.

What struck me about the latter point, after reading the many tales of horrible encounters, was that I do not have similar stories. Like 100% of baptized Sikhs, I always get pulled aside at the airport for extra security, and I certainly have stories about being glared at, followed, or stared at by someone frightened by my appearance, but in general, these tend to dissipate as soon as I flash  a smile, ask how their day is going, or break the ice in some similar fashion. I also notice these negative things usually don't happen in Seattle, or at least my bubble within Seattle, and in general, are not something I would classify as serious or threatening.

As a little background, I only became a fully turbaned and bearded Sikh two and a half years ago, and for almost a year of that time I was out of the country. So I was not with a turban in the virulent wake of 9/11, nonetheless, it still strikes me as curious.

This evening, I had a thought. Today was Seattle Night Out, a Seattle tradition when we block off our streets from traffic, break out the barbecues, and chat with our neighbors. Its a wonderful way for the community to get to know one another.

So while enjoying a lovely evening with my neighbors, it struck me that we Seattleites are extremely, perhaps abnormally, comfortable with the notion of the other. The other, as in -- the one that is different from the main stream. As I looked around, I noticed a few neighbors with colorful tattoos, a lively gay couple with two sweet children, and an ever helpful male neighbor of mine, who happens to have fluorescent purple hair, neon blue nail polish, and black and white knee high horizontally striped socks. And as always, no one, not even the "normal" folks really noticed any of this as this sort of thing is  quite common in Seattle.

I believe Seattle, in a way, acts as a magnet and sanctuary for "others." So then, given all these "others," I suppose its only reasonable that a Sikh turban and long beard doesn't get noticed much either -- after all, its just another other. And perhaps if the shooter had been exposed to more "others," his heart might not have been filled with such hate.

A Trip to Manikaran Sahib

We recently returned from a few days up in the mountains with my cousin and family. We went to Manikaran Sahib, a Gurdwara that is located in the Parvati valley near Kulu and Manali in Himachal Pradesh.

The ride up was pretty twisty and turny. We had multiple vomit related pit stops. We've driven around the Cascades quite a bit without incident, but apparently the Himalayan mountain roads were too much for Nayan's stomach. Nonetheless, the drive was just spectacular. One of the things that is so different here, is that people, lots of people, actually live way up the mountain sides. Often there are no roads, just little trails; folks hike up many thousands of vertical feet to get to their houses. There's also an interesting network of rather sketchy cables and baskets to help people and goods traverse major valleys. Pictured below is me standing on one of many jerry rigged rafts that folks use to cross rivers.

The Gurdwara is built around natural hot springs; there are multiple baths where you can soak. The Gurdwara itself has a very universalist bent -- virtually every religious prophet is pictured throughout the Gurdwara; each time I went into the hot spring I had a different experience -- once with a group of Hindu priests, again w/ a number of Buddhist monks, more with Sikh pilgrims.
Here are a few snippets from SikhWiki.org on the history of the site: Guru Nanak Dev ji was with his Sikhs in the Himalaya mountains of India. His sikhs were hungry and there was no food. Guru Nanak sent his good friend Bhai Mardana to collect food for langar (the community kitchen). Many people donated rice and flour(atta)to make parsadas(bread). The one problem was that there was no fire to cook the food. Guru Nanak than lifted a rock and a hot spring appeared. The sikhs were able to make rice and beans.

Legend has it that once Lord Shiva and his divine consort Parvati were wandering in this sublime environment. Shiva liked the place and started meditating. Meanwhile, Parvati started taking a bath in the blue waters. While she was playing in the water she lost her earring. Shiva was enraged when he could not get back the earring, he started doing Tandav, the dance of destruction. The atmosphere got tense and Shiva threatened the serpent, the probable thief. The serpent fished the jewel out from the waters. Thus the river came to be known as Parvati and the place was called Mani(ring)Karan(ear).

Lord of the Flies: Hard Lessons for a 5 Year Old

I posted HERE about Nayan's decision to wear a patka and be a proper Sikh. Well it seems he's changed his mind. For 4 weeks Nayan was perpetually taunted and called "weirdo", "freak" and repeatedly ordered to "take it off" by other kids. He was very surprised. He honestly expected other kids to be as excited as he was in his religious adherence. What particularly frustrated him, was that whenever a child asked him "why he had that thing on his head" - and he tried to explain it, they ran off laughing.

We had no idea he was being harassed until last week. He was afraid to say anything since the school authorities had lectured the kids not to "tattle." Ameen went in to speak with his teacher upon finding out. The teacher, to her credit, took action to separate some of the harassing kids. But I believe it was all too late. These things can be pretty viral in their propagation. The damage was already done.

Nayan learned a hard first life lesson: fitting in is really important, and in the all white school of North Beach Elementary, he already stands out. With all the pierced, tattooed, pink haired "open mindedness" of left wing Seattle - one would think this wouldn't happen. Well it seems many humans, even as young as 5, simply are obsessed with something as harmless as a head scarf. It saddened me to see him so excited with his new haircut and eagerness to be accepted, but alas, at least his heart was in the right place. He was very logical about it, he said, "Papa, perhaps I can try again when I'm older, and better at explaining Sikhism."

First Day of School

The other day was Nayan's first day of kindergarten. This was a bitter sweet moment for me. While I'm overjoyed Nayan is growing up to be a mature, articulate, and thoughtful young boy, its sad, in a way, to know he's growing up. I recall distinctly when I was 17, waving goodbye to all of my family and friends, as I boarded an airplane to head off to Chicago and my new college life; my family and friends were so emotional -- sad, and crying. In me, there was no sadness; I had to pinch myself to stop from smiling; I was thrilled at arriving in my new life and leaving my small town world behind. Without a doubt, when that day comes with Nayan waving goodbye to me, I'll be a real emotional mess.

Despite the teachers rounding us parents up and taking us to the "cry" room - no one was outwardly sad, most of the moms were just grinning looking forward to their precious hours of freedom. There were, however, many practical concerns. Nayan has never been away from home for such a long duration. Simply getting him to eat his lunch is a whirlwind of a challenge. Well he learned quickly. After 3 days of stubbornly refusing to eat anything but the cookies in his lunch, he ultimately caught on.

I was also concerned about Nayan getting picked on for his patka. Nayan has recently decided he will be a proper Sikh and never cut his hair. As others, Ameen and I were quite surprised by his decision, and powerful will. Nayan has virtually no role models here in the states who have kept their hair, but his dearest cousins in India all have their hair kept. Ameen, after many failed trips to the barber, ultimately relented. So it turns out no one teased him, as Ameen was certain would be the case. Our neighborhood is really full of such open minded and caring people. Thank God we don't live in France, where Nayan would have been ejected from the school system for simply following his faith.

Screen Projected Translations of Kirtan

Our Gurdwara, or place of worship, recently started a wonderful pilot project where translations of the ceremony are projected onto a screen in roman script, English, and Punjabi. As someone who was born and raised in the states, I can attest to the struggle a western native born goes through to try to understand our services.

Our Giani's, or priests, rarely if ever offer any translation into English, the primary and often only language of the young generation of Sikhs. In addition, most of our prayers and shabads, or hymns, are in Gurmukhi, which is a much older form of Punjabi. After years of struggling to become more fluent in Punjabi, I was frustrated to realize I still had far to go in understanding our holy texts in Gurmukhi. In my estimation, differences between Gurmukhi and Punjabi are something akin to the differences between the early modern English of Shakespear's era, perhaps even the Old English of Beowolf, and modern day English.

In any event, the projection idea is a fantastic new development. The way it works is a volunteer runs a laptop which projects onto a screen during the services. The volunteer listens to the service, and figures out which shabad or prayer is being recited. This person then pulls up a corresponding power point containing the translations and clicks through the slides as appropriate. If a prayer or shabad is not available in a prepared power point, the person goes to www.sikhitothemax.com and performs a search to get to the appropriate text. The system works amazingly well without being disruptive to the hymns and ragas; the serenity of the prayers in their native Gurmukhi is preserved, the Giani's can remain spontaneous in their service, and the Sangat can gain more insight into the texts. The one drawback is that the volunteer needs to be trained and spend some effort, but my guess is this will become easier over time as the kinks in the system are worked out. We're currently raising funds to purchase the full projection system, and it looks likely to happen.

My guess is other immigrant communities of different faiths have similar problems where the ceremonies are performed in a mother language often foreign to the western native generation. I really hope this idea catches on as it would be unfortunate if another generation feels alienated from its faith due to a basic communication disconnect.

Children's Video on Guru Nanak Dev Ji

I ran across this lovely claymation video on the life of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder and first prophet of the Sikh faith. It is in English, and well suited for children. Click on the links below to view the video:

Life of Guru Nanak Dev Ji - Part 1
Life of Guru Nanak Dev Ji - Part 2

Kids Punjabi and Hindi Info

Sikh, Life: In response to my post Raising Sikh Children in a World of Illusion, I was asked for more detail on books/videos etc. Here is my response:

Re: children's books - there are a number of cartoon like books; one for each of the Gurus - you can find them in Delhi in nearly any book shop in Connaught Place. Occassionally we find something in the Punjabi section on main street in Vancouver. There is a beautiful book on Guru Nanak published recently in India though I can't find it here; all the pages are hand painted by a famous Indian painter whose name I can't recall now. I'll try to look it up tonight.

Re: videos - there is a kids video on Hindi called Chalo Hindi Bolay that Nayan has watched hundreds of times; it's extremely well done. In Jallandar and Chandigarh you can also find select popular movies dubbed in Hindi. We have purchased titles like Stuart Little, The Harry Potter series, etc. I have been trying, though with no success, to find a source for all of the cartoon network cartoons which are dubbed in Hindi (the ones nearly every Indian child is heavily addicted to); I'd be thrilled if anyone could identify a place to purchase these. Sadly, there are no kid related videos in Punjabi, either here, or in India that we could find. In Punjab, most kids are fluent in Hindi, and Punjabi is not treated that seriously (it's considered sufficient if kids speak it -- no need to read and write it too well). Here, most people just don't seem to care enough to expose there children to Punjabi, or if they do, it is dealt with casually and not treated with the rigor, or the all encompassing environmental exposure required for children to be truly bilingual, let alone on a path toward understanding Gurmukhi.

Raising Sikh Children in a World of Illusion

sikh, life: I got carried away commenting on a blog I read (SinghsRus). I was responding to this:

Oh yeah!, one of the thoughts was to post something about Sikh parents as to how challenging the job of Sikh parents is to raise kids in a non-Sikh environment, teach them Sikhi and Punjabi. Sometimes I get amazed as to how are some of the parents are able to instill Sikh values in their children keeping in mind the social pressure of TV, media, non-Sikh cultural environment, peer pressures, their own insecurities etc.

Here's my comment after a bit more editing:

It is hard to raise a Sikh child in a world of mass maya. I think it is doable though. My wife and I, on the birth of our first child, decided this was very important. We eliminated the television from our house (after being scared silly by the synergistic marketing section of Fast Food Nation), and began learning Punjabi in earnest (we were both raised in the west and neither of us was fluent by any means).

Since our children were born, we have only spoken Punjabi with them in the house. To this day it feels very strange for me to speak english with my son. In addition we always translate the kids' books into Punjabi while reading them. This has proven quite a challenge for us given our limited language skills, and the ever increasing complexity of the texts as our eldest ages. In addition, we continue to buy many Sikh children books, and spend a lot of time reading them, discussing them, saying prayers with the kids, etc. We have also made a point of spending atleast 6 weeks every few years in Punjab. This was really important as prior to our trip, my son began refusing to speak in Punjabi -- after 6 weeks playing with his cousins, he realized it was not just his parents who speak this language. Now he complains his Paji's aren't here to tell him any Punjabi jokes. Spending time in Punjab also helped develop his view of Sikhism and bring historical events alive; he was thrilled to go to Anandhpursahib where the Guru of his books had fought and prayed.

I have also thought about making this task for parents like ourselves easier. When we started, most people in our community thought it was funny that two kids raised here could attempt to raise their kids speaking Punjabi when their own skills were so terrible. They often teased us -- saying even if we could manage to teach them, the kids would forget it all before their 5th birthday. While we have yet to reach our fifth birthday, the teasing just made us all the more determined. Now the "Aunties" and "Uncles" all get a kick out of speaking w/ our son and hearing his authentic kid-slang; the elder generation gets glassy eyed while waxing about teaching their grand kids, and some of the younger generation have also chosen to "keep it real."

Having age appropriate books, videos, etc. would help quite a bit. We have had to go to Jallundar and comb the bazaars just to find good books, movies, etc. I often think about a start up company catering to people like us; then I always shelve it since it isn't technically interesting enough (I'm a bit of a techy type).

happy baisakhi

sikh, poetry: just wanted to wish everyone a happy baisakhi. for those unware, you can read a bit about the history HERE courtesy of the BBC.

my cousin just emailed me a lovely quote that i thought i'd share here on CB.

Forgetting the truth there is no where to turn

Upon realization of love I witness the world as a friend

An indescribable singular thought meditates within my mind

Reflecting on love provides me with happiness;
no harm can come to me in such a state

What can I call good and what bad? I see the entire world as one

Love provides me with shelter, with support; it is the hand that protects me

All which realize this state are not attached to suffering

Peace provides the mind with happiness

Repeating the name of truth paints my mind, giving me compassion

As I pray, I realize that this body and soul do not belong to me

Nanak says the greatness of reality belongs to the indescribable;
for do not utter my name, “I” do not exist

Guru Arjan Dev

Guru Granth Sahib pg. 383

macro-views

its over a week since we returned, and i'm still rising at 5AM. nayan wakes up at 4, and then eats his first breakfast. after feeding him, he roams the house playing with his toys. here's a post from a few days ago while back in india:

when i read things in the US, about the war in iraq, and political instability, i tend to put the information and my mental image of the place into a little box that i can open and close -- typically when starting and stopping a news article, or conversation on the topic. punjab, as most of you know, experienced quite a sustained period of insurgency and political instability. from the early 80s until the mid 90s, punjab was in essentially a state of war. sikh separatists were fighting for an independent nation to be called khalistan. it was a 'terrorist' style war that affected nearly everyone in punjab, my family included. one thing that strikes me while here, is that while society has returned to "peace and stability," the wounds of this period are still very fresh. another thing that strikes me, is that there are bizarre conspiracy theories for just about everything, including the khalistan question.

let me start by explaining my macro-view on the period of conflict. i should first say, i have a read a small amount and spoken with a number of people over the years, but i by no means have a thorough academic understanding of the subject. anyway, to distill a large complex topic into a couple lines, basically, here's my take:

1. sikhs, are a relatively prosperous people, and fierce warriors both respected and feared in pakistan and india.
2. we also have a violent history of battles to control greater punjab. (read kushwant singh's history of the punjab for more info).
3. in addition, india in general is composed of ethnically, religiously, linguistically, and culturally diverse people which have historically been segregated into independent "nations." the indian national identity is a relatively new phenomenon in the thousands of years of indian history.
4. in addition, india is a poor country with deeply entrenched corruption and an utterly innept and extensive beauracracy.
5. india and pakistan have been essentially at war since their foundings; india has never truly accepted that pakistan has a right to exist, and pakistan, feeling threatened, has struggled to break up the nation of india in an attempt to address its perceived threat by leveraging an understanding of point 3.
6. the US funded the mujahedeen in afghanistan to fight the soviet union back in the 80s. since the muj (1 of which is now the infamous osama bin laden) despised the american christian "infidels", the US had to route funding through the pakistani ISI (pak's CIA). well this was no small sum of cash, the ISI, routed a good chunk to the muj, but an even larger chunk went to itself, to essentially build a war chest, and fund what virtually amounts to an independent pak government.

ok, so what of the punjabi separatist movement? basically, a group of who i'll call separatists had legitimate grievances, harnessed a general spirit of economic malaise and tribalism to gain a modest voice, then morphed toward violent resistence. ISI saw an opportunity and started routing funds and started some training camps. the indian government mistepped a few times very signficantly (operation blue star), and popular support for the separatists rose, along with communal tension. then the government granted too much power to the police, in a society where virtually no checks and balances on the police exist. the police, not unexpectedly, ran amuck, killing lots of terrorists, but also many many innocents in their path. eventually, the police were able to drain popular support for the insurgency (mostly by making the situation so violent, that the populace just wanted it all to end), and stop it.

well i thought i would get further than that, but it turns out my couple lines grew into more. anyway, i'll come back to this topic sometime soon. my basic point was supposed to be, that a sort of intellectual analysis ending in a macro-view of a situation, is so utterly irrelevant. when you actually live through something like this, what you see means so much more.

a good friend of mine, who fit the visual profile of a terrorist (which i should mention included about 50% of all punjabi's), was brutally tortured on multiple occassions. only afer his family sold off ancestral land, raised a very large ransom, and paid off the police was he liberated. he figured out later that he was picked up, because a guy he had a conflict with in his juvenile college days was picked up, and under heavy torture, stated his name. this was a common occurrence, people took advantage of the situation to deal with their enemies. this friend went on to tell me many first hand accounts of utter brutality that were previously neatly wrapped up in my macro-view of these days as "instability." i often hear this here in punjab, that what one reads from afar, is so completely different from what those here who lived through these dark days experienced. hearing these first hand accounts from my friend really brought this point home for me.